ROMANCE: PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Coveted by the Werewolves (Paranormal MMF Bisexual Menage Romance) (New Adult Shifter Romance Short Stories) (161 page)

              “That could be pretty gross.” She solemnly agreed. “Dad! Stop cooking, please. We can’t eat any more.”

              “Oh, fine. More for your mother and me, I guess.” The man replied readily enough with a chuckle. He cracked open a beer and sat at the table to talk with his spouse.

              Matt tapped Emma’s stomach gently. “Want to walk with me?”

              “Sure.” They got up and after telling her parents they would be back in a minute, the two held hands and started down the shoreline.

              “It’s a beautiful day.” She shielded her eyes from the sun and looked out at the water. The tourists were starting to fill in the empty places along the rocky shore, spreading out wherever they could find enough sand to make themselves comfortable. Work at the clinic would necessarily pick up, and the morning coffee runs would have to be skipped. Tourists weren’t as likely to adhere to the informal breakfast arrangement Doc Baker had worked out with the locals.

              Matt smiled to himself thinking of that word. “Local.” A few months on, he was starting to think like one.

              “I think today’s the day.” He told her. She squealed with glee in response, running in front of him and jumping up and down while holding his hands.

              “Yes! I knew it! I woke up this morning and just knew you were going to be ready. I don’t know why, I just did!”

              “Emma.” He replied calmly.

              She stopped jumping right away. “Too much?”

              “Yeah. I’m going to need a second on this one.”

              “Got it.”

              They walked a safe distance from everyone until they were at the final spit of where the beach met the water. Any further and they’d be in the woods alongside the lake. That was private property anyway, so they stopped.

              “Okay. How do you want to do this?”

              He thought carefully. Finally, he heard himself say as if from far away, “It’s probably best to just do it all at once.”

              “Should I go with you?”

              “Yeah. That’d be best.”

              The two waded into the lake. He’d gone in wading plenty of times. Always up to the hem of his swimming shorts, never any further. They kept walking until they’d reached that point.

              “Fear number three.” She reminded him.

              “Yep. Beat two already. Crowds, heights.”

              “And who was with you each time?”

              “You were, sweetie pie.”

              She smiled at him. He leaned over and their lips met for a long, sweet kiss.

              “You bet your cute little butt. Okay.” She looked behind them at the distant lake. “Enough stalling.”

              “I like the stalling.”

              “Shut up.” She grinned. “On my count.”

              He closed his eyes, holding onto  one of her hands. They spread their arms out and prepared to fall backwards into the water.

              “Got it.”

              “Ready? One. Two. Three!”

THE END

I

I’m With the Band

I do this sort of thing all the time.  I’m a poet.  After I do my bit, people from the audience usually come up to me and tell me how much they dug my stuff.  That my words are the truth and that what I said resonated with them.  But that doesn’t make it any less work for me.

                         Hey, you try being faithful to your craft while going to school for something else.  Nobody ever said you can’t study evolutionary biology and write poetry at the same time, but that also means they never told you that it’s incredibly hard to make the two worlds work together.  I hear there’s work in evolutionary biology.  Poetry won’t pay the bills.

                         So that’s how I came to be sitting at Word Up, this tiny community bookshop in Washington Heights, on a Tuesday night after school was over, doing a local show for the Heights locals.  When you’ve got rent, your creative side goes off into Hobbyville, and it was nice that my hobby had a receptive audience and an online community supporting it.  Poets supporting poets; kind of like a giant circle jerk if you ask me.

                         But I couldn’t say no to Henry when he asked me to perform.  I had put my name on the freestage list last time I was there, to perform whatever I wanted after the mainstage performers did their piece, and I hadn’t been chosen.  Now, Henry’s the sweetest man alive, his balding head and round nose atop a mustache that’s a shade or two darker than whatever remains of his gray hair, and he said he just couldn’t stand the thought of me missing my chance to go up there.  Even if I wasn’t a scheduled performer or anything. He likes to give everyone a chance, so he asked me to come back the following week.

                         So here I am, sitting in this wash of colors and paper and mismatched chairs.  The gentle chatter around me is from a group of misfits, among which two of my friends are sitting.  I always like to have some support when I perform on stage, even if it’s something as low-key as this.  I also like to imagine, though I’d never say this out loud, that my friends feel it’s kind of cool to know someone who’s a stage performer.  I shoot them a wink and a smile while carefully avoiding the guy who just came in who I suspect is possibly homeless.  Not that I would mind, under normal circumstances.  My eye twitches without my control.  It’s been a long week.

                         Ever since that busted clown Larry blocked me on Facebook over the weekend, I’ve been in a rut of self-loathing and pity.  It’s kind of disgusting, really.  But the bigger problem is that it’s gotten in the way of my properly preparing for this performance, and when I’m not prepared, I lose sleep.  Literally.  It’s like I’m lying in bed and my mind goes in circles and circles trying to keep up with the endless list of stuff I’ve got to get done over the week.  Laundry, rent, that paper for Histology 302, that group project for my anthro class, and what on Earth am I going to wear for this performance?  I’ve been waking up feeling like death warmed up since Sunday.  Tonight, I’ve forgone my usual rule of dressing up for my best-fitting jeans and a T-shirt with a face on it.  Still, I applied some eyeshadow and mascara and I feel like I’ve done my part for the eyes of my audience.

                         The first performer was a comic, as they so often are here, and he’s mildly amusing.  I can feel the headache creeping like a thief through the night straight into my temples, and it lodges there.  I can feel my eyes trying to give into gravity and tearing up at the corners.  Damn it, come on.  Everyone’s going to think I’m extremely rude if I start yawning, but I think I’m headed there anyway.

                         The bell of the bookstore tinkles and I lean back to see who’s just come in.  It’s just another middle-aged woman who seems to have made it her mission to look like a bag lady tonight, but I will my brain to be a little bit nicer.  She’s a local; she clearly just wandered in on her way home from work or something.  And who am I to knock an audience?  I start turning back to the stage, but then my gaze snares on this guy.

                         From the corner of my eye, I can tell he’s kind of Hispanic looking, and for a second, I can feel him watching me watching him out of his own periphery. Hmm.  Those types of guys usually like me, too.  He’s got these long sideburns and a face that’s kind of large; unless I’m prepared to crane my neck and keep looking at him obviously, though, I’ve got to turn back to the stage.  This woman is telling the story of the summer she got so dehydrated she passed out in front of the Museum of Natural History.  It’s good, and I laugh, but my head’s getting that kind of floaty feeling and I know I’ve disconnected from whatever is around me.  I’m regressing back to an earlier, caveman kind of stage where all I can think about are the three Fs: food, fucking, and floor.  As in will fall down on it and snore if given half the chance.

                         And then Henry introduces somebody named Justin Raleigh, and Hispanic boy gets on the stage with a guitar.  Well, damn.  I heard something in his bio about American Idol.  He sounds pretty legit.  He takes a second or two to tune his guitar and I take a fuller, yet still quick look at his face.  He’s pretty, this guy, with these long, thick lashes framing dark brown eyes, and a ponytail of thick, curly dark hair.  I’m half expecting Spanish music to roll out of that guitar, but instead, when he starts to sing, it’s all updated country twang and soothing melodies.

                         I’m entranced.  I want this guy to sing me to sleep.  His voice sounds like someone rolled honey and milk all together and it’s washing over me like a warm bath.  I take him in up on the stage, and convince myself it’s not rude to stare because that’s what he’s there for, right?  I’m allowed to look if he’s gotten up as a performer; when you’re up there, you’re displaying your face and form as well as your talent.  It’s why I take dressing up seriously.

                         He’s yummier than I expected, especially with the combination of that voice.  He’s a bit on the short side, compactly built for a guy his height, and there’s a stone necklace hanging off a cord on his neck.  He’s got a shirt of some muted tone on his body, and I can tell he’s gracefully built.  He’s holding the guitar like an extension of his body, and I’m letting myself melt into his song, which is all about his ex girlfriend.  Hm, ex you say?

                         He sits back down after he’s done, but I’m seeing him as an actual performer now.  Not small stage, you know what I’m saying?  Damn.  Suddenly, I feel like a fraud in the face of a professional.  Suddenly, I’m nervous about what is to come.  I’ve got to show him I’m not joke myself, and it’d be nice if he noticed me back.  Matters do not improve when I get on stage and I deliver my poem, line by line, way too fast, not even giving the audience time to react.  Wow, what’s wrong with me?  I’m never this off.  I don’t dare look at the audience, let alone Guitar Boy on my way off the stage.

                         There’s a few more people after me, but I don’t notice anybody anymore.  My part for the evening is done, and it’s been a total bust.  The bookshop is about to close, so Henry gets everyone off the stage.  My friends go off to mingle with the small crowd that managed to gather by the end of the night and I decide to approach Henry.  By looking at him, I gather the impression that he’s the type of guy who always has a million girls around him after a show, just begging him to sign their bras or something.  But no, he’s standing alone, talking to my friend Max, who apparently knows him somehow.  I substitute sheer bull-headedness for courage and walk over to Justin as soon as he’s alone.

                         He looks at me, exhibiting all the normal cues of someone who’s prepping for conversation, and I open my mouth.

                         “Music.  Your music.”

                         Good God, what the hell is coming out of my mouth?  Is it even a sentence?  Are there words coming out of my piehole or am I actually grunting at this guy?

                         Because seriously, he’s delicious as fuck.  He’s got these cheekbones you could cut yourself on.  To his credit, he doesn’t seem to react to the fact that I’ve just stood there and made orangutan sounds at him.  Instead, he says, “Oh yeah?  What did you think of my music?”

                         I try to think of something to say besides,
Hey, wanna see my apartment and me naked in it?
And come up with, “Well, what genre is it?”

                         “What genre do you think it is?”  Damn, this guy doesn’t give up easy, does he?

                         We continue chatting for a few more minutes, all about how he’s a little bit of country mixed with soul and R&B and then we part, as awkwardly as we met.  There’s going to be no apartment and no nudity tonight, and maybe that’s for the best.  My head is throbbing and it’s a long ride home to Brooklyn.  But the thing is, the one that I don’t share with much of anyone who’s not close to me, is that I’m too chickenshit to go through with it anyway.  My room’s pretty much a disaster and I haven’t parted with my childish side yet, so I would invite him back and then where would it go?  It was time to quit while I was ahead and get on that train home.

                         I didn’t even say goodbye.

*                       *                       *

                         I went and sent him a friend request.  Yup, I did it.  What was wrong with me that nervousness was bubbling up in my stomach like a cat on wheels?  People send random friend requests all the time.  I held my breath, waiting for him to respond, trying to tell myself I didn’t care.  Something that I knew not to be true because I jumped out of my seat squealing as he accepted it.