by Sable Sylvan
Brian sat up and held his head in his hands before throwing his head back. “Goldie, what are you trying to say?”
“I don’t know, that I need some time?” asked Goldie, getting up from the camp pad, sitting up, her knees held to her body. “This is a lot to think over, Brian. What am I supposed to do if you’re not my mate, just...just stop looking for whoever I’m meant to be with?”
“Don’t leave me again, Goldie,” said Brian, turning to Goldie. “Please, don’t leave, not again.”
“Brian...” started Goldie. “I...” Goldie was at a loss for words as she reached out to hold Brian close to her, but Brian slipped his shoulder out from under her arm, rejecting her consolation touch.
“Don’t make me beg,” said Brian, holding back the bear inside of him. He knew he couldn’t hold the beast at bay for long, and that he had to get away from Goldie if h was going to shift. “Because damn it, I don’t want to lose you, and please don’t make me beg you to stay.”
“Brian, I can’t make any promises,” admitted Goldie. “Other than that I promise to tell you what decision I come to.”
“You can’t just come back here, prove that you’re my fated mate, and then leave again,” said Brian, slipping off the truck. “That’s not how it works, Goldie: I’d say that I won’t wait for you forever but you and I both know that’s not true. I’d wait for you until the day I died, and if that’s how long I have to wait for you to realize that I’m the man you are meant to be with, I’ll do it...but damn it, I won’t enjoy it, and I won’t pretend to either.” Brian turned from the truck, and didn’t bother to put on his clothes, looking to the forest behind the school.
“Brian, where are you going?” asked Goldie, getting off the truck bed and slipping on her clothes in a hurry, but as the sounds of trees and underbrush rustling became further and further away, she knew that he was gone and that there was no way she’d ever catch up with him.
“I need to get away, Goldie.” Brian turned, his eyes glowing from within. “I need to find somewhere where I can hear myself think.” And with that, Brian forced himself to turn away from the woman he loved and as he got on all fours, his mate mark glowing before dark black fur bristled and clothed his nakedness, a crackling sound following the ripple of changing bone and muscle. The calluses on his hands became dark as his fingers made way for the digits of a paw and fingernails became claws as the man was replaced with the bear within, a beast that shared only two things with the man: glowing eyes and a broken heart.
The bear shifter ran towards the chain link fence, using one strong paw to rip a hole in it before running into the shadows of the woods, dead leaves and twigs cracking under each strong step. “Brian!” called out Goldie, by herself in the parking lot, her voice echoing back off the building. “Brian! Come back!”
“I don’t think he’s coming back,” said a familiar voice as a figure came out of the shadows, eyes glinting in the darkness.
Chapter Three
The man in the shadows stepped forward, the glow of his eyes and his cigarette the only light in the dim parking lot. “Miss me much, Goldie?” Tall, dark, and handsome, his crew cut brown hair was thick like a bear’s fur and his dark brown eyes seemed almost black in the low light, barely lit by the small red light of the cigarette. His muscles ripped from under his clothes and his bulging upper arms and thighs gave him a distinctive silhouette.
“G-Glen?” asked Goldie, not sure if she should walk towards the man who was either a total stranger or one of the men she’d fallen in love with back in high school. Worse, he might count as both.
“The one and only,” said Glen, walking forward and sitting down on the edge of the truck. “But I have to admit, I’m surprised to see you here of all places.”
“At our high school reunion?” asked Goldie, confused.
“In the bed of Brian’s truck,” said Glen, knocking a fist against the bed of the truck. “What, you thought I’d forget what Bri’s truck looks like, just because he’s one of the two men I hate most in the world? I spent too many hours in this shit wagon, sugar.”
“And where’s your ride?” asked Goldie.
“I, like the civilized person I am, parked in the front of the school,” said Glen, leaning back, his brown hair still crew cut, unlike Brian’s shaggy black hair, his brown eyes no longer glowing. “But a little birdie told me you and Brian had gone out for a talk...but from what I saw, it looked like more than just a talk.”
“Eww, Glen, you pervert, what did you see?” asked Goldie.
“Nothing too bad...except the sight of Brian’s bare ass before he shifted will never get out of my head,” said Glen. “But let me guess: you and Brian did the deed, and what I knew all along was confirmed: Brian’s not your mate.”
“Yeah,” admitted Goldie. “But I don’t see why Brian’s unhappiness makes you happy.”
“He’s only one of the two men that kept the two of us apart,” said Glen. “And the other...fuck Cliff. If he ever shows his face in Port Jameson again, I’ll wipe that pretty smile off his face with my own two paws.”
Goldie took one of Glen’s hands in hers and turned it over so she could see the palm: the dark calluses that marked his paw had turned a medium shade of chocolate brown in recent years, and they stood out even against his tanned beige skin. “Your marks got darker.”
“That’s not the only thing that got darker,” said Glen, lighting another cigarette. The dim light of the lighter lit up Glen’s face, and for the first time, Goldie saw a hint regarding what Glen meant: a large scar had been chiseled into his face, from his temple down his cheekbones to a few inches above his neck.
“Your mate mark changed color?” asked Goldie, resisting the urge to ask about his scar...as well as the urge to cough as Glen blew out a stream of smoke, away from Goldie’s face, not that the wind that blew it back towards Goldie cared.
“Of course not,” said Glen. “If it did, I don’t think I’d be here. No...a man can get darker, Goldie, and things...things can get darker.”
“What do you mean?” asked Goldie.
“You have no idea where I went after graduation, do you?” asked Glen. “Or what I saw...or who I became.”
“Of course I don’t. It’s not like you ever contacted me,” said Goldie. “It’s not like I heard anything from you at all.”
“Don’t tell me you got lonely up in Seattle without your three beta bear shifters to keep you company,” teased Glen.
Goldie followed Glen back to the front of the school. As they walked, Glen wrapped his arm around Goldilocks’ shoulders: she shrugged his arm off the first time. “Awfully handsy, aren’t you?” said Goldie with a glare.
“Hey, I’m not the one who came all the way down to Port Jameson without thinking, ‘Maybe I should’ve packed a coat’,” teased Glen. “I’m gonna keep you warm, whether you like it or not.” Glen wrapped his arm around Goldie again and this time, she didn’t shrug the arm off. As much as she hated to admit it, being in Glen’s arms made her feel not only warmer, but safer...and just like being in Brian’s arms, it just felt right.
“You already sign in?” he asked when they got to the double doors at the front of the school. “Or did you just head straight to the back of the parking lot to mess around with lover boy?”
“Jealous much?” asked Goldie.
“Of course not,” said Glen. “He just...warmed you up for me.”
“Ugh, jerk,” said Goldie with a groan.
Glen walked up to the table: a perky, thin blonde greeted him and of course, the notorious flirt turned on the charm, even though it was just a frikkin’ sign in table, and there was no need for him to lay on the compliments and the seductive winks.
Glen walked with Goldie towards the lockers instead of towards the reunion. “Put my badge on for me,” ordered Glen, passing Goldie the sticker with his name written on it in messy writing.
“You can’t put on a frikkin’ sticker by yourself?” asked Goldie.
�
��I can...but I know you’re going to complain that it’s askew all night if I do it myself,” said Glen.
Goldie peeled the sticker off and stuck it on Glen’s plaid shirt. “I can’t believe I’m doing this...especially after you flirted with that girl,” said Goldie.
“Oh, look, someone’s jealous,” said Glen. “Good.”
“If you want to fuck the check-in girl, why are you wasting your time with me?” asked Goldie, leaning against the lockers and looking down the hall at the various couples: while some people, like Deborah, had found love after high school in another town, where they’d started new lives, others had set up house in Port Jameson with their high school sweetheart, and Goldie was stuck in the middle: she’d left to find something and she’d come back without anything.
Glen turned Goldie’s face towards his, so she had to look right up at him while he used his other hand to balance himself against the lockers. “Right now, the right thing for me to say is, what, that there’s no time with you that’s a waste, right? But I learned that I could waste time with you, lots of it, back in high school, so maybe being honest and blunt is the right course of action this time around,” said Glen, moving his hand up from Goldie’s chin to the side of her face, feeling the softness of her cheeks with his thumb. “Maybe you need to know that what I’m doing, flirting with anything with a semblance of tits and ass, is done to rile you up, and that it’s worked, and that it’s proved to me that you can’t let me go, and maybe you need to know that gives me a sick sense of satisfaction because it means you’re just as infatuated with me as I am with you. Maybe you need to know that I feel nothing for any woman but you, or maybe you need me to deliver another one-liner instead of something from the heart. But right now, what I need is a drink, so you can join me for a shot of our town’s namesake beverage...I give you my permission.”
Glen took Goldie’s hand in his and led her through the halls to the reunion, to the bar filled with giggling, red-faced classmates, and he ordered two shots while keeping his grip on Goldie, only loosening it to pay, pick up the shots, and pass them to Goldie. “Bottoms up,” he ordered, holding the shot to his lips after clinking it against Goldie’s own plastic shot glass, and the pair downed their shots of Irish whiskey together.
“Wah,” said Goldie, holding onto Glen for support. “I forgot how strong that stuff is.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft,” said Glen, even though he knew from feeling Goldie that that was exactly what had happened to her and her beautiful body: every beautiful curve of hers had only become softer and sexier since she’d slipped out of his fingers.
“Is there anywhere to sit down?” asked Goldie. “It’s getting loud in here.”
“No, but, I’m sure we could find somewhere private,” said Glen. He wrapped an arm around Goldie and held her tight as he lead her away from the bar.
Everything was a blur: the sounds around her, of footsteps, conversation, and music, the shapes and lights around her. The only thing that wasn’t a blur was Glen: tall, strong Glen, he was the lighthouse in the storm. One shot of Jameson had felled Goldie like a werebear axman taking down a Ponderosa pine.
Once they were out in the halls, the throbbing sensation in her head was already getting better. Taking the shot so quickly had contributed to her headache and being away from the loud people and bright lights was already better.
The rest of the high school was dark, but Glen’s werebear senses allowed him to see better in the dark than any human. “I’m betting you don’t recognize where we are,” said Glen. “Remember our old stats class?”
“How could I forget?” asked Goldie with a laugh. “That was hands down one of the worst classes I had the displeasure of taking.”
“Well, somebody left the door open,” said Glen, pulling the door open with ease. “Wanna go in?”
“Glen, won’t we get in trouble?” hissed Goldie.
“Where else do you wanna go and sober up?” asked Glen. “This ain’t Seattle: unless you wanna go to a greasy spoon, you won’t be getting a cup of coffee any time soon. Plus...what better time to revisit old memories than at our high school reunion? It’s now or in twenty years, Goldie.”
“Fine,” conceded Goldie lamely. “But just for a few minutes.”
“Of course,” chuckled Glen. “Just for a few minutes.”
“Do you remember when we had statistics class together?” asked Glen.
“Yeah,” said Goldie. “It was so boring, but we had –”
“We had each other,” said Glen. “You and I had always been placed in the same math classes, and we always hated them, but at least we got to hate them together. You and me, Goldie, against the world.
“Goldie...did Brian really, well, claim you?” asked Glen, his hands behind his head, the way they always were when Glen was nervous.
“I don’t know,” said Goldie, sitting down in one of the familiar desks. She fingered the wood: there were initials carved in the desks, slogans, games of tic-tac-toe. Some things never changed: in Port Jameson, it seemed like time had stood still, and nothing had changed at all in the past five years. “I’m not a shifter, so I don’t have a fated mate like you guys do...and maybe I’m Brian’s fated mate, but does that mean that he’s the man I’m meant to spend the rest of my life with?”
“But did you and Brian, you know...” started Glen. “Come on, Goldie, don’t make me say it.”
“Did we have sex?” asked Goldie. “That’s really none of your business, Glen...but yeah, we did, and afterwards, his mark glowed.”
“Isn’t that the only answer you need?” asked Glen, sitting down in the desk in front of Goldilocks, straddling it to face her while leaning his elbows, his arms crossed, on the desk she was sitting at. Even sitting down, Glen was taller than her, bigger than her, but in the dark, even though the shadowy figure could be anyone, the fact that it was Glen made her feel safe and protected instead of vulnerable.
“I don’t think it is,” admitted Goldie, looking out the window that she’d spent the better part of a school year gazing out of, daydreaming about the future life that she’d wanted in Seattle, a life of glitzy parties with educated, sophisticated people...a future that hadn’t lived up to the standard she’d held it to in her imagination, which, in its realization, had proved to be less than satisfying. “I don’t know if it’s that simple.”
“Is there anything you could do to make it simpler?” asked Glen, turning Goldie’s face towards him using the back of his hand gently. Goldie’s hazel eyes met Glen’s dark brown eyes and she did the most impulsive thing she’d done all night: she leaned forward and kissed Glen.
Chapter Four
As soon as Goldie leaned forward and pressed her soft lips against his mouth, Glen pushed forward, the bear inside him telling him to rip off Goldie’s clothes and take her right then and there, the man resisting, keeping the bear back, but it was hard, because as he pulled himself away from the edge, Goldie pulled him closer towards it.
And then, Goldie pulled away. “I’m sorry, Glen...I just...I couldn’t help myself, for some reason,” said Goldie. “You know how many times I sat in these desks and wondered why I couldn’t just pick one of you?”
“You can pick me, Goldie,” said Glen, taking her head in his hands. “It’s not too late to fix the past.”
“But what if that’s not the right choice?” said Goldie, and her heart sunk as she saw the hopeful glint in Glen’s eyes disappear back into the darkness. “I care so much about you, Glen, and that’s why I stayed away....so that you, and so that Brian and Cliff, could all move on, so you could all find your fated mates.”
“I don’t want to move on, Goldie,” said Glen. “I’ve tried: this town isn’t exactly the best place to find curvy blondes like yourself, but no matter what I’ve done, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head, not for a second.”
“And that’s exactly what Brian said tonight, and what Cliff would say if he were here,” argued Goldie. “I can’t
be in the middle of all this drama again.” Goldie got up from the desk and leaned, looking outside the window. The view from the stats classroom had never seemed like anything special: past the parking lot was the woods, the woods that seemed to house a thousand secrets now that Goldie was an adult, and she realized that the underlying problem in the friend group was her, and that there was no way of solving the unsolvable problem of which man she should choose to spend the rest of her life with.
“Goldie...when you slept with Brian, you said, he felt something, didn’t he?” said Glen getting up from the desk and looking out the window with Goldie, not touching her or disturbing her from her thoughts with his burning touch, although his pants were getting tighter by the minute, by no will of his own but due to the fact he was in such close proximity to his fated mate. “And you said...that you didn’t feel anything.”
“I don’t know if I felt anything...or rather, if what I felt meant anything,” said Goldie, turning. “I’ve kept my distance from bear shifters since I left town: I never wanted this sort of drama to arise again. I don’t know what it would feel like if I was with what you call a fated mate, because humans don’t have mates.”
“So try me on for size,” said Glen, turning Goldie towards him, propping her up onto the counter below the window. The bulge in his pants rubbed against the crux of Goldie’s legs through her slacks. “You tried it with Brian, and worst case scenario, you pick neither of us, and best case scenario, you’ll never have to wonder whether or not you made the wrong choice.”
“I can’t, how would you feel if I was your mate and you knew I’d been with Brian?” said Goldie. “I’ve already slept with Brian: I should just choose him.”
“Then tell me, Goldie, why you aren’t with Brian right now, why you came out here with me, and why I can feel how moist you are through your panties, through your slacks, and why I know that you want nothing more right now than to have me take you, here and now,” growled Glen into Goldie’s ears, as he gently rocked his throbbing mass against her.