20. Giselle
TWENTY
GISELLE
A Leap of Faith
God, I was full.
So, so, so full.
“Dad, I wanna take a nap,” Benny said, head dipping. Veronica was already out for the count, her head resting on Ben’s broad chest. I knew exactly how warm he was, so she had to be incredibly cozy now that the air had turned colder as the sun began to set.
Unsurprisingly, the food had been utterly delicious.
I’d had quiche, some sort of silken tofu dish, musubi—not of the spam variety, unfortunately—hot dogs, brats, cheeseburgers, schnitzel, and little bites from Ben’s plate when he wanted me to try something.
I learned that I really liked vermicelli rice noodles as well as samosas—specifically the vegetarian kind.
I was stuffed to the gills in the best way and just soaking up my contentment.
“It’s getting late, buddy. Do you want to head home with Natalie and sleep in the car on your way back?”
“Yes, let us go home,” Natalie said, putting down the bowl she’d brought for herself and standing.
She’d been eating some sort of boiled vegetable dish that she’d explained was made from amaranth, bitter greens, chard, and other leafy veggies I didn’t recognize.
I’d never seen someone so thrilled about chowing down on hot leaves.
Yeah, horse shifters liked foliage. Who knew.
“Ready to dip already?” Ben chuckled, gently patting Veronica’s back.
He looked so incredibly relaxed, so unencumbered by everything that tended to haunt him.
For a brief moment, I had a snapshot of what it could be like in the future if things kept going well: Ben being a dad to his growing children, and Natalie as their loving but somewhat introverted aunt.
Was there room for me in there?
I hoped so. God, did I hope so.
I’d never really thought I’d have children of my own, since I interacted with twenty of them five days out of the week, but the idea of waking up each morning to Benny and Veronica, seeing them grow up and go through all the different stages of life, was actually quite a welcome one.
“I have greeted the people I like and avoided people I don’t. And I have eaten all the food I want.” Ben and I both gave her a look. “Most of the food that I want. It is best I go while my record is so pristine.”
“That’s my Natalie,” Ben said with a chuckle, shaking his head, and the tiniest sliver of jealousy rose up in me.
Girl. This is not the time.
Ben and Natalie had a very special bond that I would never have, and honestly, I didn’t want to.
It was a completely unromantic connection born out of losing everyone they loved.
That was a pain that I would always empathize with, always support both of them through, but I never wanted to experience on my own.
“I am no one’s,” Natalie said firmly.
I thought Ben was going to apologize, but then Veronica lifted her sleepy head and made a vague gesture with one of her pudgy arms.
“Nawewe…”
“Correction. I am Veronica’s.”
That was too cute to be real, but I felt that same teary sort of happiness rise up within me just like it had at my house with my own family.
“Fair enough,” Ben said with a laugh before Benny was also up and walking beside Natalie as she went to extricate his sister from his father’s hold.
“But I, like, have partial custody of you, right?” the first grader asked, and for being so cheeky, there was an air of uncertainty in his voice.
If it were me in the situation, I would have crumbled immediately and pulled him into a hug. But Natalie was Natalie; she and the kids had their own love language.
“You are too young to know of partial custody,” she said, ruffling his hair. “Have you been watching Divorce Court again?”
“Only when you fall asleep while it’s playing on the TV.”
“I cannot help that it is one of the few afternoon programs that soothes the beast within your sister’s soul.”
“Yeah, yeah, keep telling yourself that.”
“Impudent boy.” She gave his cheek the tiniest pinch, then gathered Veronica in her arms.
I watched the whole thing unfold, not quite an outsider but not an insider either. I was locked in the peripheral, waiting for permission to come closer, and all I could think of was that the scene was so beautiful.
Family. They were a family forged together despite someone trying to destroy all of them. And although they had their struggles, their nightmares that refused to let go even against the hopeful rays of wakefulness, somehow, they’d found a way to make their own happiness. Their own pack.
I wanted in.
Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure I could be okay with Ben deciding he wasn’t ready for a relationship. I wouldn’t try to force one on him, or badger him, but at the same time, a beautiful picture was forming in my head, and I didn’t think I could let go of it.
I could see my dad and Benny watching long documentaries about some shared interest while I sat on the floor and read to Veronica. I could see Nox and Benny playing video games together.
I could see Simon and Ben going fishing together, although Ben had never mentioned an interest in such a thing. I could even see Natalie and I shopping together, Ben watching the kids.
All of it flashed before my eyes in a beautiful procession, and it nearly took my breath away.
I was incredibly grateful everyone was busy packing up and heading out, because it gave me the chance to recover. But there was only so much recovery I could do. I was pretty sure I was falling in love. It had gone beyond attraction, beyond casual for me.
But how did Ben feel?
Because as much as I wanted us to be on the same page, he had lost a wife, a soulmate. There was no way I could ever fully understand. I’d had one serious relationship in my life, and it had ended on relatively good terms.
If he wasn’t ready, he just wasn’t ready, and there was no way I could pressure him to be.
Even if I desperately wanted him to want me.
Fuck, I’d really gotten myself into a bit of a pickle, hadn’t I?
Well, I had about another ten minutes to get myself out of the emotional funk, otherwise Ben would definitely smell it on me once he came back from loading up the kids and saying goodbye.
There was a bit of a learning curve when it came to dating a shifter, but thanks to the group of “allies”—as they called themselves—I’d hung out with earlier, I’d learned an awful lot.
Mrs. Hayashi had wanted to show me around a bit, but her ultimate goal was to drop me off with the small circle of humans who were sitting around and enjoying a couple of beers while their shifter partners played with the kids in their animal forms.
For a brief second, I’d thought that maybe we were purposefully segregated, but no, that didn’t seem to be the case. It was just a natural grouping of humans resting and socializing while the shifters did their thing.
And to be honest, I learned a lot from that group. Tips for safety, both in everyday life and even sexually. I hadn’t had the heart to tell them that Ben and I weren’t at that level yet—not that it was any of their business.
I also learned little things I could do to cover for them in human society—not a ton, since Ben and his family already had a pretty good handle on it—but things could get dicey when puberty came, so me working at the same school Benny went to was a huge boon.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I’d gotten more used to how silently Ben could move, but he still startled me every now and then. “Whoa, sorry there. I didn’t mean to make you jump.”
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to focus on settling down my nerves the way the human partners had explained to me. I expected I would get better in time with more practice. “So, now that we’ve eaten our fill, and a lot of the youngsters are headed to bed, what’s next for this jamboree?”
“Really anything. The world is our oyster.”
“Oh, so we could rob a bank?”
“Okay, maybe not anything ,” he said, chuckling slightly.
It wasn’t a full laugh, but I would take it.
“We could go on a bit of a walk, find a nice place to watch as the sun sets and the fireflies come out. We could socialize and go from cluster to cluster since people have kind of spread out from the main pavilion. Or we could just sit here and chat. Or...” he trailed off, and that piqued my interest. Maybe I had been a cat shifter in a past life, because boy, did I have curiosity to spare.
“Or what?” I asked, more than a bit intrigued.
“Or you could dance with us.”
“Dance?” I asked, wondering what kind of playlists they had for such a multicultural event. “Like with music and everything?”
“No, not quite like that,” he said, sounding unsure of himself. In the time we had been dating, it had been nice to see Ben grow more and more confident in himself, but this seemed like his original nerves all over again.
“Then, like what?”
“Ah, it’s a little hard to explain.”
“Because it’s weird? Or violent?”
“No, nothing like that. There’s no direct translation. Like a lot of those German words.”
“Like schadenfreude?”
“I knew you would know what I meant. Schadenfreude.”
“Can you try your best? Just to give me an outline of an idea?”
“Hmm. Best I can say is it’s kind of… a celebration of nature? Everyone who wants to participate gathers together, usually within the trees, forming a sort of loose circle. Certain segments are led by a single shifter. They set the mood, the tone, and move however their bodies tell them.
“Sometimes it’s kind of like play fighting, sometimes it’s just running in circles, sometimes it’s sitting around and howling to the stars. We follow that one leader for a while until that segment is over, then it’s someone else’s turn.”
I couldn’t picture it properly, but my mind conjured up a vague approximation of what it might be like.
“And it would be okay that I was there, as a human?”