Fated Desire

by Noah Harris

  “The note on the guy’s body said different. He was specifically coming to take you out. Take you and the kids away from Dominic, as some kind of justice. I’m guessing when he went broke he decided to just go all the way around the bend. As we all do from time to time. I guess his family didn’t quite survive that. So the plan was to take away what Dominic loved.”

  If I drive Dominic away now, then, it’s letting the Silly Man win after all.

  I know exactly what Goodboy’s saying. I’m just not sure I’m strong enough to do anything else.

  Your Man

  The first thing I hear, before I can even open my eyes, is Jonesy’s voice.

  “They keep running it, over and over. They played it slower this morning, not like slow-motion slow, but noticeably slower. With music over it, no idea what. Chariots of Fire or some shit. Anyway, it’s insufferable.”

  It makes me want to laugh, but I’m alert quickly, I know where I am, and I can smell Christian in the room. So my first instinct, humiliating as it might be, is to play possum. Stay still until I can gauge the situation.

  I’m not saying I appreciate getting shot, but at the time I do remember thinking that at least I didn’t have to keep fighting with Christian. Or to be more specific, listening to Christian explain exactly what a piece of shit I am, and me agreeing.

  Poppy’s screaming over Goodboy’s shoulder as he’s running toward the camera. Christian and I are running away. Silly Man’s a blur in the distance, briefly in focus just between two flashes from his shotgun. Then I go down.

  I realize I’ve been hearing it all night. Playing over and over, just like Jonesy said.

  It doesn’t make me feel any better. They’ve got me on drugs and I heal as fast as any shifter so I’m not in pain at this point. But inside, it hurts.

  I came here looking for redemption and found the man I once loved. So I decided to get him, instead. Like getting revenge on him for long ago. Or handing my younger, lovesick self a win. How could I be surprised that it would backfire? It’s sick.

  It’s my worst nightmare. My oldest, sweetest dreams come true. Sure, for about five minutes. Then immediately shattering into a thousand pieces. Why? Because of stuff I did. Because I spent all that time getting hard and mean and I didn’t care who I was hurting, so I was able to pretend I didn’t know I was hurting anybody. And now I’m paying for it.

  And Christian paid for it. So much I can’t ever repay him. I owe him an infinite amount.

  The debt of guilt, the debt to his children and his future. Everything I took away. In the real world you can declare bankruptcy. I don’t know what the equivalent here is. Unless it’s killing yourself, but I tried that too. And ended up on a loop in the hospital, hero porn for people who don’t know any better.

  I can’t stop thinking back to that first month, when Christian made me unpack. The trepidation, second-guessing, total fear it rammed upward in my throat. Telling myself it wasn’t a premonition, just jitters. I came here exactly for this. Put down roots for once, see what stability might do for me.

  But I guess I knew. I guess we all did.

  I’m moments away from sitting up and letting him off the hook when Jonesy leaves and I chicken out. I can’t be alone with him, not after everything I’ve done. So I lie there, listening so intently for Christian to leave too that I imagine hearing it more than once. But when he does make a sound, it’s something else.

  “Okay. I don’t know if you’re supposed to talk to people or whatever. It’s not a coma, you’re just sleeping. But maybe I’ll feel better, so here goes. That night, you talked to me while I was asleep. I don’t know if you remember that, but I wanted you to know that I do.”

  Interesting. We must really remember that night differently. My nerves, my skin, were lit-up like an electrical grid that night. I could smell him, nervous and sad for me, wanting and not wanting. Did he really think I…?

  “Since before I got married, that’s the one thing I wanted to tell you. I heard every word and I remember it all.”

  He was definitely falling asleep during the third movie in our marathon and I didn’t want to disturb him. I tried to fall asleep too, so we’d stay on the same schedule come morning. But there was a sex scene, unexpectedly, and I was discovering my body’s reactions to that. For some reason I got really nervous that he’d notice. Like it was just so extremely visible, or my face would get red or something. I don’t know. I felt like a neon sign.

  And I couldn’t help imagining if he did notice. How we’d talk about it. How we were growing up and those kinds of things didn’t feel safe or appropriate anymore. So, when he giggled, it shot up my back like an electric shock and I squeezed my eyes tight. Trying to will myself asleep right there.

  He started shaking me, asking if I’d jumped because the movie was scary. Was I afraid? Of course, the answer to both questions was yes.

  There was a wild blood that coursed through me then, looking in his eyes in the dark. For a second, I could swear Christian was thinking about kissing me too. Awkward teenagers kissing, teeth knocking into each other, absolutely unsatisfying and terrifying. But a first kiss nonetheless.

  By definition, everybody’s had one of those. This was going to be mine. By the light of the full moon, two years before my first transformation. I felt a flood of information I didn’t know what to do with. Time slowed down to a trickle as I waited for him to decide what was going to happen next.

  And then I started to cry. I knew it made Christian feel weird, it was weird. I felt weird too. But he grabbed me and held on, shoving my head into his shoulder. Like when we were seven and my goldfish died, and I was convinced it was my fault. That moment of kindness, that innocence back before everything got terrifying, just clicked in me. I realized what I was so confused about. It wasn’t that confusing really, after all. Just overlooked.

  In every movie you’ve ever seen there’s a part where they tell the hero, “You just have to tell him how you feel. You have to put yourself out there. Even if it’s so scary you might throw up, or die in front of them, you can’t live your life knowing you didn’t do this.”

  It didn’t make sense to me then and it doesn’t really make sense to me now. But for a second, our wolves in silent communion, the moon passing through us both, I really, honestly believed it was the right time. So, through my tears, I told him.

  You can say you weren’t looking for anything in return. That you’re going to love each other no matter what. That nothing has to change. In fact, you’re supposed to say those things. Like drawing a circle of salt around a demon so it won’t kill you. But they’re lies.

  If you didn’t want something so much that it threatened your body, your sanity, your comfortable life, you’d never work up the courage to ask for it.

  Christian laughed, looking into my eyes. Not a mean laugh but a bewildered, surprised laugh. Like I was accidentally saying all this to a stranger, not the person it was meant for. But I didn’t budge. Not even as we discussed it. The impossibility of it. The best way to get back to yesterday and forget this ever happened.

  I felt a cold, steel fire in me saying that wasn’t right either…and then he kissed me.

  And it was terrible! The corn chips and hard candy we’d been eating, the fumbling inexperience of two very scared young people.

  But it was a first kiss. It counted. It was with the only person I would ever want to share that with.

  And twenty-four hours later I was gone, and that was the end of the story.

  End of my family, end of our friendship, end of everything I understood.

  And the beginning of a very structured life, which was immensely helpful in its own way. Being beaten into a shape more like other men. I think it was very good for me. Not for everybody, but good for me.

  He’s talked and talked, ever since I found him again, about how guilty he feels about all that. How it all went down, and I paid the price for his cowardice, and all of that.

  But it doesn’t leave
any room for my shame. Because whether or not he was gay, or we were meant to be together, or even had a shot at love, I spent the next five years in shame. I hadn’t done anything wrong, I know that now. But I was a kid, lost and afraid and in utter agony that I’d corrupted my favorite person in the eyes of his family. Or somehow taken advantage of our friendship, or his loneliness.

  A million gross scenarios. All of them centered on the idea that I’d done something unethical. That I’d already altered his life. I wouldn’t ever know for sure, I thought. But for a decade there’s been guilt, stronger than my regret. Almost relief I wouldn’t ever have to know what I’d done to him. How badly I’d messed him up with my childish, selfish wants.

  I’ve always been a creep, I think. Just took you a hell of a lot longer to figure it out.

  “So now I’m doing it. Talking to you while you’re asleep. I don’t know what I’m going to say or what I want or what’s going to happen now. Maybe by the end I will. So don’t go anywhere.”

  He sniffs at his own lame joke, shuffling his feet. I can picture his face perfectly, coy, embarrassed and deeply sad.

  “I knew that love was not going to be an option for me from the second the phone rang to tell me Ernest was dead. That’s how connected we were. The phone rang, on a perfectly unremarkable afternoon, and my very first thought was, that’ll be Ernest having died. Now I’ll be alone for the rest of my life, with my five babies. Huh.

  If I’m asleep, I wouldn’t cry. So I can’t cry, or he’ll stop talking, and go away forever. But damn.

  “But my second thought after that, when I put down the phone, was even stranger. For a good ten minutes all I wanted to do was find you. Because nothing else was going to make me feel okay. Probably you wouldn’t either, wherever you were, but it was the thing I needed. Like chicken noodle soup and ginger ale. I felt sick, and that was how to feel better.”

  Or maybe it’s because I killed him. I mean, as long as you’re being psychic.

  “And now we’re here. You aren’t going to die. But for a minute you were. I felt like I was standing at the edge of a very deep pit, looking down into nothing. I’d broken rule number one, never let anybody in that far. Never give anybody the chance to hurt me, or my cubs, as much as he did when he died. So that was a…a real wakeup call.”

  I can hear him crying now. Between the words, tiny gasps at oxygen.

  “When you told me you were part of Highpoint it was a relief. Because I had a reason to throw you out. I didn’t have to feel guilty about loving you, or fucking you, or any of the ways I felt like I was cheating on him. I could just hide behind blaming you and feel good about it. Instead of feeling like a coward.”

  I come very close to opening my eyes. Not to speak to him, but because I desperately need to see his face. To look into his eyes and figure out how to end the suffering there.

  “But I’ve been hiding from Ernest for exactly two years next week. Because I am a coward and that made it a relief too. Better to just let the garden die than plant anything too soon. Because neither of us can be trusted. You could die on me at any time, or I could turn to ice on you. After Ernest, I thought love, real love, true love, was a lot more stable than that. Every time.”

  I don’t think you’re wrong, baby. It’s exactly how I’ve felt for ten years. Nothing could be more stable, from where I’m lying.

  “Even while I was screaming at you I knew I was being irrational. But it was my wolf that was howling. Justice. Or revenge. Or…I guess just in pain. I don’t know. It was beyond words. All I could think in my human brain was, Thank God, I have a reason.”

  I came back, I want to scream. Every single time I tried to run, or pack my shit, I came back. It would have been so easy to move into Jonesy’s bachelor pad. Frankly, he could use a babysitter. It would have been perfect. Running off into the night with Felix Armistead. All of those things would have been solutions. But they’re not you, and that isn’t a solution.

  “But Dominic? I’m braver than that. I want you to wake up, so I can say so. I want to just say, We’re even. I lied. You lied. It fucked up our lives. You took a bullet. We’re good. If you could forgive me or have me at all. Because there is a side to you that I never really understood. I guess because we were so young. You are not a loner at all. You’re no outcast. You’re about family and always have been. Like Goodboy but better, because you’re the alpha I love. Giving our family that strength and knowledge, that kindness, that’s a gift I can’t repay. I know that man is inside you and I think we’ve both been scared to meet him. But I want you to wake up, so I can devote myself to finding him. With you.”

  He is there. I can feel him, aching to be free. He’s almost all I am now, after the last few days. There is very little of the charming, happy, intentionally oblivious, selfish, shallow Dominic Tarrant left.

  How could I explain this?

  As I ran toward that gun, I physically felt like I was growing a foot taller. Like I was suddenly a man. Not a boy driving a man’s body around, fooling everybody. A man. Your man.

  “It seems like half the time we’re hiding behind sleep, or other people. Like leaving love notes all over town, even though we live together. I’m not going to do that anymore. You’re brave and I want to be brave too. So when you wake up, I am going to say all of this again.”

  We’re finally on the same page. All I have to do is open my eyes.

  And here, at the end…I find I can’t.

  So I don’t. You’re the brave one after all, Christian. You win.

  Some hours later, a small, whispered, warm breath on my cheek pops my eyes open before I can recall where I am or why. Bodhi’s staring into my left eye from about an inch away with strawberry breath, so close I imagine he can see every pore. Looking at me like a specimen, like some poor roadkill we found walking through the woods. He strokes my cheek a while, like a pet, before suddenly realizing that I’m looking back at him.

  The joy on his face is contagious, as is his laughter. The twins come running, their distinctive pitter-pat, and somehow engineer a chair into position so they can crowd up onto me too.

  “Careful, careful,” Bodhi whispers, playing grownup. Pointing at the bandages around my ribs. The area that’s off-limits. The twins nod, snuggling against my shoulders where they always fit so well.

  When Christian returns with Poppy in his arms he’s perturbed by the arrangement, almost angry, before he realizes I’m awake. Smiling through his tears, he sits.

  Poppy climbs across him to plant herself on the bed, my stomach as her table, and keep watch, across the bed, across the room, out into the hallway. My little sentinel. More wolf than girl.

  That’s when I start crying, too. Eyes locked, pain clearing like cloud cover, I nod.

  We’re even. Sure.

  I don’t really believe it. I might never believe it. But I won’t let anybody take my family away from me. Ever again.

  “How much did you…”

  My smile cuts him off. Every word.

  We subside into comfortable silence as the children dress me, and tie my shoes very poorly, before I pick up on what makes today special. That I’m invited.

  I hesitate at the door of the hospital room, not sure I should be allowed to leave, but Christian assures me I’m cleared and that I look fantastic in the suit he brought me from the house. As if he just somehow knew today would be the day I came back to him.

  The drive is quiet. I sit in the back seat, at Queen Poppy’s request, and she spends the time running her fingers over my face, like she’s painting it a million different colors. A few times she catches my eye and smiles, like an artist completing a portrait. By the time we’re at the cemetery, she seems satisfied with her invisible work.

  It’s a clear, late-summer day. A bit more of a chill coming through but still pleasantly warm. The kids are acting goofy and giddy, as they always do in Sunday clothes, but they stay on task. They’ve been talking about this for weeks, reminding each other what we’re doi
ng and how it will go down. Asking questions about the most minute details.

  Only Huck seems terribly concerned about the meaning of death, the larger questions. But without the vocabulary to express them we can just pretend for a little while longer that we don’t know what he’s asking.

  Bodhi puts a small stone on his father’s grave, holding up Poppy by the armpits as she does the same. The twins hold hands, looking down, communing in their way. Christian turns to me under the trees and beckons me closer with a smile. Amused, like I might explode if I get too close. But that’s sort of how it feels.

  Until we’re standing with the kids, his hand in mine, and I realize what it actually feels like.

  It feels like meeting Ernest for the first time.

  It feels like the sun coming out.

  As the sun descends, the kids, one by one, get bored of exploring the immediate area and come to stand with us. The six of us, in a line. Standing between the trees and the gravestone, breathing in the silence and the heat. The breeze in the trees, the rusty twilight.

  There is a magic here. A deep and quiet stillness that feels very close to heaven.

  When I was a kid I always hated cemeteries. They seemed like collections of death and sadness. A place to stuff things you want to forget.

  But no. They’re a way to spend time with the ones we love, after they’ve moved on. Death is just what happens, and sadness is what happens next. Then this.

  Where we are now is a collection of love. Love and honor, and memory so strong and concentrated, so serious and ceremonial, that it soaks into the very ground, like rain.

  When we get home, Rosemary settles her brother into a seat on the couch and walks away, which is jarring. They enjoy time without each other too much usually. But she gives me a significant look on her way out of the room, so I follow out of curiosity.

  She’s sitting at her tiny table, setting out a teapot and teacups, and I sit down, hesitant, unsure if I’m an invited guest or really misreading. But she pours me a cup of imaginary tea, so I feel welcome.