by H. T. Night
“That’s awful.”
“Yes, it was. You were. We need to figure out a way to have you not be in the same spot as her.”
I looked at Maya and a part of me felt as if the real place that all of this concern was coming from was jealousy. She was obviously irritated with my werewolf behavior. It was one thing to be in charge of my actions when I was a human, but now I had to apologize for things I did when I couldn’t even remember my actions. “Look, Maya. I’ll do whatever you think we should do. This whole thing is weird for both of us. But we are going to have to worry about next month. We aren’t going to have enough time to figure something out today. Let’s rent a U-Haul truck and haul the cage up the mountain to the cabin. That is going to be a task in itself.”
Maya smiled at me. “You’re right; nothing about this conversation is normal. Not by a long shot.”
Chapter Five
Sasha eventually woke up and started to get ready. She moved around slowly and who could blame the poor girl after the abuse she received a couple of nights ago? The fact that she was moving around as well as she was surprised the hell out of me.
I showered up and the three of us rented a U-Haul and brought the cage up to my grandmother’s cabin. I dragged it up into the house with very little help from the two girls. But I put it in the room to the left of the door. It was an empty room, so now it was designated as ‘the cage room.’
We spent all day moving and getting the cage into the space. I bought weights and locks to keep it locked down. Time got away from us and even though Maya didn’t like it, Sasha and I were going to have to share a cage on the third night. Maya and Sasha weren’t BFFs, but they got along. It was interesting to have two beautiful girls at my disposal. I cared for both deeply, but in two completely different ways. Soon, Sasha and I made our way into the cage and we dealt with the third night of the full moon.
Once again, we woke in the morning drenched, on top of each other. I called out for Maya. This time, she wasn’t in the room with us when we woke up. Again, I had faint memories of the night before. They were less visual memories and more instinctive once I remembered how I felt, as opposed to what I saw.
I called out Maya’s name again. Finally, she came in and I had to piss like a race horse. She unlocked and opened the cage door. Before I could step out, Sasha dashed past me and ran to the restroom. I had another bathroom upstairs, so I ran up the steps and took the largest piss I had ever taken.
While I was in the bathroom upstairs, I decided to take a shower. Thank God, the full moon was over for that cycle. I needed to have a heart-to-heart talk with Sasha. I needed the low-down on how to live as a werewolf while I was in my human form. What advantages and disadvantages did I have during the non-werewolf moonlight time? Which was made up of 90 percent of the month. There must be an advantage or why would anyone choose to be a Carni? I needed to figure out how I was going to apply my new characteristics to my life... good or bad.
I came downstairs after I put on a clean set of clothes that I had in my upstairs bedroom. I put on black jeans and a white button-down shirt. The three of us were starving and we decided to have some breakfast at a local diner in town.
My appetite was off the charts. I ate a lumberjack special that consisted of three buttermilk pancakes, hash browns, bacon, sausage, eggs, and toast. I threw in an order of strawberry-drenched waffles for a breakfast-y dessert. Josiah had nothing on me when I was starving.
“If you keep eating like that, you’ll have to be a heavyweight in your fighting league!” Sasha said, as I wolfed down the last of my food. She ate delicately, like a lady. Not much, and very slowly.
As I finished up my last bite, I looked over at my girlfriend, who seemed floored by all the food I just put away. And then Maya chimed in about my huge meal, as if she had to have her two cents in there, too: “You better watch eating like that because you don’t want it to affect you in your little fighting league.”
“Little fighting league?” I smiled at my Maya. She had no idea what I do. You would think having a brother like Josiah would give her a better perspective on fighting, but she had a typical woman’s outlook on it. Women usually thought of fighting as barbaric and that it was only a matter of time until we all killed each other in the ring. How could I blame them? Especially a woman who cared about her man. The last thing women wanted to wrap their minds around is how dangerous the sport truly is. But I did say, “It’s a little more than a ‘little fighting league.’”
“Isn’t that what you’re part of?” she asked.
“It’s MMA. Mixed martial arts. It’s the fastest growing sport in the world. The greatest athletes in the world are MMA fighters.”
“Greatest athletes?” Sasha smiled. “I think Kobe Bryant and Lebron James might disagree with you.”
“Yeah, but any man that knows anything about the MMA sport wouldn’t disagree with that statement.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know,” Sasha said. “I’ve never seen you fight in an actual match.”
“Really, you’ve never seen Tommy fight?” Maya asked.
“No, I’ve seen him street fight plenty of times. I’ve just never seen him fight in the ring. When it comes to street fighting, I’ve never seen anyone tougher.”
“I think so, too,” Maya agreed.
“Really?” I said to both ladies. There was nothing more than I loved than when someone praised my good looks and my fighting. Considering both parties in the room had slept with me, I assumed they both thought I was good looking. My studly ego was ratcheted up a notch by their competitive stroking for my attention.
But of course, Maya very quickly busted my bubble. “I mean... besides my brother.”
“There it is,” I said, smacking the table. “The 17-year-old fight prodigy, Josiah Reign, who couldn’t hike a canyon yesterday, but instead, waited at the car, is somehow tougher than I am.”
“Sweetie, he’s not a tougher man than you. He’s just a better fighter. I’m sure you can take a punch really well and that makes you extremely tough. The thing about my brother is that he never gets hit. He is only the one who is doing the clobbering. Dart like a hummingbird. Sting like a bee. That’s Josiah.”
I looked at Maya and you would have thought her little brother was Muhammad Ali. “Well, it’s good that he has a fan in his sister, because I sure as hell don’t have a fan in my girlfriend.”
“Sweetheart, I have to see you compete to be a fan of yours in the ring. I see how you live your life and I’m a huge fan of yours.”
“Yippee,” I said sarcastically. “I guess I’m going to have to start my training.”
“Haven’t you already been doing that?” Sasha asked.
“No,” I said. “I just have been jerking around in the gym. Ever since my last fight, I hadn’t had the killer instinct. However, I can feel it creeping back. Real training is a 24/7 job.”
“I have a question for you,” Maya said.
“What now?” I asked.
“Do you think that it is okay to fight in a league now?”
“Why not?”
“You’re not actually human anymore. It is a human league.”
“Well, because no one knows I’m a werewolf, I don’t think I’ll have an issue. It’s not like they are doing DNA testing, looking for werewolves.”
“But, do you think it’s the right thing to do?” Sasha asked, chiming in her two cents and now I felt the girls ganging up on me, for different reasons.
“What’s wrong with it? I can’t become a werewolf in the ring. I’m as human as anyone else.”
“But, you’re not, Tommy. Your body is now a lot stronger. You’ll heal faster and when you work out, you’ll get twice as strong as you normally would.”
I was surprised that both of them seemed to think I should quit MMA, now I had become a Carni. “Look, MMA is my life,” I said. “What the hell else would I do with myself?”
Maya sighed. “Isn’t it obvious? You could be a trainer.”
“No. Werewolf or not, I’m always going to compete.” I was taken aback and was growing irritated with the conversation. “There is no way in hell I would ever stop fighting for a living,” I said firmly.
“It’s your decision and I’ll back you no matter what you decide,” Maya said.
“Decide?” I said. “There’s nothing to consider. I’m staying in MMA and that is all there is to it.”
Sasha rolled her eyes and I didn’t care what either of them thought. It seemed like Sasha was just trying to get my goat, while Maya wanted me to stop for girlfriend reasons. She hated to see me banged up. Sasha didn’t have any long-term investment in me, beyond friendship, while Maya was all about my personal safety and well-being because it affected her well-being.
Under her breath, Maya said, “Don’t you think it’s sort of cheating?”
At that moment, the waitress dropped off the check or I might have blown up. I paid the bill and the three of us made our way back home to Anaheim Hills.
When we arrived back at the apartment, Maya went to sleep in our bedroom. She was in desperate need of a nap. And I was in desperate need of Maya having a time out. Her crack in the restaurant about cheating in MMA as a werewolf dug into my gut like I’d eaten twenty waffles with butter and syrup. I figured this absence of Maya from the conversation was a good time to have a talk with Sasha about my new werewolf life.
Sasha was in the kitchen washing dishes. I stepped in there and sat at my little kitchen table. “Hey there,” I said.
At the same time, we both said, “We need to talk!” We laughed.
“You go first,” I said.
“You sure?” she asked.
“I’m sure. What’s on your mind?” I asked.
“Tommy, I need to get out of here. I can’t do this third-wheel thing much longer.”
My immediate response was to tell her to stay. But I filtered it out because I know that it would be what Maya would want—for Sasha to leave. The tension between them was getting a bit sticky. So, I said, “Where would you go, Sasha?”
“I have people I can go to in New York.”
“New York? Are you kidding? What’s there?”
“Tommy, everything is there. Mainly, there is a chance at a new beginning.”
I paused and then said, “Okay.”
Sasha smiled at me. And in just a few moments, her eyes were misty.
I thought she was glad I was okay with her decision but her smile changed into something more menacing. “’Okay...’” she repeated. “There isn’t ‘No, Sasha! Don’t leave.’ There’s no ‘Sasha, I need your help through this!’ There’s nothing from you asking me to stay?”
“Huh?” I was confused. I obviously had fallen into a female trap. Damn, I hate those things. This is why I’ll never understand women. Especially hot women. “I guess I said something wrong.”
Sasha stared blankly at me, as if I should know what the hell I said that was wrong.
“I’m confused,” I said, shaking my head. “You told me why you wanted to make a new life in New York and I was supporting your decision. That is what friends do, Sasha.”
“Tommy, you make it so hard for a girl not to fall in love with you. You’re belligerently perfect.”
“Belligerently perfect? What does that mean?”
“You’re incredibly rough around the edges. You stick both feet in your mouth constantly. You’re crass, rude and immature.”
“And somehow that makes me perfect?” I asked.
“No, that’s the belligerent part. There is a whole sweet other part of you. That part is what is so amazingly wonderful about you. You’re honest, loyal, and you stand up for what’s right. Your good heart is engraved in you. You hide it behind this frat boy persona, this fight club mentality that is your bravado to cover up that you are a sentimental and sweet man. At the end of the day, all I know is I’m in love with you. But I know you’re in love with that equally amazingly wonderful woman in that bedroom, who is asleep under your bed covers. A place I dream of being. Is that clear enough for you, Tommy?”
Oh shit. I let her talk it out. It was her heart talking. So, I listened. I tried to keep a neutral expression on my face. I nodded for her to continue.
“I understand that you’re not mine to have. You and Maya are perfect together. She challenges your shit, but also loves you without judgment. That’s what is so fucking heartbreaking about this. I know that...” She struggled to catch her breath and not cry, I could tell. After a brief pause, she continued, “…I know that deep down in my heart, you’re perfect together. You and Maya.”
I looked at Sasha. We had once had an intimate relationship, but now were just close friends. “You mean a lot to me, Sasha,” I said. “I just—”
“—love someone else, I know,” Sasha said, finishing my sentence.
“I do love Maya. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. I just sniffed you out in the wilderness and carried you, unconscious, up a mountain on my back. I shared a werewolf cage with you and didn’t harm you. That’s love, too, Sasha. At its most core level.”
“I know.” Sasha walked over to me and kissed me on my mouth. It wasn’t a romantic kiss. It was something far different. It was a deep, final kiss between friends. “I’m going to leave tonight.”
My heart sank and my knees almost buckled. “Are you sure that this is something you’re ready to do so quickly? You can take a few days and get ready. I don’t want you to feel like you have to run out of here like a bat outta hell. Nobody is kicking you out of here. Or rushing you.”
“I’m sure. I’ve been thinking about this for a while. It is something I need to do. Go away from watching you and Maya, and stop interfering in whatever life you two are meant to have. I’m walking away from any shred of hope that you would choose me over Maya. I’m not going to fight for you to love me or try to seduce you away from her. I’m walking away from the man I love, from the werewolf I love, to avoid making conflict in his life. Even though we are both werewolves and Maya is not. I’m sacrificing what I want so that you can be happy with what you think you want. Her. That’s love at its core level.”
Damn! I hated it when a woman threw my words back at me to prove her own point.
“Come here.” I stood up from my chair and hugged Sasha, a big, deep hug and a heartfelt embrace that came from a place down inside of me that I rarely showed to anyone. Not even Maya knew I was capable of the kind of philos love that was once defined by the Greek philosophers as pure platonic love between friends. I was choked up that Sasha wanted to leave our circle of friendship because she wanted eros, romantic physical love, not philos, friendship love. I supposed that although I was a horny dog at times, Maya had turned me into a monogamist, after my earlier days of being a player. I gave Sasha a long, long hug, to last her a while after she left. I had no idea that this was going to be the last hug we would ever share.
While I was holding her, I said, “Are you fleeing because it hurts too much to see me and Maya together?”
“Oh yeah. Big time,” she choked out into my chest, trying to hold back a sob, and hide her face from me. “And shut up, Tommy. Stop talking but don’t stop hugging. Whatever you do, don’t stop hugging me.” When she said that, I nearly lost it myself.
“Don’t be a stranger,” I said softly, as softly as I had ever spoken to her. I kissed her on the top of her silky brown hair. Sasha was a good woman. Not a perfect woman, but she had a heart of gold.
Chapter Six
Sasha left that night and just as I suspected, Maya didn’t argue against it.
It had been two months since Sasha left. Having Maya in my life had made things normal, except when I turned. I had zero memory when I turned and, as a matter of fact, when I did turn, it’s as if time skips. There was no dreaming, no time lapse, nothing. I went from being aware that the moon was out to immediately waking up hours later in a soaked, sweaty mess. We didn’t have problems at my grandmother’s cabin but I started to feel bad for
Maya. This was a lot for her to handle, having a boyfriend become a werewolf and be expected to take care of him when he turned. She had said that I had become calm when she was in the room with me. She had claimed that I only barked and howled when she left. So now, the poor girl had to sleep in the cage room with me on the floor when I turned into a werewolf.
Maya said my howls and yelps had sounded better. The only thing that felt different was my voice. Howling does a job on the howler’s vocal cords. Maya said that she could now confirm that I had a sexy howl. I guess my howl is a lot sexier when I’m not trapped in a cage with a female werewolf. I guess that’s just another ‘sexy’ to throw on top of everything else I possess.
One thing started happening to me, however. I had gone into a funk from not being able to compete in the ring. I was a fighter, and it was time for me to get back on the horse and start training.
But Maya had never seemed too supportive when it came to my fighting for a living. She understood that I loved it, and that is why she supported me. But I knew she wished I would just go to school and become a coach or something regular. There was a problem with that. There is nothing about me that was regular. I lived to be outside the box. I knew she struggled with allowing me to be who I am versus who the person she hoped I would be. I think all women struggle with that sentiment. They love their man, but they also think they know what’s best for him.
I set my alarm for 5:30 a.m. When my alarm sounded in the morning, I nearly cried out in sleepy misery. The last thing I wanted to do is get up ‘Rocky style’ and run around the city of Anaheim Hills.
That’s a good thing about having a live-in girlfriend. Even if she didn’t entirely support me, she would at least support me being fit. She loved my body more than I did.
“Tommy, get up!” Maya yelled from her side of the bed.
“For the love of God, why is the alarm going off?” I slammed the alarm with my hand and nearly broke it. I ripped the cord out of the wall, and lay back down on my side of the bed.