17
Shawn
The next day passes exceptionally quietly. I know, because Aiden texts me.
When did you start grinding your teeth?
I look up across the room and attempt to relax my jaw. Aiden’s always had the keenest sense of hearing out of all of us, but this is ridiculous.
“There’s no way you can hear that,” I say out loud, and he doesn’t look up from the coffee table. He’s spread a bunch of printed-out pages that he’s cutting into name cards for seating. Clearly Mom’s been putting everyone to work.
I’m restless enough that I’ve been considering volunteering to help out, but that would mean talking to my mom, and that’s been off the table since pizza night. Elise actually put a note on the kitchen door not to bother her while she was working on food prep, and Logan’s been Logan.
“Every time you walk around downstairs,” Aiden says, waving the scissors around for effect. “Being in the same room with you is a bit much.”
I’ve been trying my best not to think about Elise, or last night. I’m failing miserably. I’d been so tempted to go back and kiss her breathless and make her whine with pleasure, that I ended up going for a run until I was too tired to think, just following the paths that were as familiar to me as breathing.
With everything going on, I’ve barely paid any attention to the scene I’m supposed to be editing; I just keep playing it through and hoping one of these times I’ll remember what I was supposed to be doing. I hit the spacebar a little too hard to pause the program.
I pull the headphones off and get up from the window seat, moving to leave the room.
“Let me know when you get to the folding stage on those place cards,” I call over my shoulder, to a non-committal grunt from Aiden. Fine, I guess I don’t have to help him if he’s gonna be like that.
“Elise doesn’t need you to keep bothering her, y’know.”
First of all, rude. I’m not that predictable. I stop in the doorway. “Who said I was going to bother her? I could be going anywhere.”
Trying to look casual, I lean against the doorjamb, crossing my arms over my chest. “. . . I mean, did she say something? Did she tell you I was bothering her?”
Aiden rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t look like he wants to chide me about it. “You’ve got it bad.”
I sigh and scrub a hand over my face. He’s right. Bothering her is the only thing I want to do.
“You know, if you hadn’t told me it yourself, I’d think you two knew each other a little more than just a couple of bad dates,” Aiden says, snagging part of my attention.
I shrug, looking out across the empty hallway. Mom’s probably asleep in bed already, the sun is setting, I don’t see Elise’s car in the driveway.
Maybe it’s safe to practice a tiny bit of honesty. It doesn’t come naturally at this point. Admitting the truth feels more like lying than lying ever did.
“Yeah, alright, I might’ve fibbed a little. It was a little longer. I didn’t want to get her in trouble with the mothership.”
“So, she is that human you weren’t supposed to marry,” Aiden says, and my full attention snaps to him.
This little shit. Did Laura tell him? There’s no way he just figured it out on his own. I would have put money on Logan doing the math for when I left and whenever Elise showed up, putting pieces together.
For my least observant brother, I wouldn’t have thought he’d be the first to figure it out.
Instead of answering, I push off the wall and close the heavy wooden door to the den, its base sliding across the carpet. It’s about as close to soundproof as this house gets.
Aiden looks absolutely delighted with himself. He punches the air, before offering a low whistle and wincing. “Yikes. That’s messy.”
“Yeah. Well, I wasn’t about to tell Mom she was right. ‘Wolves can only mate with wolves’ and all that,” I say. Even years since I’d last heard it, I still say it with the same inflection our mom did when the drama initially went down. She’d become a broken record about it, and that became the only thing she would say on the matter.
“Well, it could have been worse. What if Elise had been a Protestant,” he chuckles, and takes a swig of his beer, “—and Dad was still alive.”
“Well, yeah, I guess it can always be worse. Our parents could always have had even more insane, outdated rules.” I throw a flippant sign-of-the-cross and roll my eyes.
Aiden grimaces. “Don’t do that, you’ll give me flashbacks. Remember when he burned my Pokémon cards for being devil worship? I cried so hard I threw up, man.”
A short, dry laugh escapes me. I remember that. I also remember Logan and I pooling our allowances to buy him a couple packs of cards, making him swear he would never take them out at home again.
We stare out across the lawn, my thoughts turning toward Elise. She used to do that kind of thing. Small gestures that went a long way. Whenever she poured herself a glass of water, she made one for me too. The instant ramen cups she hated but always kept a stash of them around because she knew I preferred them over the good stuff.
“. . . I cried pretty hard after she left. She didn’t say anything, she just left. And I know I made it hard on her. She was right to leave, but it still hurt,” I say, looking at the window, gauzy curtains filtering the last light of evening through them. “I think I stayed in bed for days.”
I glance at Aiden, whose face is contemplative. “Did you throw up, though?”
“After trying to drown my sorrows, probably. I don’t remember.”
“Well, if I loved my Pokémon cards more than you loved her, maybe it wasn’t meant to be, ya dingus.”
“I think you’ve blocked out the part where you stuffed your face with a dozen saltines covered in cream cheese first.”
“Oh. Yeah. Did you know Elise has a bougie recipe for that? It’s so good. She’s made it for my birthday like three times now. Seriously, you’re not allowed to do anything that’s going to jeopardize that.”
“That’s all it takes, huh? A lifetime of brotherly love for some Boursin on crackers?” I chide him and move back to the couch he’s on. I nudge him over with my foot, and he sticks a pillow between us, as if that’ll shield him. He mutters something about it not just being Boursin.
This particular couch isn’t all that long, so I end up folding my legs up on the couch between us instead of stretching out.
I can’t bear to think of our relationship as a complete mistake, but there’s plenty I regret. Back then I was young and just stupid and hubristic enough to think I could make it work with a human, that she would never have to know.
Of course, it didn’t work. Of course, it all went the way my parents said it would, and I’d been too proud to admit that, to return home at all.
And here I was, still too proud to tell her.
I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to show her the worst parts of myself; that I could bury it. Perhaps that was the problem at the root of it, that you can’t really be known and loved if you hide half of yourself away.
I’ve turned these thoughts over hundreds, maybe thousands, of times in my head. I don’t think I’ve ever said them out loud before, because they sound just as selfish as the first time I thought them.
“I just wish . . . I don’t know. Maybe that she would have tried to stay. Choosing her over you guys was the hardest thing I ever did. And the minute it got difficult for her, she was gone.”
“I think it’s ok to feel like that, even if it’s not fair to put that burden on her,” Aiden says, surprising me. I watch him as he takes another printout of place cards, the scissors carefully gliding through the page.
“We all want someone to choose us, at the end of the day. But I think because our family put you in a difficult position, you didn’t really choose her either. You could have told her what was really going on and given her a chance to choose all of you. But you hid behind our rules, because you didn’t think she’d stay if she knew what you were.”
I stare several moments at my brother, increasingly concerned that one of us is having an aneurysm or something. “What the fuck, dude.”
“Oh, did you miss the part where she’s one of my friends, and this is what she yells at the TV on movie nights? It’s been real obvious to me, the whole time.”
“Yeah, I guess I did miss that part. I don’t think I was physically here for it.”
The heavy back door creaks open, and Logan stands on the precipice, threading his arms through a jacket. He nods to the both of us, “I’m heading down to the catacombs, you want a ride?”
I blink. We haven’t called the brewery’s basement that in ages. I would be surprised if the graves of Aiden’s many deceased goldfish are even there anymore, our mom always did hate that he kept burying them in the basement’s dirt floor.
“It’s not even the full moon yet,” I complain with a glance to the window, its ghostly shape creeping up in the sky. “And we’re not kids anymore, we have some control now.”
“You think you do.”
Ladies and gents, my brother. He knows how to kill a vibe wherever he goes.
Logan doesn’t look like the responsible type, with his long hair, piercings, and tattoos, a visual rebellion no matter what detail you stop on. But his default demeanor has clearly changed. He just always seems like he’s waiting for me to be done with my bullshit.
He’s right, but I don’t want him to know he’s right. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the next few days. I’ve been doing a pretty terrible job of leaving Elise alone. We’re almost to the wedding, and almost to the full moon. But with all the wolf sightings and rumored animal attacks, if one of us is starting to turn feral . . .
I can’t imagine it’s either of them, they both seem so normal. Well, as normal as any of us have ever been. If it were me, wouldn’t I be able to tell that something’s wrong? At least, besides everything else that has been messed up lately.
Logan scoops up a six pack of cans with the Aconite Ales branding that I hadn’t noticed on the floor before. “C’mon, I’m leaving. We’ve been experimenting with a honeysuckle and aconite blend. It’s got a more traditional ale flavor profile, less of the aconite’s bitterness.”
“Look, he thinks he’s going to lure us into the basement with a new flavor of ale,” I scoff to Aiden. If there’s one purpose I have in life, it is to annoy Logan.
“For the love of God, Montresor!” Our little brother grins, and mimes pounding against a brick wall. It makes me crack a smile. Some jokes never die.
“Don’t tempt me.” Logan rolls his eyes, looking like he’s trying to play along. “Come on. With all the coyote sightings, I’d hate for one of you to get pepper sprayed by some hikers.”
His words are light, but I can tell he’s worried. The eviscerated deer is still on my mind, and clearly his as well. But I don’t think locking ourselves in the basement is the answer.
“If one of us is going feral, the last thing I’d want is to be stuck in the brewery basement with him.”
“We’re all here together, we can’t go feral,” Aiden says, as if that puts the whole matter to rest. “I mean, you’re with us now, and we’re about to join with the Carrington pack. That’s more wolves in the family than we’ve ever had.”
“Yeah, there’s a real sense of community with a bunch of strangers.” I can’t help but tack on a little snark to Aiden’s optimism. He’s an extrovert, so of course joining with a bigger pack sounds like a party to him.
“Then why are there still coyote sightings?”
His expression falls a little, and he rubs the back of his neck uncertainly. “Maybe there really are coyotes.”
Logan doesn’t look impressed, of course. “So, are you coming?”
“Nah, dude, he’s gotta go annoy his girlfriend,” Aiden blabs, and I try to kick him through the pillow. He gives me his puppy eyes, and I glare at him, hopefully communicating that if he tells Logan I was married to Elise, I will make him regret it.
Logan gives me a side eye as he settles against the doorjamb. “You two have been getting pretty friendly. Are you sure that’s smart?”
He’s never been a snitch, but he does have our mother’s Are You Sure That’s Smart? glare down pat.
“Since when does Shawn do smart things?” Aiden snorts, his grin immediately falling when I shoot a glare at him.
I’m not sharing a couch with a traitor, so I get up and toss the other throw pillow at Aiden, directing my words to Logan. “I don’t need this from you and Mom, ok?”
Logan crosses his arms at me like he’s in any kind of authority. An older-brotherly annoyance rises in me. I’m not about to take direction from the kid whose face I used to wipe Cheeto dust off of, even if he is right.
He continues to lean in the wide-open doorway, making it impossible for me to leave until he’s gotten his way.
Instead of doing anything so obviously guilty as crossing my arms over my chest, I take one of the cans of ale out from the plastic loops that hold the pack together.
“I don’t mean it the way Mom probably means it, you and humans and all that,” Logan says quietly, leaning towards me, even though there’s no way Aiden can’t also hear it. “She is right though.”
That makes it sound like I have a weird, specific human fetish that I had to break all our rules for. Not really how I would frame it.
Still, Mom had never put it in the colorful terms that Dad did. She had always just reminded me, “Humans don’t know how we do things.”
Gentle words with a difficult meaning.
I bristle and resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Dude, if you have something to say that Mom hasn’t yet, you should get to your point.”
“Ok,” he shrugs, and says simply, “Elise is my friend, and I don’t want you to hurt her. Again.”
I pull open the tab and the harsh sound stings the air.
There’s no way Elise told him enough of what happened to merit him saying “again” like that. There’s a slight chance Laura told him whatever version Elise was willing to share with her. It’s possible he’s just imagining that because clearly it ended badly before, it was my fault.
Logan eases into the room and hands one of the other cans to Aiden, opening one for himself. He sits down on the coffee table, and if I wasn’t currently the problem child, I would have tattled on his ass so fucking hard right now.
“Back at the bar, she said you lied to her,” Logan chides, leveling a cool look at me. His tone drops into a low disapproval that manages to mock both me and Aiden, “Dude.”
The level of judgment in that one word. I guess they all must have heard us fighting the other day outside the bar after all.
“That’s what I got from the other day,” Aiden adds. Yeah, these little family togetherness moments are just so important.
“Just say you eavesdropped and move on,” I reply dismissively.
“Well, did you?”
I look at both my brothers in disbelief. They’re ganging up on me, to defend my ex-wife to my face. It was bad enough when it was Aiden hounding me, but if Logan is joining in, I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this conversation.
“Of course I did.”
Aiden’s brows scrunch together in abject confusion, before devolving into that kicked puppy look. He had the gall to be disappointed in me. He lives in a world where lying to people you love doesn’t need to happen, because he follows the family rules.
“You would have done the same,” I almost snap at him in defense.
“Neither of us would’ve gotten into that situation,” Logan snipes unhelpfully, but at least he picks up my meaning, and has the presence of mind to close the living room door again.
Aiden, unfortunately, hasn’t been paying attention, ever, I guess. “What situation?”
“She caught me coming back from my . . . midnight runs a couple of times. She’s a light sleeper, and, in the moment, I didn’t really have a good explanation,” I mutter. “It sucked, and it was clear I was lying to her, but that was the only option. I wasn’t going to spill family secrets.”
I would have thought this was obvious. At least these idiots could have picked a worse time and place to confront me about this. By now Elise has already gone home for the night.
It’s likely the least of the many reasons wolves keep bloodlines within long established packs, but it’s not exactly easy to keep one’s lunar transformations a secret when living with someone. My brothers probably never had to consider just how difficult it is because they’ve only ever lived at home.
I’d thought Elise understood something about me. She commiserated with me about fucked up family dynamics, how hard going no-contact was, what it meant to give up on the idea that our parents would love us the way we needed them to, when the pattern of their damage was imprinted upon us.
But it had been clear she was looking to replace her family with someone else’s, and I knew that would never happen with mine. Of course I lied to her.
“Oh,” Aiden says, looking guilty, and then mumbles, “Sorry. I didn’t think it was that. I just thought—”
“That I’d actually cheated on her? Of course,” I grumble, perturbed that my brothers would think so little of me. “You guys have anything else you want to say to me? Logan, clearly you’ve had a chip on your shoulder since I got here. Come on, out with it. Get it off your chest.”
Logan says nothing, just rolls his eyes. He looks like he’s regretting offering any kind of olive branch.
“I can only speak for MYSELF,” Aiden says, shooting a glare at Logan, “. . . but it sucked when you picked some stranger over us. It hurt, man.”
Logan glances at me for half a second, his eyes lifting and falling imperceptible as a single breath.
There was a point when Logan and I were best friends. We were closer in age to each other than with Aiden, who’d been the baby stumbling to follow us around. We’d only grown apart as we’d gotten older.
I chew the inside of my cheek. Not the way I thought that would go, but I don’t feel right apologizing for choosing Elise. I’ve never had it in me to regret choosing her, and this past week has only made that clearer to me.
But I am sorry for the pain that it caused.
“Yeah,” I nod slowly, “—and it hurt when you guys sided with Mom and Dad.”
Maybe they hadn’t realized that’s what they’d done. They were as young and immersed in our family’s bullshit as I had been, and they had never left home the way I did. But that was still effectively the choice they had made.
For a moment, there’s only quiet. Too much of it, filling the rifts between us.
Instead of responding, Logan downs the rest of his ale and swiftly cracks open another. I’d grab one too if it didn’t mean moving closer to him.
“I think it’s super lame that I’m the only one in our messed-up family that even tried therapy.” Aiden sighs, but I know he’s not going to make a dent with Logan.
“I don’t need therapy, I’m fine.”
“I’m also fine.”
“Good to know we’re all perfectly fine.”
And no one is going feral, either. Yeah, that checks out for this family. Just pretend nothing is a problem, it’ll go away sooner or later. I imagine that’s what happened when I left.
I wonder if Logan sees it too, watching his expression. His jaw is tight, but I watch the half-smile that flickers across his mouth. He doesn’t look at me but raises his eyebrows. “Do you guys wanna go light a soccer ball on fire?”
I follow his eyes to one of the pictures on the wall, where the both of us are no more than thirteen, our eyebrows singed off, grinning like maniacs.
The nostalgia of that question is touching, honestly.
“Yeah, alright. We’re probably too old to be grounded.” I scoff but still feel all mushy inside about it. I didn’t realize how much I missed this kind of bonehead shit. “Aiden, you in?”
He grins wide and takes an ale from the pack. “Burning all the leg hair off our shins is gonna be such a great look for the wedding. We should all wear shorts to show it off.”
Logan smiles back, it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He looks tired.