Holiday Wolf Pack

by Bridget Essex

  I breathe out for a long moment, unsure as to what to say. We stand still, the cold of the day hardly affecting either one of us—werewolves just don’t notice low temperatures all that much.

  I probably shouldn’t have offered to help her.

  But I felt like I had to.

  No... I wanted to.

  Hmm.

  What the hell am I doing?

  “Okay,” she says then, surprising both of us.

  Now it's my turn to gape. “Okay?”

  “Yeah. I accept your offer.”

  Well...that was unexpected. I pray to anyone listening that this isn’t going to be tremendously awkward—and then I nod to her, incline my head toward the back of the van.

  “So…what needs to be loaded into my car?”

  She snorts. “Two dozen gift baskets.”

  “Right.” I hand her her phone. “How about I take care of that while you call the towing company?”

  She’s already put her phone to her ear, is turning away from me, her profile etched with annoyance.

  Yeah…pretty sure this is going to be the most awkward experience of my life.

  Great.

  (What the hell was I thinking?)

  I make my way to the back door of Carol’s van, try to open it. The thing begrudgingly gives way with a rusty groan. I pull the van door open, and there, on the floor, are some large and fairly festive gift baskets. The scents of ground coffee, chocolate (oh, so much chocolate), peppermints, and gingerbread overwhelm my senses. And fruitcake. Honestly, I don’t know what everyone has against fruitcake. I kinda like it.

  I take the mostly-fruitcake basket first, and then I grab the cellophane-and ribbon-wrapped handles of a few other baskets, and I stagger back to my car.

  Of course, I forgot to unlock my car before I made this epic gift basket journey, and my keys are in my hoodie pocket. I wrestle with the gift baskets, trying not to drop any of them in my quest for the key…and end up dropping three of them into the gross, gray snow at my feet.

  Carol is beside me within moments; I guess she finished her phone call already. She stoops down elegantly, gathers up the baskets, and wipes them down with the red scarf that she produces from inside of her coat.

  “The salt will stain the cellophane, but we can wash it off once we get to the Moose Lodge,” Carol murmurs, almost as if to herself.

  “Hey, I’m sorry about that,” I say, then try to grab the cellophane of one of the gift baskets in my arms with my teeth so that I can free up a hand to reach for my keys. Carol stares at me as if I’ve just grown three heads, and then...then, she actually chuckles.

  The warmth of her laughter surprises both of us, I think. I smile softly as her eyes crinkle at the corners with amusement. She was always the most beautiful girl in the world to me. And now she’s grown into the most beautiful woman.

  My smile fades as quickly as it appeared.

  God...

  It’s like a punch to the gut, being in the presence of this woman who I left fifteen years ago. This woman I loved with my whole heart…

  This woman I gave up.

  Her expression changes, too, hardens, when she looks at me, and then silence drifts between us again as the snow starts to fall: big, fat flakes that get caught in Carol’s golden waves.

  She clears her throat, holding tightly to the gift baskets. “Is your car open?” she asks, glancing sidelong at my Honda.

  “Yeah,” I tell her, and then I break out of my reverie. “Wait, no, sorry… That’s why I dropped the baskets. I was trying to get my key. Could you hold them, or…” I trail off, because she’s staring pointedly at my hoodie pocket.

  “You have them there, yes?” she asks me, and when I nod, she takes a step forward, and she reaches into my pocket.

  My breath catches in my throat: the scent of her envelops me. The sensation of her hand, the warmth of her, against the flat of my stomach is too much; I try to stay still as she grabs my keys. She’s very quick, and the reality of our situation presses back down upon us when she removes her hand and unlocks the passenger side door. She places the gift baskets she's holding onto the backseat neatly and then takes the ones in my arms, too, though she doesn’t meet my eyes.

  “Um…what did the towing guy say?” I ask her, because, suddenly, the quiet is suffocating me. Carol and I used to talk about everything in the world; we spoke so easily to each other. There have been fifteen years of silence between us, but that doesn’t make it any less painful to find nothing where there was connection and warmth before.

  She glances up at me, her eyes hooded, wary. “He said he didn’t think he could get out here today. That I should talk to the manager of the rest stop to avoid getting a ticket. But I’ll probably get a ticket, anyway.” She shrugs her shoulders.

  “If you put a trash bag or something flapping in the driver’s side window, I don’t think they can ticket you. I don’t know for sure,” I tell her, swallowing. “But it’s worth a try.”

  “Yeah…sure. I’ll do that. I must have a bag in the back somewhere.” Again, she won’t meet my gaze, and she moves past me, giving me a wide berth as she heads to her van.

  There are more gift baskets to fetch, but I find myself frozen as I watch her move…just for a moment. I can see her hips swaying beneath the black coat. And even though there’s snow and slush on the pavement, Carol is wearing the hell out of those black heels, doesn’t seem to mind that her feet are getting wet. She was always so well-dressed, even when we were kids. Always so put together.

  Always so damn pretty.

  That much hasn’t changed. If anything, she’s gotten even more beautiful—so much more beautiful. My eyes follow the line of her neck, her head bent forward, the snowflakes crystallizing on her hair…

  What would have happened if I’d never left?

  It’s a dangerous thought. I've wandered down that path too many times—often in the middle of the night, when I’m having trouble sleeping. Those dark hours of the soul, plagued with regrets, wondering what kind of a life you might have led if you’d made one or two different choices.

  It’s useless, though, to ask questions like that. Nothing can change the past. We made the decisions we made, and that’s what brought us to this place, here and now.

  That’s what brought me to this rest stop, staring at the retreating back of a woman I loved and lost.

  I shake myself out of my dark mood, shove my hands into my hoodie pocket, and follow after Carol to grab the rest of the gift baskets. Together, we load them into my car, and it’s dicey, making them all fit without damaging the contents or the frilly bows, but then we’re done, standing there as the sky begins to darken, the open road beckoning us…

  I gaze into the front seat of my car. Carol and I are going to be sitting side by side in there...for hours. This is really not how I expected my day to go.

  I gulp down some cold, cold air, brace myself, and then get behind the wheel.

  Carol stands outside for another minute, paging through something on her phone. She’s probably stalling, trying to delay the inevitable, and I can hardly blame her. We've got a five-hour drive to Pine Springs. Five hours in the car with your ex who left you…

  God, why did I offer to drive her up again? I was being too damn practical. Just because we’re both aiming for the same small town in Maine doesn’t mean we should be in the same car together. This is a recipe for disaster.

  Just then, Carol opens the passenger side door and slides her graceful form into the seat beside me, strapping on her seat belt quietly after shutting herself in.

  My palms, gripping the steering wheel, start to sweat.

  The car is as quiet as the grave. We both stare ahead, through the frosty windshield. Neither of us speaks when I start the engine, or as I wait for the car to warm up. I chew on my lower lip and wonder if I should turn on the radio.

  We can’t talk for five hours. We don’t know each other anymore, even though we knew one another inside and out once upon a
time. Really, we shouldn’t even try to engage. Conversation will only result in arguments, or more pain.

  But Carol? Carol’s never been the type to hold her tongue. She turns halfway in her seat to look at me, her magenta lips drawn into a hard line, her eyes steely in the winter twilight.

  “I appreciate your giving me a ride,” she says, her voice clipped, cold. I glance at her cautiously. “But—and I hardly think this even needs to be mentioned...” She licks her lips. “This doesn’t make up for anything, Georgia. Not at all. Do you understand? I’ve made peace with what happened—as much as I could, anyway—but I don’t think I can ever forgive you.”

  I wince.

  Then I straighten my legs a little under the dashboard and nod my head, wrapping my fingers around the wheel. “Wouldn’t imagine that you could,” I tell her gruffly, softly, pointing my gaze ahead again.

  Her words hurt. I can't pretend that they don't. They pierce me, but I deserve that pain, I know. I just didn’t think it could hurt this badly. Not after all this time.

  Yet another thing I was wrong about.

  I take a deep breath, and then I put the car in reverse, backing out of the parking spot. Carol says nothing else. She removes her gloves before crossing her arms in front of her protectively, and she stares out of the passenger side window as we ease onto the highway.

  Around us, the snow is starting to come down in thicker and thicker curtains of white; combined with the darkening twilight, the driving is rough, even though I’m a pretty fantastic winter driver (if I do say so myself). There aren't any cars coming from the opposite direction, but high beams in snow are a bad idea, so I try to make do with my regular headlights.

  The tension in the car is as thick as the snowfall. I don’t know what to do or say, so I stare at the road, my hands clutching the wheel, my stomach churning. Maybe I shouldn't have drunk so much espresso...

  But what kind of an idiot invites her ex on a road trip? Who could possibly be that stupid?

  Oh, yeah. This idiot.

  I could have helped her out in some other way. Helped her find a taxi, or a bus, or a train. Why did my brain immediately decide that offering her a ride with me was the optimum choice?

  Okay, I can’t take this anymore. I’m kind of a talky lady, and I feel thoroughly miserable, and my emotions are bubbling up inside, as if I’m a dropped bottle of Coke and someone has unfortunately opened me…resulting in a sugary geyser.

  I sort of erupt.

  “How about this weather, huh?” blurts out of my mouth.

  Carol stares sidelong at me.

  “The snow, I mean,” I stammer on. “It's...so...snowy. Um—”

  “You’re trying to talk to me about the weather?” she asks, her voice surprisingly quiet.

  “I mean… Weather’s a safe topic, right?” I roll my shoulders and risk a glance at her before gluing my eyes back onto the slippery road.

  Carol still has her arms crossed, is still staring through the windshield, but there’s a faraway look in her gaze. And there’s pain etched into her forehead in the form of a single, deep line. As if she’s frowned a lot in recent years.

  Carol never used to frown. She was rarely sad. She was passionate, bright as a star. She was fierce, strong.

  Is it self-centered to wonder if I caused that line across her forehead?

  Should I feel guilty about that, too?

  “Do you remember the last Christmas we were together?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper.

  My stomach drops.

  I do remember. A little too clearly.

  There’s so much pain in the memory; I don't want to think about it. But her voice was hushed, almost as if she were pleading with me, or asking me to share a secret.

  So we talk about the past, as painful as it is.

  And for a little while on that dark, snowy road, we relive our last day together.

  ---

  I'm eighteen—just eighteen, though, and still fairly wet behind the ears. Still such a baby, so young. I don't know anything about the world, and I'm pretty sure I'll never know anything about the world, because I'm never going to leave Pine Springs, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere…and I'm not sure I'm okay with that.

  I love my family, and my family loves me. I have pretty great friends; most of them are pack members, so I can be myself when we're together, an “out and proud” werewolf, as my girlfriend calls it.

  My girlfriend…

  Carol. Don’t ask me how, in this little place, we came to know exactly what we were around the same time, but being a werewolf…it kind of puts you more in touch with your body, your emotions. You know yourself well, have instincts for things.

  And I knew I loved Carol pretty early on in my life. Almost from the beginning, if you'd believe it.

  When I was fourteen, she asked me to come over to her house so that she could practice tutoring me on a couple different things. I didn’t pay attention much in school; doctors said I had ADHD, and I was inclined to agree with them. But Carol, she never lost her patience with me like the teachers did.

  She was intense. That’s the first thing that drew me to Carol when we went up to her room to study. She approached the lesson of the day with this intensity that no one in school was giving it. Most of our teachers knew we were never going to leave Pine Springs, so they didn't put much effort into our classes.

  But Carol? She gave a shit. She told me to do my best, to focus, that my grades in high school actually would sort of matter when it came to me getting into college. And I’d laugh at her about that, because I had no intention of going to college.

  But after Carol kept talking to me about it, the idea started to stick. Going to college didn’t seem like such a joke. There were no colleges or universities in Pine Springs—still aren’t—but that didn’t seem to phase Carol. She said that, if I got good grades, I could go anywhere.

  Anywhere.

  She wasn't like anybody else I knew. She was weird. Passionate. Kind of a serious girl, though she was always optimistic. Everyone at school who was as beautiful as her was a cheerleader, but Carol didn't have interest in stuff like cheering. She studied; she read. She read a lot.

  And, at night, she turned into a wolf, and she ran.

  You have to know one thing about Pine Springs: its population is primarily made up of werewolves. Like most minorities, werewolves tend to drift toward other werewolves and make up their own communities along the way, which is what happened with our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers here in Pine Springs. The town is up, high up, in Maine, and it’s very isolated. So you don’t have to hide who you are so much, at least around people who are like you.

  Werewolves, like you.

  Carol didn’t like hiding.

  There were a handful of human kids at school, and they were oblivious—and had to remain oblivious—to the fact that they were surrounded by weres. If the rest of the world found out about us... I can only imagine that it’d be pretty awful. The world at large doesn’t have a great track record with treating people who are different very well, and werewolves are about as different as it comes. So there was this unspoken vow in our pack that you had to be careful. You had to keep who you were a secret. A dozen or so human families called Pine Springs home, and these humans had no idea who their next-door neighbors really were.

  And that’s where all the trouble starts: with the humans.

  Carol and I were madly in love. Both of us had just turned eighteen. Eighteen—what a wonderful year to be alive.

  She's beautiful, thoughtful, intense, passionate… And, at this point, I think I’m going to spend the rest of my life with her. But when I draw her to me, taste her, touch her, there’s this shadow, something ugly and dark, and it worries me that I can’t shove it down, that I can’t just ignore it, make it go away.

  It’s a question.

  Carol wants to stay in Pine Springs. I mean, she wants to go to college, but then she wants to come back. She wants to come back to
this nowhere town, and she wants to be a force for change among the werewolves. A lot of the weres are living in substandard housing, are impoverished, and that breaks her heart; she wants to fix it. Pine Springs isn’t the wealthiest place, and Carol wants to—no, she needs to—help. She’s seen my mother helping; she’s gone with us to some food drives and charity benefits.

  Carol knows exactly what she wants to do with her life, and her passion for achieving her goals is as hot and bright as the sun.

  But me?

  I just want to escape.

  We’re poor, too, my family. Me. Carol. We’re all poor, and I just want to get out of here, but I don’t know how. I want to go to college, maybe. Carol’s put the idea in my head enough, has told me that if I get the best grades, I can win scholarships. I can leave Pine Springs. Maybe I can become a vet. I’m good with dogs, after all. Ha, ha.

  That’s the problem, the shadow between us:

  I want to go; Carol wants to stay.

  But she doesn’t know I want to go. Not really. She knows about the college thing, but I think she assumes that Pine Springs is in my blood, too. That I’m proud to be a werewolf. That I’m proud of our little town.

  It’s hard to say I’m proud to be a monster—which is what the rest of the world thinks werewolves are. It’s hard to say that I’m proud to come from a tiny, boring, never-going-to-change town. I’m feeling so suffocated here; I can hardly breathe.

  I’ve got big dreams, too big for Pine Springs. None of my other friends seems to feel trapped, and that makes me feel alone. And it starts to sour my belly, this loneliness. Especially when Carol talks about all of the improvements she wants to make here. How much she wants to help the people. How much she loves Pine Springs.

  And I realize…I don’t.

  I don’t love Pine Springs at all.

  But I love her.

  And this disparity is eating me up inside.

  I’m a confused kid. Even though I just turned eighteen, I don’t really understand what’s important—not yet. Because I haven’t been hurt, haven't ever lost anything.

  I'm going to lose something soon.