Chapter 13
Reservoir Wolves
Isat on the couch watching a video on my phone while Adam kept flipping through the channels on the TV, never sticking to one show for very long.
I would have said something, but from the wily glances he occasionally threw at me, that was precisely the reaction he was aiming for.
While I didn’t take the bait, I was also growing more irritated by the second, especially when he started increasing the volume.
Roscoe walked into the living room and paced silently for a moment, shakily holding a huge mug in one hand.
“Are you okay?” I asked. When he turned, the size of his dilated pupils freaked me out. He looked like a giant kitten trying to get adopted.
“Yeah,” he replied, taking a few more sips from the mug. “Need to borrow yer phone.”
My stare narrowed. “Why?”
“How much space you got on it?”
“I don’t know. Sixty-or-so gigs. Again, why?”
Roscoe’s ears shot up as he disappeared into the hall. Adam and I looked at one another while listening to something scrape against the wall in the bedroom. The werewolf reemerged wearing a pair of fake rounded spectacles and a square academic cap a size too small.
“Well? What do ya think?”
“I don’t know what to think. You haven’t explained anything!” I sat my phone on the arm of the couch and stood up. “Give me the coffee, Roscoe.”
He poured the rest of the mug into his mouth. “This shit’s kinda good. Could use a little Baileys to balance it out.” His excitement turned to a wide-eyed panic. “I’m ’bout to go insane!”
“How much have you had to drink?”
“We ran out of beans. I—I don’t think werewolves are supposed to drink so much of this stuff.”
“Then why the hell do you keep drinking it?” I paused as what he said sank in. “Roscoe, that was two-and-a-half pounds of Robusta coffee! What should I do? Do I take you to the vet?”
“Listen to my idea,” he said, talking much faster than before. “Sex Ed by Roscoe.” He stepped closer and nudged me with his elbow. “Eh? Whaddya think?”
“I think I’m going to start hiding my coffee from now on.”
“C’mon. It’s a great idea for porn. I’m the big bad wolf that shows up to teach you all about sex, and you pretend to be all doe-eyed and innocent.”
“Heh, yeah. Pretend,” Adam muttered under his breath.
The room flashed red for a second.
“Think about it, Cody. We gotta have an angle that’s kinda unique or we’ll get buried. You know how much half-turn-on-werewolf porn there is?”
I shook my head.
“A lot. A LOT a lot.” He rubbed his head. “Shouldn’t be surprised, I guess.”
“What about the costume idea?”
“It wasn’t as unique as I thought.” He took my hands in his and gave me that wide-eyed, watery stare, only this time, his wired pupils made it creepy rather than cute. “It could be really fun.”
“You’re not using my phone for this.”
“But I don’t got nothin’ to record us.”
“Use mine,” Adam said with a smirk before fishing his phone out of his pocket and tossing it to Roscoe. “Cody’s phone is a cheap piece of shit. This one’s got some great camera features.”
“My phone’s cheap because I’m not an idiot that spends over a grand on something I barely use to make phone calls.”
Adam ignored me and hurried over to Roscoe. “You can record in 4k, and you can even use the slo-mo feature for when things really get rough. It’s even waterproof.”
“Hmm,” Roscoe said, stroking the thicker fur around his chin. “That could come in handy. I got a great idea.” He looked back at me. “Don’t leave or nothin’.”
“Wasn’t planning on it, but I might now,” I mumbled, sitting back on the couch to resume the video I was watching earlier.
Roscoe had been in our bedroom for over an hour with the door closed, though occasionally stepped out the back door.
Austin kept to himself in the garage working on something with his power tools.
Adam and I finally settled on a show but had to crank up the volume to drown out all the drilling and hammering.
“What the hell is he doing in there? I’m about to say something.”
“Don’t you dare,” Adam said, kicking his feet up on the couch to block me. “He’s leaving me alone. That’s all that matters.”
“I thought you guys were getting along better. Did he do any of that stuff you wanted?”
The half-turn ground his teeth.
“I take that as a no.”
“He was so close. So close, but then he got all weird because I was on top and was ‘telling him what to do.’ So, it was business as usual. Austin’s specialty: hard and fast with no foreplay.
” He muted the television. “You don’t seem like you’re all that interested in Roscoe’s idea. Why don’t you let me do it?”
A slight pang sent a warm flash through my face. “Don’t subject yourself to Roscoe’s perversions.”
“I think it’ll be fun, and if he’s as good as you say he is, it could be what I need.”
The entire room turned red again, and the annoyance from earlier quickly manifested into something I didn’t expect. “Really. It’s not necessary.”
“You’re just going to bore everyone and kill boners.”
“Like anyone will find your gaping asshole convincing enough to be an innocent high school boy.”
Adam jumped up from the couch. “You’re a huge pussy.”
“Well, yeah. Gaping, ground hamburger anuses are gross.”
“You’re afraid Roscoe would prefer me over you.”
“You know there’s like forty other werewolves in this town, right? If you’re that thirsty for attention, go set up a lemonade stand outside with a glory hole.”
“I’m gonna ask him,” he said in a playful tone before turning toward the hallway.
A low growl left my throat, and everything got darker. “If you step into that room, I will throw you through every window in this fucking house.”
The red hue disappeared when I realized Adam was actually winning.
“Why are you so weird about this?” Adam asked, his tone a little less teasing. “You were fine when Darryl was with him, and it’s not like you’re serious about him. You even said that yourself.”
“Just drop it.”
The bedroom door opened, and Roscoe strolled into the living room with a grin so obnoxious that I began to reconsider Adam’s request.
“You ready?” he asked, handing me a wrinkled sheet of paper.
“What’s this?”
“It’s yer script.”
I looked down at his terrible handwriting, reading through each of my lines. “This is… surprisingly tame.”
“And you were worried.”
“I still am. This just makes me more suspicious.” I folded the paper as Roscoe handed me a dirty white T-shirt with a smiley emoji on it and a red and white baseball hat. “Oh, come on.”
“It’s yer costume. It’s what a high school kid would wear.”
“Dude, I’m one giant lollipop shy of this being pedo bait. I’ll just wear what I’m wearing.”
“Nah. It’s gotta be that.” He licked his lips. “Only that. No pants.”
“That doesn’t make any sense either—”
“It’s porn, Cody! Fucking hell. You’re getting people off, not making a cinematic masterpiece,” Adam interrupted, looking up at Roscoe. “Let me do it.”
Roscoe’s ears perked up. “Really?”
The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up, and I reluctantly put on the baseball cap. “Tell me what you want me to do,” I muttered, slipping into the T-shirt.
The perverted old werewolf rubbed his hands together. “Oh boy. When we get to the room, take off yer pants and underwear, then sit at the desk.”
“What desk?” I asked, then darted into the bedroom.
A little wooden table and chair sat in front of a chalkboard Roscoe had hastily screwed into the wall.
It was slightly crooked with ‘Sex Ed with Roscoe’ scribbled in pink chalk in the middle.
“How? How did you get all this in here without me noticing?”
Roscoe’s tail wagged, and he pointed to Adam’s phone, which was tied to the handle of our vacuum cleaner. “You said the phone was waterproof, right?”
Adam nodded.
“Are we taking this into the shower or something? Because you need one.”
“Uh, yeah. A shower,” he said with that same devious expression from earlier.
I unfolded the sheet of paper. “I didn’t see it in the script.”
Roscoe snatched the paper away. “It’s more fun to improvise, don’t you think?”
“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me right now.”
“If Cody doesn’t want to, I’ll volun—”
I shoved Adam out of the bedroom before slamming the door shut.
“It would have been more fun with the two of you,” he said, straightening the camera phone. “Coulda been a real classroom.”
I remained silent but didn’t take my heated gaze off him.
“I know. You don’t like threesomes.” He snatched the cap off my head, putting it back on my head the other way. “All right kiddo. Pants off.”
“Do NOT call me that on camera,” I said, slipping off my pants. “This is creepy enough as it is.”
“Underwear too,” he added.
“I’m in a classroom. Why would I sit at a desk with a shirt and nothing else?”
Roscoe swiped his finger across the phone screen and tapped once. “You didn’t read the syllabus, did you?” He walked to the front of the desk, pointing at the seat. “Now yer in detention.”
I cleared my throat, stiffening up a bit as my nerves set in. The camera and I never got along, and as a half-turn, I was even more self-conscious.
“Sorry, sir. I forgot my homework.” I plopped down onto the little wooden chair, which was cold against my bare skin.
“How ’bout we start with some easy lessons?” He wrote something on the board, then moved out of the way so he could point to it with a yardstick. “Now read this.”
“I’m not reading that out loud.”
He let out a nervous laugh and looked over at the phone. “We’re live.”
“What?” I hissed through my teeth. “This wasn’t supposed to—”
“Do you want another hour of detention young man, or do you wanna read the word for the rest of the class?”
I let out a sigh, half covering my face with my hand. “Bussy.”
“What was that?”
“Bussy, you fucking—” I said louder, deliberating the pros and cons of committing murder on a live stream. “Mr. Roscoe.”