3. Olivia #2
“Broke my alarm,” he said, bleary-eyed and yawning. “There any breakfast le—”
His brain still clearly calibrating the whole being alive thing, he paused when he noticed the scene in front of him. I watched the teenager blink once, twice, and then a third time before a lucid thought flashed behind his eyes.
“Am I interrupting something?”
If only he knew that he was the whole catalyst for the bomb I had just dropped into our family dynamic.
I would definitely tell him later, but for the moment, I wasn’t quite sure if he was fully cognizant enough to comprehend the situation. One of the many things I’d learned about growing up with multiple teenage boys was that they sure could eat, and they sure could sleep.
“No, nothing, nothing. I was just about to head out. You, me, and Massimo are all on for the movies this weekend, don’t forget.”
“Oh, good! I was hoping we’d stick to that. Anyway, is there still breakfast in the fridge?”
I left my parents to deal with him as I hurried out the door. Unlike Serafina and Ginna, I’d insisted on getting my driver’s license the moment I could, so I was able to hop into my own car and drive to a cute little café I often visited when I needed to get out of the house.
It wasn’t a long drive, a little over fifteen minutes when traffic was bad, but it was enough for the adrenaline to wear off and for me to realize exactly what I’d done.
I had just quit my job. And it wasn’t like I had another one lined up.
No. In fact, I wasn’t going to work at all for a while.
I had plenty of savings, and my cost of living was low.
My car was in my name, because that was another thing I had insisted upon, and it was paid off.
My phone was part of our pack’s plan, and my parents didn’t charge me rent.
Basically, I only bought food for myself and pitched in for utilities.
I was well aware that Papa and Mama squirreled away that money, because they’d done it with everyone else and gifted it back to them as a wedding gift.
Well, it wasn’t like I was getting married anytime soon.
“You did what you needed to do,” I told myself as I pulled into a parking spot and the doubts proceeded to ratchet up tenfold.
Goodness, one would think that the magical healing powers we had as shifters would extend to mental health so I wouldn’t have to deal with so much goddamn anxiety.
But no, not so lucky. I had the ability to explode into a ferocious beast that could take down ten men in a few minutes and also cripple myself with the power of my own mind.
Fantastic.
At least making fun of myself was a distraction, and it worked through ordering my drink, then waiting for said drink, and then realizing that they’d somehow spelled my name wrong on my cup.
How in the hell did they get Allievia?
I didn’t say anything, of course. One battle at a time. I had just launched myself from the nest I had been so comfortable in for my entire life, no need to go to war with a barista who had a million other things to do besides remembering how to spell other people’s names.
As I moved to a table, steaming coffee in hand, I saw a community board. It must have always been there considering the dozens of papers and flyers in various colors covering it, but somehow, I had never noticed it.
I couldn’t say what possessed me to stop and look at it, but I did.
There were flyers for all sorts of cool stuff pinned to the board: guitar lessons, advertisements for drag shows, burlesque shows, a running club, a knitting club, an anime convention, and a sci-fi convention.
Sadly, there were also flyers for lost pets and stolen bikes, and I hoped those posts resulted in the lost things being found.
My family and I tended to be quite insular, considering how many of us there were and the fact that we were wolf shifters living in a human world, but looking at all the little attempts for connection touched my heart in a way I hadn’t expected it to.
Every single person who had pinned a paper to the cork board had a hope that someone would see it and respond.
It was a bid for connection with a whole lot of faith wound into it.
Faith... exactly what I needed for myself since I’d taken such a leap of it. I was flying by the seat of my pants, and as terrifying as it was, the rainbow of paper in front of me made it much less so.
“Is this a sign?” I asked the community board. My gaze landed on three coordinated flyers all with the same font but slightly different subject matter. “What’s this?”
I zeroed in on them. They were all for eight-week classes at the local community college.
One was for cooking, one for woodworking, and one for metal-working.
As much as I would love to beef up my culinary skills, all the tabs on that were gone, as were the tabs for the metal-working class.
A bit more searching revealed a fourth flyer for gardening, nearly completely buried, but I could learn that from my father or even Serafina.
“Woodworking, huh?” I asked, looking at the three remaining tabs on the orange flyer. I imagined myself in a stereotypical lumberjack outfit, swinging around a chainsaw in a way that would definitely not be OSHA approved. “Crazier things have happened, I suppose.”
Intrigued, I took one of the tabs before finally taking a seat. Maybe nothing would come of it, maybe that class would be full too, but if I wanted to try new things to find myself, it seemed like a pretty good way to start.
After all, what was the worst that could happen?