15 #2
Andrew opens the door to the Mexican restaurant. I look at my parents for a few more minutes and then just follow him in.
Inside, it smells like crispy corn tortillas and they are playing upbeat Mariachi music, and there’s a hostess at a lectern, sorting through menus. “How many?” she says brightly.
Andrew sputters.
I lean around him. “We’re looking for someone. Blond, short, curvy, probably getting everyone to buy her drinks at the bar?”
“Um…” The woman shakes her head. “No, there’s no one here like that.” She gestures and the bar is entirely empty, absolutely no one there.
“Thanks,” I say and drag Andrew out. Back on the sidewalk, my mother is wringing out her hands and my father’s face is red, and I say, “Maybe we should split up. You guys look that way, and Andrew and I will go this way.”
Without waiting for an answer, I take Andrew by the arm and pull him away from our parents, because I don’t want to deal with any of this right now.
Andrew and I check the Applebees, which is on the other side of the road from the strip mall, and we also check the Buffalo Wild Wings.
Then my mother texts that they’ve found Calliope, that she was in a furniture store and she’d made a nest on one of the display beds. My parents are going to have to buy it now, because it’s completely ruined, clearly.
Andrew and Calliope get thrown in the back seat of my mother’s car, and she drives them back to their place. I take my car, and my dad takes Andrew’s, and then I have to drive back with him so that he can get Calliope’s car and take it home.
During this drive, my father is very intense. “What’s going on with Ellis?”
“He’s in heat,” I say.
“Did you leave him alone in heat?” says my father.
“No, his alphas came to find him,” I say.
“Oh,” says my father.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think I’ve known for a while that he was my water wings or whatever. A little crutch to use while I learned to swim, and now he and his alphas will work things out and that will be that. No more Ellis.”
My father drums his fingers on my dashboard, shaking his head.
“Your mother wants me to tell you that if you want to be on birth control pills, you just make an appointment. She says that if you’re too embarrassed or something, she can delegate that to one of her assistants, but you need to tell her that. ”
“No, it’s fine,” I say. “I can make my own appointment. It’s heat, Dad. Things get intense, that’s all.”
“Well, she also thinks you need to go and get a battery of STD testing,” he says. “And I agree, because—”
“Yeah, it’s all about my physical health and safety,” I say. “I get it.” I can tell they are horrified by my behavior. I can tell.
“That’s the most important thing,” says my father.
“But I have to say that I think you’re very young, and you’ve been a little sheltered, Hannah, and I got a different impression from him than this.
The way he looked at you, it made me think that he really cared about you.
I trusted my gut and not my head, and your mother is being very I-told-you-so about it, and Hannah-banana!
If anything happens to you, and I mean anything, it kills me, do you get that? ”
I laugh a little. My dad is horrified, sure, but he loves me. I look across the car at him, and I nod. “I get that, Daddy.”
He slumps in the car seat. “I guess you’re due to have your heart broken.”
“It’s not like I haven’t had my heart broken before,” I say. It’s like everyone forgets when Michael came out, and how sad I was. Everyone was all, Well, he did like musical theater. And, Well, he did go on and on about Andrew Garfield.
So, I guess the implication was that I should have noticed he was gay and not believed him when he said he was definitely attracted to women. It was my fault for not noticing he was gay, I guess?
“That tends to happen a lot of times, Hannah,” he says to me.
“Your heart gets broken more times than you find a connection, you know? And sometimes it’s both.
You connect for a while, and then you can’t keep connecting.
We’re betas, we choose to be with someone.
We don’t have some mystical force giving us a life bond. ”
“Well, call me crazy,” I say, “but these life bonds don’t seem particularly mystical, if you ask me.”
He chuckles softly. “That may be true. Witness your mother, for instance. She could have been in a relationship with an omega, but she chose me instead, and she claims she’d never want anything different, and I believe her. If it was all set, she would have had to have an omega.”
“I like choice better than destiny, anyway,” I say.
“Me, too,” says my dad.
After my dad takes Calliope’s car, I go and get the Plan B pill.
I go home to my apartment.
It’s late, getting dark.
I put the bag with the Plan B pill on my counter and resolve to take it immediately, because I know the sooner you take it the better.
But somewhere in the middle of collapsing on my couch and feeling too tired to cry, I forget about the pill.
I know I’m disgusting and that I should probably take a shower, but I feel wistful at the idea of losing the scents of Ellis and Gatlin. I feel confused about everything that happened today, and I try to sort through my emotions.
I feel angry and hurt at Ellis for having sex with Calliope.
But I also feel stupid, because obviously Ellis was going to have sex with Calliope, and what kind of idiot was I for thinking anything otherwise?
I feel sort of warm and mushy about the entire heat experience, because I’ve never felt anything like that.
I still remember being in that cozy room with all those delectable scents wrapped around us, Ellis’s thick cock snugly inside me, dragging in and out of me, coming in me again and again, while I could look up and watch his mouth and ass also filled full of alpha cock.
It was a good place to be. I liked it there.
But then I remember realizing I’d been so eager to fuck Gatlin because I wanted to get back at Ellis. I wanted him to know what it felt like to think that I had been someone else. I wanted him to feel betrayed, like I’d felt betrayed.
I remember knowing that he did feel that way, and the flash of satisfaction I got.
But it was only a flash.
After that, I felt sort of guilty.
I don’t actually like hurting Ellis, it turns out. So, now, I’m just a big pile of confusion and regret.
I should take a shower.
Maybe if I rinsed away the smell of everything, maybe then I’d feel better. Maybe I’d be less confused.