How to Date a Werewolf...or 3

by Graceley Knox

  “Oh my God. That looks just like her picture,” Amy breathed.

  Kate held it so I could see it better. It was a carved wooden cameo, almost life-sized, of Blue. She wasn’t young, but not so very old as I remembered her. With fine lines on her face that would one day become the silken soft wrinkles I’d traced with little pudgy fingers, once upon a time.

  Amy sighed. “Well. He’s a jerk, but I’ll be damned if that isn’t the finest carving I’ve ever seen.”

  “It looks like she’s about to turn and look straight at you, it’s so lifelike.”

  I had to agree with them both. And he’d been so angry when I called out the sheriff for being in my home. It made me wonder what kind of man had the kind of heart needed to create something so beautiful, but could still carry such a chip on his shoulder.

  “Certainly, he is a handsome one Could be trouble.” I could almost hear Mammie’s voice in my head, the way she’d wink at me about any boy she could see I liked.

  “He certainly is, Mammie,” I whispered to the cameo as my vision blurred. “Definitely trouble, if I was ever going to see him again.”

  Chapter 3

  Two days had passed since Mammie’s funeral. It was beautiful, and quite frankly, over too fast. I didn’t know how to say goodbye, when I’d been so terrible about keeping in touch after I’d left Louisiana for New York.

  The house was full of well-wishers at all hours, people coming to pay their respects to the remaining ‘Jackson girls’. But there I failed again. When I was a kid, they’d been busy raising their own families. There had been scant time for visits outside of holidays, and those passed quickly, adults mostly ignored by us children.

  By the beginning of day three, I didn’t know what to do with myself. The ladies of the town were like a fine-tuned engine, neither needing or wanting the assistance of three northern gals. Worse, they said it in a way that suggested they both felt sorry for us for not knowing how to help a family drown their grief in etouffee, and they were embarrassed by our lack of southern hospitality.

  “They think we’re idiots because we haven’t seen enough death, right?” Amy muttered at me as we hand-washed an entire sink-full of dishes that wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher.

  “Yup. I don’t think we were going to win this one no matter what. Either we’re just dumb kids because we don’t have husbands and children, or we’re dumb northerners, even though none of us was born north of the Carolina’s.” Kate scoffed as she leaned against the counter, watching us work. Kate had never washed or dried a dish in her life. The death of a stranger wasn’t about to lower her to menial labor.

  I threw down my damp dish towel. “It’s like they’ve erased me from my own dumb hick family. I should be grateful, but I’m just pissed off. This is my mom and dad they’re pretending I don’t belong to. I wouldn’t mind so much if it were my drunk, survivalist uncle.”

  “Dad’s side, huh?” Kate glanced around and lowered her voice.

  “My uncle Jian.”

  Kate sputtered and Amy laughed. “Oh, I can just imagine. I have some family who came here thinking that was what being American meant. They have a bunker now and everything.”

  I snickered and covered it with a cough as Ms. Dutchy glanced into the kitchen, a severe scowl on her face. “Y’all take so long with those dishes, I can tell you don’t do much around the house.”

  “You have three maids and from what I’ve heard, you’ve never even cooked a meal for your own family, Eliza Dutchy.” My mother’s voice floated in from the dining room. “Leave the girls be. They came all this way to help, and it wasn’t even their family that passed.”

  Her face flushed crimson and Ms. Dutchy fled as Kate lifted her mint julep glass to my mother. “I love her. There’s absolutely no question where you come from.”

  “Yeah,” I laughed. “Sometimes I wish I was more like my dad. You know, quiet and kind. But I hate bullies, and so does Mom. I can’t stop sticking up for people just because I might have to raise my voice.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Amy placed the last sparkling plate in the drying rack. “Yesterday Kate and I found this hole in the wall, straight out of a movie, dive bar. I can’t imagine you’ve ever been there. Let us show you a little of your hometown.”

  I hung mom’s apron on the hook inside the pantry door and followed Kate and Amy out to the car without saying goodbye to anyone. They had told us they didn’t need us, and I’d rather take them at their word, then give them time to think of more housework for us. Especially since they assumed we’d all share the work. I love Kate, but that was never going to happen.

  They headed across the bridge and to the outskirts of town, to a wooden building with ‘My Ex-wife’s Place’ blinking in neon over the door.

  “Classy, ladies. Why am I not surprised you found this place?”

  “We weren’t sure you’d know it. The owner talked to us last night, and she knew your parents in passing, but not you.”

  “I’ve never actually been inside, that’s for sure. Dad probably played pool here when he was younger.” I imagined him bent over the table, measuring his shots, Mom making sure he didn’t drink enough to lose his edge. “It was Mel’s, back then.”

  “So, Mel retired?” Kate held up three fingers at the bartender.

  “Divorced,” I mumbled around a handful of beer nuts. “Emily’s the owner still, right?” They both nodded. “She’s the ex, mentioned in the sign.”

  Kate crowed. “Oh, my God. I love this place now.”

  We took our drinks to a table in an almost quiet corner, where we could watch the pool tables and wait for an opening.

  “Oh shit. We finally get to watch you play in your natural habitat,” Amy giggled.

  I hadn’t played pool in months, not since Amy’s boyfriend had coaxed me into hustling his brother and best friend. It’d been fun, until the guys got in their feelings about being beaten by a girl.

  Our waitress came by and deposited three more bottles, adding our empties to her tray. “From the guys at table three,” she explained, sashaying away in the direction she’d pointed.

  I followed her with my eyes, all the way across the room, where the guys from table three were watching us. I didn’t immediately recognize the first two, but the third made the smile drop off my face. Goddamn it. Mr., LeBlanc, in the flesh.

  “Hey, isn’t that hot guy sitting with the rude sexy carpenter who dissed us?” Kate leaned forward, and the one at the table watching us grinned, probably at the amount of cleavage that her maneuver revealed.

  “Yeah, that’s LeBlanc. We should take the drinks back.” I sighed and set down my beer. We don’t need him feeling entitled to anything from us.”

  Kate mumbled something unintelligible that sounded like, “Speak for yourself.” But when I shot her a dirty look, she just shrugged.

  “Table’s open,” Amy whispered, nudging me.

  I jumped up and cracked my knuckles. “All right, it’s on.” I took my beer over to the table where the hot guy with long, dark curls watched us while his friends pretended that they hadn’t even seen us yet. I walked around and placed myself right in front of LeBlanc. “Thanks for the beer/”

  Dark curls spoke up. “You’re welcome.” He grinned at us and let me see him look me over. “I don’t recognize you. Thought you might be new in town, could use some hospitality.”

  “Shit,” the third guy finally spoke up, and as soon as he did I remembered him. “She’s not new. This is Frankie Bonhomme, prettiest girl to ever graduate Robert E. Lee High School.”

  “Carter White, as I live and breathe.” I gave my old classmate a big hug. “When did you get so damn tall?”

  “College,” he shrugged. “I guess I probably look a little different, huh.”

  “Well, aside from the extra three inches in height, the extra six in biceps muscle, and the sexy beard…nope, you look exactly the same.”

  He laughed and Kate cleared her throat behind us. “Sorry. These are
my best friends, Kate and Amy.”

  “I’m Adam,” our benefactor waved from across the table.

  “Yankies,” LeBlanc sniffed.

  “Carpenters,” Amy drawled.

  The unnamed guy who’d bought us beers chuckled. “What the hell did you do to piss these pretty ladies off, Cash?”

  Cash LeBlanc. I knew the name but couldn’t place it for a moment. “Wait just a goddamned minute. You graduated a couple of years ahead of me, so I never knew you…But didn’t your pops and mine team up for a bit?”

  “Yeah, they did. Your mom used to come round the house and help mine when they went out.”

  “She never brought me with her.”

  LeBlanc glanced at his friends then back at me. “She had, uh, RA. Sorry, rheumatoid arthritis. It was hard for her to get around, and they always demanded I be in sports and stuff, so…”

  “Huh. I’m glad to have met you, then. You make a shitty first impression, though. Has anyone ever told you?”

  Adam laughed so hard I thought he was going to fall out of his chair. “Woman, you are all right,” he wheezed. “And to answer your question, it may have come up a few times.”

  “Every time,” Carter interjected, prompting another round of laughter from Adam.

  I caught a biker eying the now empty pool table and tugged on Kate’s sleeve.” Well, it was nice to see you, Carter, and nice to meet you, Adam. We gotta move or we’re going to lose out on a pool table.”

  Cash’s eyebrows went up, but he said nothing, and I didn’t encourage him to change his mind. His dad had always been kind to me, but the son was nothing like the father. I couldn’t tell what rankled more, that he was a jerk to me, or that I still wanted to have those icy eyes on me anyway.

  Best leave that one be, as Blue always said, I thought to myself as I peeled off my jacket and browsed through the cues for the straightest ones. Amy and Kate were still learning to play, but I’d been handling a cue since my daddy bought me a half-sized one for the table in his den. I’d even made some money hustling frat boys in college. But one night, I’d hustled the wrong guy, and he’d scared me straight. Now I barely had time to play, and I hoped Cash LeBlanc and his friends found something more interesting to watch than my rusty game.

  I racked and Amy broke, sinking the nine ball. “Stripes,” she called out.

  “Hey, at least you can say you sunk one before Frankie finished the game,” Kate replied in a saccharine voice.

  Amy shot her a look over her beer and waited for me to finish dropping solid balls into pockets. It was just supposed to be a fun game, so I left anything that required strategy, and sat after only sinking four balls.

  “I’m not here to work hard, child. Don’t expect me to put on a show tonight.”

  Kate snorted and drained her beer, tilting the empty bottle from side to side sadly before setting it on the high table behind us. “I bet someone’s getting a show. Your ass looks fabulous in those jeans.”

  I saluted her in thanks and put Amy out of her misery, finishing off the solids and calling out the eight ball before dropping it neatly in the corner opposite me. “All right, you two play. I’ll get us another beer.”

  “Not for me. I’ll take a mineral water since I’m driving,” Amy reminded me.

  I saluted her and left them to rack up again as I headed over to the bar. People had started to trickle in since we’d arrived. I waited my turn, leaning over the counter to make myself tall enough that I knew the pretty brunette behind the bar could see me.

  She raised a finger to me and I grinned back at her. Emily had owned the bar since I was in high school. Daddy and his pool buddies had made a point of sticking by her side when her husband, the previous owner of the bar, had decided to take out his frustration on her face one night.

  They’d gone looking for her when Bill’s knuckles had belied his story that she was under the weather. Daddy brought her home and Mom tended her wounds and cursed her husband to a long and miserable stint in hell.

  She and I had hardly spoken, but I’d received my first inkling of a premonition that night and told her I saw a man with a gun looking for her. Mom had been horrified, Daddy had laughed it off, a nervous half-smile on his face. Emily had believed me without question. She thanked me for telling her and refused to go home until sheriff Collins spoke with him.

  Later, Daddy told me he’d been sitting in the dark at home, his rifle in his lap. He made me promise never to tell anyone what I’d seen or said.

  I’d forgotten all about it until her eyes met mine and it all came flooding back. She was the one who had unlocked this thing inside me that I’d spent the rest of my life trying to ignore or avoid.

  I felt a familiar pressing against my mind, thoughts that I’d learned to control and push away rising to the surface as she neared me. I backed away, bumping into the person behind me.

  “Hold on there, Honey. I got you.” I scuttled away from the barrel-chested, ruddy man who was leering down on me.

  “Sorry.” I climbed up onto the high stool pulled up to the counter and stared hard ahead of me.

  I felt his breath on my neck as I did my best to ignore him. Emily caught my eye and rushed over with an apologetic smile on her face.

  “Sorry, girl. It’s been crazy since I lost my other barkeep. How are you doing?” She gestured for me to follow her down the bar and I hopped off the stool and started after her, but the guy grabbed my arm.

  “Where you going, Honey? I thought we were gonna talk.”

  “Nope. I’m going to talk to my friend who I haven’t seen in forever, then I’m going to take drinks back to my other friends, who also aren’t interested in meeting anyone tonight.”

  He gripped tighter and I gave an involuntary yelp of pain. “You don’t need to be a bitch. Somebody who looks like you should be grateful to get a little attention around here.”

  My hands were in fists and I reared back before I considered that I was starting a fight I couldn’t finish. Assholes like him were few and far between, but when they crawled out from under their rocks, it was hard not to let them get to me.

  “Get your hand off my girl before I flatten you, Merle.” Adam was scowling at him, tugging his long black curls into a ponytail. He snarled, and the guy backed away, looking like he’d just wet himself.

  Merle took off, and Adam slunk closer, the look in his eyes making my mouth go dry. “Thanks,” I finally stammered as he backed me into the bar and leaned in, his mouth barely an inch from mine.

  “Let me get your beers, and walk you back to your friends, okay?”

  I hated letting one jerk make me feel weak. “I should’ve just nailed him in the balls. But I really didn’t want to be the one who ended up getting kicked out of the bar. Especially not in front of…” I almost said your friend, but managed to choke out “my friends,” instead.

  “I think for the rest of the night your friends should be my friends. Just to keep the creeps at bay.”

  I handed Emily cash and grabbed the longnecked bottles in one hand. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him no thanks, so when I said, “lead the way,” I was too surprised to take it back.

  Chapter 4

  We’d arrived too early by any decent club standards in our attempt to escape the hounding of the sewing circle at my parents’, but as nine o’clock hit, the band showed up and we quit the pool tables to remind the locals that New York girls could still line dance.

  Loud music and three muscular hunks keeping, as Adam had said, “the creeps at bay” let me relax and almost forget the shiver that had crawled down my spine at the bar. Still, I was in no hurry to talk to Emily again, afraid that she too would remember and bring it up.

  Carter had always been one to sit and hold down the table while everyone else danced, but Kate managed to pull him onto the floor for a two-step while I talked Amy into another couple of beers.

  “How’s your momma holding up, Sugar?” Cash cozied up to me as we watched Kate and Carter circle the d
ance floor.

  “She’s okay. I guess she had a feeling something wasn’t right for a little while, you know?” I shrugged and wrapped my arms around myself in a hug. “Everybody’s pitching in, helping with the aunties. I just don’t know what to say to anyone.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I left. I went to New York and I went to school and got a job and didn’t call much or write ever, barely said anything to anyone back home except for the holidays.”

  Before I could say anything else, his arm was around me and my head was tucked into his shoulder. “It’s okay to grow up and move on with your life. Blue was so goddamned proud of you, you know that? She talked about you like you were her own granddaughter.”

  But I should’ve known she was dying. I should’ve felt it, but I didn’t, because I don’t want to know things before they happen, I thought.

  He gave my shoulders a quick squeeze, then stood and wolf-whistled at the dancers, stomping and clapping his hands as the song ended.

  “C’mon, girl, dance with me.” I looked up into Adam’s storm-cloud eyes. “If I don’t get you away from Cash soon, you might forget I’m the better option.”

  I rolled my eyes but let him pull me out of my seat and onto the plank dance floor. He held me tight, my body molded to his as he guided my steps with a press of his thighs against mine.

  The music had slowed, and we rocked to the beat, my fingers fisted in his t-shirt, his hands warm on the small of my back. I rested my cheek over his heart and listened to the steady thump-thump.

  Too soon, the song ended, and Kate was calling for more beer and another round of pool, this time between Cash and me.

  “A legacy battle. Nice.” Carter took out his wallet. “I’m putting ten on Ms. Bonhomme. She’s a goddamned shark.”

  Adam sighed, but released me to my friends. “I bet she is. Okay, I’ll see that bet, just to make things interesting.” I busied myself finding a cue so I didn’t have to hear where my girlfriends put their money.