“Is that a thing?”Wave frowned.Diana’s door opened, and then Ginny’s.They both looked like normal people should this early in the morning, sleepy.
“Is what a thing?”Diana asked.
“Males lecturing females because they were scared and don’t know how to express it otherwise,” Chrissy said.
“Oh, that.Yes, it’s quite normal,” Diana said over her yawn.
“Really?”Wave had a bit of a hard time believing them.
Ginny turned on the coffee maker and nodded sagely.“If you hadn’t done this or that, or the moon hadn’t been in the sky, you wouldn’t have been hurt.So, you should have done that and this and controlled the whole world to avoid being injured.”
“You are joking, right?!”
“I can’t believe you haven’t come across this phenomenon before,” Diana said while sipping her smoothie.
She wasn’t much of a coffee drinker as far as Wave knew.She also didn’t eat meat or sacrifice goats on the full moon.Wave had asked.Apparently, druids had gotten some bad PR when a few of them had paired up with some blood demons.
“Can you grab me a smoothie too?I promised Jarred I’d drink one before any coffee.And, I don’t know where I would have stumbled on that nonsense before?”
“Your previous boyfriends?”
Wave stared at Ginny blankly.
“No!”she gasped.“You can’t mean… Wayla, you had to have had a boyfriend before!”
Diana stood frozen by the fridge, and Chrissy let go of Wave’s arms.She sat up straight and looked from one face to another.
“Sheesh!Don’t look at me like that,” she groaned.
“Oh, we are definitely going to keep looking at you just like this until you explain,” Chrissy said.Diana finally got moving and took out a smoothie for Wave and brought it over.They were gathering around her, and for a moment, Wave felt smothered.
The feeling didn’t last long, though, when Chrissy reached over and squeezed her leg.“Did something happen?”she asked seriously.
Immediately, Wave shook her head, the lies falling from her lips easily.“No.Nothing like that.We just moved around a lot, and my mother was pretty strict until I gained control over my powers.”Of course, something happened.She’d been so stupid, hurting after her father’s passing, and trusted a man who had promised her the moon.It had almost cost her everything.
“What about your dad?”Diana asked softly.
Wave chuckled, masking the deep hurt and the memories, clinging to the few lighter moments from her early teens.“No one was good enough for his little girl.”
That got a laugh and a round of nods.“My dad tangled the boy coming to take me to ice cream in poison ivy.”Diana smiled.“Mom was furious with him, but he only used nonpoisonous ivy the next time.”
“My father is a threader like me,” Chrissy sniggered.“He made sure my dates couldn’t take their clothes off.”
“Like that’s bad.”Ginny snorted.“At least they could still touch you.Imagine going out with a fucking barrier spell around you every damn time.”
“That explains why you are so good at barriers.”Wave laughed.“How long did it take you to circumvent him?”
“Too many years,” Ginny groaned with a twinkle in her eyes.“What did your dad do?”
Wave hesitated.How much could she say?
“It’s all right, Wayla,” Diana hurried to say, when the silence lingered.“You don’t have to—”
“It’s not that…” Wave mumbled and then sighed.“So, my mother wasn’t letting me date anyone anyways, so I don’t have any cute stories like that.Even after I got my power under control to an acceptable degree, there weren’t that many options that counted.I’ve been mostly with… humans.”
There was a sad flicker in Diana’s eyes.“Can’t have a relationship with them, though.Not a real one.”
Wave nodded.“That.Mother has issues with the… society,” she added, and then sighed again.“And Father’s family is a piece of work.He wanted someone to be good enough.They wanted someone proper and suitable enough.”
