by Molly Harper
“He’s not asking you out, you’re going. That’s it. We’ve let you do things your own way long enough,” Lurlene informed me.
“When?” I giggled. I couldn’t help it. The very idea was just freaking preposterous. “When have I ever ‘done things my own way?’”
Lurlene ignored me. “And that ends now.”
“Mama, thoughts?” I asked.
“I’m sure your aunts know what’s best,” Mama murmured. She rubbed the sleeves of her worn gray cardigan before backing out of the room.
“You stop by my place, when Donnie and your daddy set up a time,” Lurlene told me, thumbing through my limited closet options. “We’ll go over what you should wear.”
“And what to do with your hair,” Braylene added as she and Lurlene bustled out of my room. “Now, get yourself up. It’s too late to be lazing around. My Annaleese has already done three loads of laundry and butchered a hog this morning.”
I groaned, rubbing my face with my hands. “That explains the laundry.”
Since I woke too late to start a shift at the butcher shop, Daddy sent me to the enormous vegetable patch the pack kept just over the hill from the trailers. Yes, we did eat mostly meat, but even we knew better than to go completely without roughage. McClaines had figured out a lot of tricks to grow the cheapest bumper crops possible. Which was why I was on my knees in the dirt, transferring tomato plants that would result in the stewed tomatoes that I despised.
Several of my cousins, plus a few aunts and uncles who preferred the garden to the other family ventures, were working the rows around me. The Kentucky growing season started relatively early in the spring, as long as the weather held, and it took quite a bit of work to get the ground ready for the endless rows of strawberries, sweet corn and who knew what else.
Personally, I thought stewed tomatoes tasted like mushy sour dirt. Every year, I considered sabotaging the crop so I wouldn’t have aunties trying to shove them onto my plate.
I shuddered at the thought, even with the pleasant warmth of the sun on my shoulders.
I didn’t mind working in the garden. It was nice out here, and when I was alone, it was quiet enough that I could think. As it was, my cousins were chatting loudly about sports and town gossip and whatever else could fill the silence, but I could mostly tune them out as I moved down my row. I would have worn earbuds, but on previous gardening excursions, I’d been told it was rude.
I wondered what it said about me, that I was supposed to be a pack creature but clearly preferred my own company. Well, that wasn’t true. I preferred the company of the vampires I’d met, and that was probably even weirder. Why was it so easy for me to be accepted by creatures who were supposed to loathe me, but my own blood, the people who were genetically disposed to like me, seemed to find so much wrong with me?
“So how’s school going, Ty?” Eugenelene asked from two rows over.
Eugenelene, for whom we’d never come up with a decent nickname, was one of the closest cousins to my age. My parents considered her damn near perfect, what with her recent engagement and persuading her husband to move on to our packlands instead of taking her to his own. I’d resented her quite a bit when we were kids. Eugenelene always did what she was told. Eugenelene ate every bit of venison on her plate. Eugenelene always took care of her baby brothers and sisters without complaining. But as I got older, I realized that Eugenelene gave up a lot for those compliments. By comparison, I wasn’t as well-liked, but I was happier.
“Oh, just fine,” I lied. “Classes are interesting. Professors are really cool. Nothing crazy.”
Eugenelene, who had dreamed of opening her own café when we were kids, gave me a soft smile. “Sounds nice.”
“You know, the technical school has culinary classes.”
She shook her head, even though I could see longing in her eyes. “Oh, I couldn’t, not with the wedding coming up.”
“You never know until you try,” I told her. “You could start classes next semester, maybe finish a certificate before you start having kids. It’s not selfish to do something for yourself. It’s your life.”
Eugenelene stood, ripping off her work gloves. “Not everybody’s like you, Ty. Some of us put a priority on the pack.”
She stomped down the row and started working next to her sister, Shaylene.
“Three minutes and I managed to piss her off enough to storm off,” I muttered. “That’s got to be a record.”
Interactions like this were what kept me so isolated from the family, while still living within ten freaking feet of them. And even bigger fights were coming. I didn’t want this date that my aunts were setting up for me. I didn’t want to marry some nice werewolf boy and settle for a life where happy kids and a clean house were the most I would hope to achieve. But at the same time, I knew – as sure as the sun would rise and fall —I would go on the date because otherwise the constant pressure, the snide remarks, the scenes like this morning would become so much worse. I was only delaying the inevitable, but it felt like my only power lived in that delay. I didn’t want to give that up any more than I wanted to give up the work I loved.
I was drawn out of these gloomy thoughts by the sounds of footsteps through the grass to my left. I scented pipe tobacco on the wind.
“It’s real nice of you to plant the tomatoes, even when you hate them.”
I glanced up to see my Uncle Lonnie standing at the end of the row I was working. He was wearing an old work shirt and battered jeans with his muck boots. The garage advertised on his hat—McClaine Auto Repair—had closed when I was a child, but I’d never seen him wearing another.
I stood up, taking off my UK cap. I swiped my forehead, ignoring the dirt it left smeared across my skin. Uncle Lonnie and I had never been close, but I admired him. I’d seen too many Alphas use fists and fangs to bully their packs and run their packlands like dictatorships. So I appreciated Lonnie’s tendency toward good sense and a stern, quiet voice. Mimi was much the same. She didn’t swan around like my aunts, shouldering an ax to grind. Aside from the brief period of losing her damn mind around the time of Jolene’s marriage and childbirth, Aunt Mimi tended to just give orders and then stared at whoever was giving her trouble until they relented.
My parents tended to keep me out of both of their reach. I’d always assumed that it was because they didn’t want me to embarrass them, but now I wondered whether they didn’t want the Alpha couple to know what was happening in our house. The money problems, the desperate unhappiness of my parents’ marriage, the constant conflicts with me—my father didn’t want Lonnie or Mimi sniffing out any of those issues.
“It’s all an elaborate ruse,” I told him. “If I flood the barn with tomatoes, the aunties will be so overwhelmed by supply that their canning might not turn out.”
Uncle Lonnie just squinted at me and shook his head, all amusement. “Well, it can’t be any crazier than your cousin Waylan’s plan to build a tractor that runs on expired mayonnaise.”
Cousin Waylan was either a genius or completely freaking crazy. Nobody had ever been able to figure out which, no matter how many tests they ran.
“I actually liked that plan,” I said.
Lonnie jerked his shoulder. “Waylan’s a dreamer. How’s the job search coming?”
I dropped my garden knife, nearly impaling my foot. “Beg pardon?”
“Your daddy said you’re looking for a job. That you’re not much for working at the butcher shop.” He kept his lips pursed. I imagined he was trying to find a way to avoid saying, “because you think you’re too good for the butcher shop,” which I’m sure my father had added.
I flushed red, which had nothing to do with the sun.
“If you don’t want to work at the butcher shop, you don’t have to,” Lonnie told me. “A smart girl like you has plenty of options, especially in this family. Your cousin Vern is getting busier and busier with his construction business. He needs someone to take care of the billing and the scheduling and such. And
Vonnie could always use some help at the Bridal Barn.”
I shuddered. Nearly all of the McClaine brides got their formalwear from my aunt’s shop. Aunt Vonnie made all of the dresses herself, based on a circa 1982 pattern called “Ruffles and Dreams.” It looked just as awful as the title implied, and Vonnie usually used the shiniest sateen polyester she could find. Despite steadily dwindling business, she insisted that eyesore was the height of elegance.
I would not submit. I might humor the aunties with their dating machinations, but I would not connive unwitting bridesmaids into wearing the Ruffles and Dreams. Every person had their ethical limits, and this was mine.
“I have a job, Uncle Lonnie,” I told him carefully. “I help people with social media…um, it’s like advertising for their businesses on the Internet.”
He tilted his head. “You can make money at that?”
Well, that was a more interested response than I expected. Unlike my parents, Lonnie seemed to be waiting for me to explain, instead of just huffing dismissals about what they were sure I was doing. “I make enough. I would make more if I could get a bit more peace and quiet.”
“Don’t get enough of that at home, huh?”
I shook my head and pinned my lips together, because any words I said would just be destructive and disastrous.
“You happy doing that?”
“Sure.” I managed to say that without adding “so much more than cutting up animals and wrapping them in butcher paper.”
“Well, then, I don’t see why you shouldn’t go on doing it. I’ll tell your daddy to give you some, uh, breathing room,” he offered.
I grinned at him, grateful to the point that it was sort of sad. Suddenly the vacancy in Dick and Andrea’s apartment building came to mind. If I asked Uncle Lonnie for permission to move off the compound, would he give it? The very idea made me dizzy with the possibilities. Bathroom privacy. Sleeping, working, and living on my own schedule. Kitchen privacy. Being a grown ass woman without a curfew. Garage privacy.
I opened my mouth to say the words, but I seemed to run out of air. I’d scored a victory for my independence, getting Lonnie on board with my self-employment and his offering to get my father off my back. It felt like pushing too far to ask for more. It might have seemed like sad baby steps for a human, but these were giant furry leaps for werewolf kind.
I ran through the woods on four feet, scenting the wind, leaping over fallen trees. My prey was only a few hundred yards away, taunting me with the promise of a belly full of my favorite kill.
I paused at the edge of the tree-line, listening, waiting as my brain processed the flood of sensory information from the hunting grounds. The flat terrain. The number of targets. The dim light of the starlit sky. The scent of hot dogs frying in the grill.
I’d seriously missed Marv’s Drive-In Picture Show.
I shifted to my human form, pulling a pair of jeans and one of my nicer tops from my backpack. Fully dressed, I used the faint light from the drive-in’s streetlights to put my hair up in some semblance of a ponytail. I’d thought about make-up, but even with my keen eyesight, I didn’t think applying eyeliner in the dark would be a good idea. The bravest I got was applying some raspberry-colored lip gloss. Alex met me without a lick of make-up on and he’d been attracted to me then. What was the point of putting up layers of illusion between us on a date? He knew what my face looked like. It was sort of the point of vampire super-vision.
I’d told my parents that I was watching the twins for Jolene. And she had (reluctantly) agreed to confirm my story if they checked up on me. I didn’t feel great about it…but I also didn’t feel great about the prospect of telling my parents I was out on a date with a vampire they’d never met.
I walked out of the woods with my backpack slung over my shoulder, as if it was totally normal for a girl to walk alone for miles through the trees toward a drive-in. Carrying yourself with confidence, that was the key.
Marv’s was something of an institution in Half-Moon Hollow, built in the 1950s when drive-in theaters were all the rage. Even as the passion for outdoor cinema waned, Marv’s endured, with the same ancient window-clip speakers, the same old cement block concession stand and the same weirdly outdated playground equipment in front of the screen. The movies were also incredibly outdated because Marv couldn’t pay the distributors for recent releases.
Once upon a time, my parents had loved bringing me here. It was one of the few things we did just for our family, just for us. My daddy would buy enough food to make the back gate of his truck dip as we sat on it, watching 1980s classics. It was a place where I’d felt loved and normal. I was accepted by my parents, good enough for just one night at a time.
And suddenly, we’d stopped. Sometime around my turning twelve, Daddy was “too tired” to sit all night in an uncomfortable lawn chair getting bit by mosquitoes, and Mama didn’t like old movies. She said she never had, though some of my fondest memories involved her laughing so hard at that Steve Guttenberg robot movie, she had tears rolling down her cheeks. Based on what I heard, eavesdropping from the hallway, drive-in nights became another thing we gave up in order to keep the pack happy.
Towards the back of the parking lot, I spotted the music school’s black SUV among the neat rows of cars. I took the long way around, avoiding the foot traffic areas. I didn’t know if I would be recognized, but I figured the fewer people who saw me, the better. Alex was hopping out of the car before I was anywhere near it. “You look lovely.”
“Thanks for coming,” I told him.
He grinned, taking my hand in his. “How could I resist the invitation? ‘Would you like to go sit in a dark car with me and watch a weird old movie you’ve probably never seen?’”
“Yeah, I haven’t asked a lot of guys out on dates,” I told him, shaking my head.
“I find that comforting in a way that is probably outdated and unhealthy,” he admitted.
“The windows of your car are super tinted,” I noted, realizing I could barely make out the outline of his seats from outside the SUV.
“Well, it comes in handy, if you have to leave your house before the sun has entirely set,” he replied. “Why, what are you planning for the two of us to get up to inside this car?”
“Nothing like that,” I scoffed, nudging at his shoulders as he chuckled. “I just mean, it’s a good thing. It will keep us off of the kitchen gossip circuit...unless we stand out here all night.”
He sighed, opening the passenger side door. “I could have picked you up. I believe Dick mentioned that as part of the ‘rules for gentlemen who don’t want to have their asses handed to them.’”
“No, you really couldn’t have,” I assured him. “My family wouldn’t have understood and answering the questions would have been…difficult.”
“You could have just said I was a friend,” he said as he handed me into the car.
“Werewolves don’t have vampire friends,” I told him. He closed the door, but not before I saw the injured expression on his face. When he returned to the driver’s seat, I added, “I’m sorry. It has nothing to do with you. You’re…I don’t want to use the word ‘perfect’ because that seems like a little much. But it wouldn’t matter that you’re kind or smart or you treat me well or that Jolene trusts her children to you. My family just wouldn’t understand. And they would make life really difficult for me at home. I would never be allowed to forget ‘that time you brought home a vampire.’ And this is so new…”
“That you don’t want to risk that sort of repercussion without knowing whether this is going to work long term.” He took my hand and I leaned across the front seat, my forehead almost touching his.
I wanted to object, but honestly, he was right. I didn’t want to risk that sort of estrangement from my family if this relationship wasn’t going anywhere. “Thank you.”
“I’ll try not to push,” he promised, his lips hovering over my skin, just over my cheek. My fingers stroked over his jaw, tracing the sharp lines
of it. All I would have to do was move my head up just the tiniest bit and my mouth would connect with his. And the closeness, the knowledge that kissing him would be so effortless, made butterflies the size of condors fistfight in my belly. “But that’s going to be difficult…I want you, Tylene. And not just with the aggressive and slightly creepy implications of the way I just said that. I want all of you. I want to be able to take you out on my arm, without you looking over your shoulder like we’re doing something wrong. I want you in my home, relaxed, knowing you belong there. I’d like to be able to meet members of your family beyond Jolene and the twins. I just want to be part of this strange, colorful life you live. I haven’t been a part of the light in a long time. I hope to borrow a bit of yours, for as long as you’ll let me.”
I breathed him in. I wasn’t sure if he closed the distance between us or I did. All I knew was the cool, sweet press of his mouth against mine. He let me lead, only opening to me when I slid my tongue tentatively across the soft line of his bottom lip. He moaned softly as I licked into his mouth, tasting mint and the copper-bright tang of blood.
His hands slid down my back, not quite pulling me closer, but keeping me right where I wanted to be. His skin was so cool against mine, smelling of cedar. I wanted to wallow in it, to carry that scent on my skin forever so I would never forget this moment and how it felt to kiss someone I wanted so much. Someone who wanted me in return. I slid my hands under his jaw, my thumbs brushing his earlobes.
I guess they were pretty sensitive because something seemed to shift in the kiss. The console of the car kept us apart, and that was probably for the best, considering that my instincts were commanding me to climb into his lap and test how far back his seats reclined. I could feel his teeth moving and a sharp point drew across the sensitive flesh of my bottom lip. I gasped at the sting, though it wasn’t enough to draw blood.
“Sorry!” he exclaimed, cradling my jaw so he could examine my mouth. “Are you all right?”
His fangs had come out, which, from what I understood from the books I’d skimmed at the shop, usually happened when vampires were thirsty, angry or…excited. My blood rushed to my cheeks and I was weirdly proud that I’d managed to get that reaction out of him. I felt…powerful. Which was probably wrong, but I was willing to go with it.