Sophie's First Shift: There’s No Turning Back (Shifters Take Manhattan Book 1)

by A. M. Sommers

  Her mother puts covers over the pots and foil over the chicken before leading Sophie back into the living room, where Nina is pouring the wine and her father is putting a match to the fire. Sophie looks over to Nina and sees there are four glasses. “So, Nina is finally drinking in front of you,” she teases, as she sits on the couch next to her father.

  “Hey, if we were in Europe I would have been drinking for years,” Nina responds playfully shaking her fist at Sophie.

  “To surprise visits from Sophie,” Sam says raising his glass in a toast.

  “Here, here,” say Margaret and Nina in unison.

  Sophie looks around the room and then back at her family. They’re wonderful. Will they be able to tell when I’m different? Will I still be a person they can love?

  As there are four of them, the bottle is quickly emptied. Sam offers to crack open another, but Sophie reminds them that Will is waiting. Her mother suggests inviting Will down to join them for dinner, but Sophie insists on leaving so she can be alone with her man.

  ****

  The roast chicken from the corner deli that Will has waiting for her suffers in comparison to the one she left behind, but Sophie praises him. She gets out plates as he carves the bird and serves up the gloppy deli potato salad. As he opens a bottle of chardonnay, she carries their plates into the living room. If we watch TV, we won’t have to talk much, she figures, calling up Netflix so they can continue their Schitt’s Creek binging.

  When food consumption is completed, she takes their plates into the kitchen and returns with the remaining half bottle of wine. She sits next to Will and pulls his arm around her shoulder and then snuggles in. “I’m sorry about the short notice,” she tells him, stroking his cheek. “I just found out I could go today. The person who was supposed to go got sick.”

  Will pauses the program and kisses her forehead. “I’m glad for you. You’ll have a nice train ride, stay in a hotel, have free food, and meet some simpatico people. I’ll take the opportunity to have a boy’s night out. I called Justin as soon as I got your text.”

  Sophie wants badly to have some sweet good-by sex, but Will exits the bathroom holding his gut after brushing his teeth. “Do you feel okay? I think that potato salad may have been bad. I’ll make it up to you on Monday night.”

  Sophie tells him to rest up, kisses the back of his head, and turns to face the opposite wall. She cries silently.

  The next morning, Will carries her bag down to the curb, hails her a cab, and gives her a passionate kiss good-by. Sophie blows him a kiss as the cab pulls away. She didn’t know she could feel so sad.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When Sophie returns to the Perez apartment, Isabelle is there alone waiting with a hug. Marko and his father had already left for the day. She’s grateful for that as they both likely know what’s going on – she suspects few secrets are kept in the Perez family. And, it’s just too weird that semi-strangers know more about her than Will, her family, and Nora.

  “The good-byes were not too difficult?” Isabelle asks.

  “I didn’t know I could be such a convincing liar,” she responds, handing Isabelle her coat. “Is being a good liar going to be one of my new talents?”

  “It may have to be, if you choose not to tell those you love of your new circumstances. I know from experience.”

  “How much does your family know about your life now?” Sophie asks, following Isabelle into a small library off the living room.

  The answer is not much. Isabelle seldom visits Argentina because her parents expect a middle-aged woman to deplane. “As you can see, I haven’t aged since I first shape-shifted. Before going to see them, I put just a touch of gray at my temples and pack clothing that makes me look heavier and, you know, frumpier. In the plane’s bathroom, I apply makeup that makes my skin appear drier, rougher. Last come dark circles under my eyes.”

  “So, whenever you’re with family, you can’t be yourself or tell them what your life is really like. Your visits are like performances because you’re playing a role.”

  “When my parents first see me,” Isabelle laughs, “their faces show they think I’m aging badly, but they never say so.”

  Sophie doesn’t see the humor in this. It makes her cringe to think she’ll have to do the same thing. How long will it take Will to figure out she’s different? Or her parents? It’s easier, though, to picture coming out to her parents than to Will. They never pictured her growing old with them.

  Isabelle sees Sophie’s mood darken. “I know, my dear, I just added to your worries. I am sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, it’s not your doing,” Sophie says. “It’s Guillermo’s and my own. If I’d been on a bus that night, my life would be the same. I’ve only known you for a few days, and I already can’t imagine what my life would be like without you. What would I be doing if you and Marko hadn’t warned me? I could have been out with Will somewhere not knowing what was happening to me. I’m not looking forward to tomorrow night, but at least I won’t be on public display.”

  “An unexpected transition would have been catastrophic for both of you,” Isabelle agrees. “But, that’s not going to happen. And your Will, do you not think he can some day accept what has happened.?

  Sophie shakes her head. “I’d like to think he loves me enough, wants me enough, to accept what’s happened to me. We’ve been together since college. I was a freshman and he was a worldly sophomore. His fraternity had a party and I was young and stupid and drank too much. I was outside puking in the bushes when he first saw me. Not a pretty picture. But he came over and asked if I needed help and handed me a dish towel.”

  “He walked around with a dish towel? How strange.” Isabelle comments.

  “Somebody had spilled a tub of ice and he’d been cleaning it up,” Sophie explains. “Anyway, I used it to wipe my mouth and then said I’d wash it and bring it back. He asked for my address so he could pick it up and that’s how it all started.”

  “It sounds so very American,” Isabelle laughs.

  Sophie shrugs her shoulders and smiles. “He’s been my handsome hero ever since then. He didn’t judge me then and he never judges me now. He thinks whatever I do – with the exception of walking through the park alone in the dark – is perfect. We trust each other as much as we love each other. We got married relatively young because we’d already been together for four years by the time I graduated.”

  “Perfection is a difficult state to maintain,” Isabelle observes. “How much imperfection can he tolerate?”

  “He’s flexible, but it’s reasonable for him to want a wife who’s human twenty-four/seven.”

  “So, you fear he will reject you?”

  “I don’t think it will be his first thought. But when he thinks about it, he’ll know we can’t have the life we were planning. And, it was going to be a really good life.”

  “You don’t have to make any decisions right away. Make your way through tomorrow night, give yourself time to adjust, and then think about how you want your life to proceed.”

  When Sophie reaches out to hug Isabelle, she can feel Isabelle’s empathetic tears on her cheek.

  ****

  Isabelle’s plans for the first day together call for a spa day, complete with a gentle yoga class, sauna, and massages. These treatments will help Sophie stretch, loosen up, and relax. In order to build her strength for the ordeal ahead, Sophie will have steak or the red meat of her choice for lunch and dinner today and tomorrow. Her Saturday schedule will be nearly identical, but she must have a long restorative nap in the afternoon, before the moon begins to rise.

  “Where will I be when things start to happen?” Sophie asks, hoping Isabelle will be the only one around. She doesn’t want Marko and his father to be in the audience. The thought grosses her out, it would be like going to the bathroom in public. She wants and needs her privacy.

  “Enrique is picking Marko up after school today and they’ll spend the weekend in Vermont skiing. As I’ve told
our man Roberto not to return until Monday afternoon, I will be your only companion.”

  That night, as she chows down on her medium rare tenderloin and chews up her spinach, Sophie’s limbs feel as if her bones had been replaced by bamboo. They are light and oh so flexible. Her neck struggles to keep her head up. Across the candle-lit table, Isabelle’s well-massaged arms resemble half-cooked pasta as she attempts to saw through her meat. The wine she keeps pouring was not purchased from a bargain bin.

  As relaxed and sated as she now feels, Sophie knows that once she hits the sheets her mind will go into overdrive. Again, Isabelle has a plan. They get into their nightgowns – Isabelle’s looks like something from her bridal night – and meet up in the library, where a fire prances and a large impressionist painting slides over to reveal an enormous flat screen. Isabelle stretches out on a couch and indicates Sophie should take the leather club chair with a matching ottoman and cashmere throw. “Don’t worry,” Isabelle laughs, “we won’t be watching Dances with Wolves.”

  Instead, she cues up Dead Poets’ Society, an old movie in which Robin Williams plays a charismatic English teacher at a boys’ prep school. As it came out in 1989, long before Sophie was born, it’s new to her and reels her in. She can’t believe how young Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles look. God, they were cute. While calm when the movie ends, Sophie immediately senses her anxiety levels rising and looks anxiously over at Isabelle.

  “Go, do your nighttime preparations,” Isabelle says, “and I will bring you something soothing.”

  Waiting for Isabelle on propped up five-star hotel-quality pillows, Sophie anticipates brandy or maybe a joint. Good pot often puts her to sleep. Instead, Isabelle arrives with an ornate hookah. She has Isabelle skooch over so there’s room on the bed to place the hookah between them. “Now, my darling,” she says. “tonight, you may inhale only a few quick draws. Tomorrow night, when you need it more you may consume more.”

  Sophie and Will, young urbanites that they are, have patronized hookah bars. The mango-infused steam they breathed in was pleasant but didn’t come close to making them high. She looks at Isabelle skeptically and her mentor gets her drift.

  “Sweet girl,” Isabelle smiles, “this is not just a little flavored steam. This contains opium, which will make you very happy before it closes your eyes. Gently now, two sips.”

  Sophie has, of course, heard of opium and opium dens. It’s bad addictive stuff. She doesn’t want to become a wolf and an addict, so she shakes her head no. Enough is enough.

  Isabelle understands. “Tonight, only a few puffs, just to help you sleep. Tomorrow night, when your body is coming apart and the pain feels unbearable, you will demand I hand the hookah over. Don’t worry, I will monitor your intake and keep you from taking too much. After that, nothing stronger than Advil. I promise.”

  Sophie takes one of the hookah hoses and gently breathes in once and then twice. She floats and then smiles at Isabelle. Nice, very nice.

  “I brought you this tonight, Sophie, because you need to sleep, to sleep deeply, so you’re strong and energetic tomorrow. And, having a little taste tonight will reassure you there will be relief if your pain becomes too great tomorrow.”

  She rises from Sophie’s bed and turns out the bedside lamp. Hasta manana.

  With Isabelle gone, Sophie takes out her cell. Although thinking about Will raises her anxiety levels, she knows he’ll worry if he doesn’t hear from her. There are several texts from Will and one from Nora, who wants to know what ails her. Will’s texts ask how her train ride is going, about the quality of her hotel room, and a wish for sweet dreams. A final one asks her to please check in. She texts back that all is well, that she misses him, and that she’ll be in touch tomorrow. Yes, she’ll feed him more lies tomorrow.

  Feeling both guilty and frightened, she begins to pray but falls asleep before she gets past the “Our Father, who art…”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When Sophie forces her eyes open the next morning, she’s startled to see it’s after ten. At home, even on weekends, it’s hard for her to sleep past seven-thirty. Their apartment is on a noisy street and deliveries to local stores begin early. Her sound sleep is probably a combination of the opium and the Perez apartment’s triple-paned windows.

  This is it, she thinks. It’s the last morning I will wake up and be just a girl with normal girl feelings and issues. From now on, when a wolf, fleas and ticks may be an issue. Grief over what she’s losing and what she will become, against her will and desires, is overwhelming.

  After allowing herself twenty minutes of self-pity, she pads into the large kitchen, in which well- crafted traditional cherry cabinets and shelves abut and wrap-around massive stainless-steel appliances. Isabelle must already be up as the coffee pot in the Cuisinart brewer is nearly full. She takes a mug from a rack and fills it. While she doesn’t feel odd helping herself to coffee, opening the refrigerator to locate half-n-half, feels a little presumptuous. Black it is.

  Isabelle’s cheerful chatter grates on Sophie as they walk together to Equinox, her health club. It seems she, Marko and Enrique are planning to meet their older son Tomas in Switzerland during Marko’s winter holiday and get in a few days of skiing. She needs to get her quads in shape for the long runs before they leave. And, she’s wondering if she should get her skis waxed before they go. Does Sophie ski?

  Yes. Sophie tells her, she’s skied since childhood but hasn’t had a chance so far this winter. No, she hasn’t skied out west much, she’s a Vermont girl.

  Sophie doesn’t know if she wants the day to go slowly or quickly. Does she want to savor her last moments of normalcy or does she just want to get all this over with? Or does she just want to die? No, she decides, she doesn’t want to die.

  Sophie is relieved Equinox doesn’t offer couples’ massages as she’s afraid Isabelle might insist on that. Her masseuse is friendly but thankfully doesn’t expect Sophie to keep up a conversation during the massage. What a relief. When the pummeling and kneading is done, Isabelle meets her in the steam room and they sit together companionably for twenty minutes; Sophie is ready to go after ten minutes, but Isabelle insists the longer the better.

  Back at chez Perez, Isabelle brings the hookah back out to ensure Sophie is relaxed enough to nap. Sophie doesn’t know the number of muscles in the human body, but she’s certain every one of hers is mellow. It’s her brain she’s worried about, so she joins Isabelle for a suck or two before heading off to her room.

  It seems only a few minutes after she dozes off that Isabelle wakes her. “It’s nearly four, so there’s less than an hour before the moon is to rise. It’s time to get the room ready,” she says turning on the lamp by Sophie’s bed, so she can see under the bed when she gets down on her knees to unplug the lamp. “We need to remove anything fragile or made of glass. You won’t suffer any long-term consequences if you smash something, but I happen to like this lamp and these paintings.” With the lamp gone, an LED nightlight provides the room’s only illumination.

  Sophie helps her carry the vulnerable décor into the library, then follows her into what turns out to be Marko’s room where they pull the mattress off his bed and then drag it into Sophie’s room and place it beside her bed. “Your body will not be under your control once the change begins and I want your landings to be padded,” Isabelle explains.

  Sophie sits on the side of the bed, tapping her feet, waiting for Isabelle’s return. What’s she doing now? Her question is answered when Isabelle returns carrying three liters of Poland Spring, and a pair of light weight workout clothes for Sophie to wear until she starts transforming. She indicates Sophie should put them on and then leaves again. The outfit is pale pink and is so incredibly soft Sophie wonders if it’s cashmere. I’m going out in style, she thinks.

  Along again, Sophie reluctantly fires up her phone. Will’s texts reveal he and Justin watched Columbia win in an overtime squeaker and that he’d be winning lots of money in a poker game that night. She smiles
and calls up her favorite picture of him, in which his hair is disheveled and his faded black t-shirt sports a few holes. She kisses the image and writes back that she’s glad he’s having a good time, and that he’s missed and loved. No fibs necessary.

  When Isabelle comes back with the hookah, she is wearing an outfit identical to Sophie’s but in pale blue. “We might as well both be comfortable,” she shrugs. She lines up the water bottles, fuels up the hookah, makes Sophie take a drag and then takes one herself. She plumps up the bed pillows and sits next to Sophie with her legs outstretched.

  “Do you have questions?”

  “I’m too scared to think of questions. Well, okay, how much do you remember it hurting?”

  “I’m afraid I can actually call it torture. This is why we are sitting here with the hookah trying to make your body unable to feel much pain. Even without great pain, the experience can be very frightening. But, I will be here with you every minute. Here, inhale again.”

  As Sophie takes several deep drags, and coughs a great deal, Isabelle gently kneads her shoulders.

  “My head is starting to feel funny, but I don’t know if it’s the opium or the change,” she says quietly, reaching for Isabelle’s hand. “My ears are sort of buzzing.”

  She places her hands over her ears, but that only seems to amplify the vibration. Sweat beads at her temples and rolls down her face, slightly burning her eyes and blurring her vision. Her shoulders tense. Her body temperature begins swinging wildly between burning and freezing. She feels the need to lie flat and pushes her pillows to the floor. Isabelle hands her a bottle of water and insists she hydrate.

  “Do you feel pain?” Isabelle asks, as she rises and walks over to the window and pulls back the curtains. The full, low-hanging moon’s milky glow lends the dim room a silvery but spooky aura.

  “Not really. I’m aware of sensations but not of pain,” she says in an observational tone, but then she gasps. Her body begins to twitch and spasm. First her left side and then her right. Without her doing anything, muscles in her arms and legs become rubbery and stretch and contract. Her heart pumps wildly.