16. Olivia
OLIVIA
GIRL TALK
Somehow, life had gotten even more hectic since I’d gotten engaged, which I’d thought was physically impossible considering I was still partially juggling two lives.
Except now, my family knew my fiancé was human and couldn’t find out that we were shifters.
There had been… mixed success on that front, but for the most part, everyone had kept the wolf talk to a minimum (barring the few slips of using the word wolf in idioms) during the lunch with my parents and the Greek Italian chorus that had snooped themselves into the house at the time.
Even though it had been a month since that interaction, sometimes I still wondered if I dreamt it all up.
From Nonna arriving unannounced, to Keith’s practically perfect answer when my father pressed him about why he hadn’t asked for permission to propose to me, it had been a whirlwind of emotion and conversation.
And although some of my family still didn’t get why I would want to be with a human and couldn’t see the point in concealing ourselves from him when I was supposed to be marrying him for life, no one was actively sabotaging us.
For that I was grateful.
Grateful, and very, very busy.
Planning a wedding that would somehow follow all the traditions of my family without tipping off my fiancé that we could all spontaneously burst into giant wolves wasn’t enough.
I was also taking swimming lessons at the local Y.
I didn’t want to be a stereotype who could only do the doggy paddle if Keith and I went somewhere tropical for our honeymoon.
I was also taking that metalworking class that had been too full when I decided to join Keith’s, and I enjoyed giving him little recaps about what I liked and disliked, so he could tinker with his own workshop.
Then there was my workout schedule, which I had again increased because, frankly, I liked feeling strong and not getting as breathless on our pack runs. Apart from that, I was still gaming and hanging out with Amanda.
Although we were still what I would call best friends, I felt like I’d been neglecting our girl time together, so now I was trying to make a concerted effort to maintain my side of things.
Which was why, even though I was headed toward the shower after coming back from a pack run, when I saw that she had called me nearly a dozen times I ran up to my room and dialed her right back.
“Hey, is everything okay?” I asked, a million-and-one awful scenarios running through my mind. All my life, I had been warned about the possible dangers of interacting with humans, but no one had ever told me that my biggest fear would be that something would happen to them.
Keith and Amanda, while quite capable and intelligent, were also so fragile in a way that was still alien to me despite knowing them for so long. Sometimes, all it took was a simple fall for everything to break apart.
So yeah, once she answered, I was a bit anxious. But who could blame me?
“Heeeeeeey,” Amanda drawled. To a stranger, she probably sounded nonchalant. However, I knew from experience that was her tone when she was trying to pretend something wasn’t a big deal to her. “Sorry about all the calls. I know it’s one of your family weekends. Honestly, I was being silly.”
I knew Amanda to be many things, but silly was not a word I’d use to describe her.
“Hey now, don’t downplay yourself. I’m sure you had a good reason for calling. If you want to share, I want to listen.”
“You sure?” she asked, and even without any enhanced senses I could hear her relief through the line. “It’s, like, no big deal or anything.”
In a move that was straight out of a coming-of-age movie, I flopped onto my bed on my belly, kicking my feet up behind me as I put my phone on speaker—again, something I wouldn’t do without the soundproofing in my room.
I wasn’t sure what my family might think if they found out my best friend was also human. One shock was enough for the moment.
“Big deal or not, you gotta dish. That’s what friends are for, right?”
She let out a tiny laugh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“I have a habit of being right.”
“Not when we’re playing Words with Friends,” she shot back, which of course she would. While I loved bantering with Keith and he always made my cheeks hurt from smiling and my belly hurt from laughter, no one quipped as fast and as snarkily as the personified Barbie.
“That was one time!”
“Uh-huh, sure it was.”
“Okay, now you’re trying to distract me.”
“You know me too well.”
“And I’m all the luckier for it. Now spill!”
“Relax, I’m getting there. Just figuring out where to start.”
“I’ve heard the beginning is a great place to try that.”
“Hardy, har har.”
Perhaps I was being a little annoying, but it was clear the verbal back and forth had eased up the stress I could hear in my friend’s voice, because she sighed and finally started really talking.
“You see... I got asked out.”
I’d hung out with Amanda enough to know that wasn’t necessarily a good thing, so I braced myself for whether I needed to squeal in support or go get a baseball bat. “Are you happy about it?”
“I don’t know.”
Now, maybe that would confuse some people, because how could someone not know if it was a good thing when someone asked them out or not?
But Amanda needed a business day or two to decode what she was feeling, then another twenty-four hours to decide what she wanted to do with that.
It was different from how my brain worked, yeah, but I didn’t judge her for it.
It took all sorts of people and wolves to make the world go round.
And witches too, but I didn’t know any of those personally.
“Okay, then let’s talk about it and maybe you’ll be able to figure it out. Did you know this guy previously or did he just come up to you?”
“Oh no, he’s not a rando. He works at the comic book shop. He’s really polite and not one of those well akshually creeps who drive me up the wall.”
“That’s good!” I wasn’t as much of a nerd as Amanda, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t familiar with the trope of men in the hobby either not believing a woman could be into comics like them and trying to quiz her like they were the gatekeepers of all geekery, and the trope of men asking women out at inappropriate times.
“Have the two of you talked much, or is this really out of the blue?”
“No, we talk a lot whenever I go in there and at the events I go to. He’s really funny, if a bit quiet.”
So far, it sounded all good to me, but I could still tell that something was bothering Amanda.
Sometimes, she needed someone to ask questions so she could figure out where her own thoughts were, but sometimes, she needed things stated bluntly, so I figured it was time to check if the latter was the correct course of action.
“What’s the deal then? What’s got you stressin’?”
“I’m interested in him.”
She said it so bluntly but I was sure I misheard. “Pardon?” I asked out of instinct.
“I said, I’m interested in him.”
“Okay, so what’s the issue then?” So far, it seemed like we should be squealing in excitement and planning Amanda’s killer outfit for their first date.
Actually, that sounded like a lot of fun.
Could we do that? Although the two of us still dressed up to go out on our girl dates, it would be fun to go through the entire full glam process with Amanda.
A rehashing of the makeover she gave me that had changed the way I viewed myself, but probably with fewer personal revelations.
“The issue is that this is the first time I’ve felt any sort of attraction at all since my ex cheated on me three years ago. He was the only other person I’ve ever felt that way toward, and I don’t know if I wanna make myself vulnerable like that again.”
And there it was.
Finally, I had the true answer, the reason she needed to phone a friend. Well, I was happy to do my part and help in whatever way I could.
“I totally understand that, Amanda, and I’m sorry that happened to you. Someone breaking your trust like that can leave some really deep scars that take a long time to heal.”
It made me grateful for my limited romantic history. I’d missed out on a lot of social milestones that many people would consider par for the course, but hey, I never once had to deal with infidelity, and that seemed like its own special heartbreak.
But it seemed, now that the seal was broken, Amanda could no longer play nonchalant, because she was already talking again, her rhythm speeding up with each passing sentence.
“The thing is, I don’t even know if going on a date with him would be fair!”
“What? Why not? Because you’re a total smokeshow?”
“Ha. No, nothing like that. It’s just...”
“It’s just?” I prompted when the silence went on a bit too long.
“I’m worried I might be ace.”
“Ace?” I repeated, feeling dumb. “Like the card?”
“Ace as in asexual.”
Oh.
I sat there silently for a moment, and my feet stopped kicking. I’d seen coming out moments in all sorts of different media, but I hadn’t really been prepared for it to happen to me in real life.
“You think I’m stupid,” Amanda stated, and maybe an outsider would think that her voice was blank, but I heard the pain in it. I heard her bracing for rejection. So I rushed to respond.
“No! Not at all! Never think that. I was just trying to recall every single thing I’ve ever heard about asexuality and locked up for a moment.”
“Really? You don’t think it’s stupid for someone who looks like me to not be interested in sex?”
From anybody else that would be a wild question, but in a way, I knew exactly what Amanda meant.
To many people, she was the pinnacle of attraction.
Supermodel, complete with abs, legs for days, a megawatt smile, and stacked as well, just to make things unfair.
It probably seemed pretty incongruous to most people to see someone who they regarded as nearly painfully sexy be completely uninterested in such an aspect.