The door slams behind me. I drop my bag on the front porch and pull the fanny pack with a tightly bundled change of clothes in it out. I’m not quite ready to leave, but giving everyone some space to process what happened seems like the best thing thatI can do. And I need to give my wolf the chance to burn all the energy from these feelings off. I strip down from my wet clothes and sling the fanny pack around my chest.
I stretch into my shift, rolling my neck and twisting my body as the bones slide into place, the thick fur pushing through my skin. It only hurts for a moment, and it’s only about as bad for you as cracking your knuckles.
My paws hit the muddy ground, and I find her scent immediately. I know it well, and I recognize it for what it is now: that cinnamon and nutmeg, and under it, just her, all her, sweeter than I remember.
Even with the rain, I can pick it out better than anything else.
7
Elise
I’ve never just run away from a job like that. It doesn’t even register that it’s raining harder, and I’m just wearing a sweater as I lean against my car and think about the nearly-saved-up-for down payment for a house that I put in my rearview mirror without a second thought.
Usually in town I just go and get groceries, but there’s a small diner I stop in often, and I go in automatically, without really thinking.
The diner’s mostly empty, and it almost feels like a good idea to bury my welling-up feelings under a pile of crinkle-cut fries. And a milkshake. Nothing will heal a damaged heart like a chocolate milkshake.
When you’re within spitting distance of Vermont yet somehow still in Massachusetts, every other place has a little corner of “Vermont Genuine Maple Syrup” sold all in the same exact maple-leaf-shaped bottle. The further up the mountain you go, everything is priced for ski-bro tourists too, because if you’re rich enough to have this stupid, expensive hobby, then you probably can afford a second home in the mountains to summer in, or whatever it is rich people do. Winter, maybe. I don’t fucking know how to use seasons as a verb.
The bell on the door rings as I push it open. There’s maybe one waitress left in the place, sitting at the counter—big hair, dark curls, acrylic nails, and red lipstick.
On one hand, Laura is just the friend I need right now, but the wound today opened is still fresh and raw, and for half a second, I think maybe I shouldn’t talk to her. She’s Logan and Aiden’s cousin. That makes her Shawn’s cousin too. And maybe she doesn’t have anything to do with this, but I can’t help but be wary.
She raises an eyebrow at me, concern drawing down her face, and I wonder if I look as pathetic as I feel, drenched to the bone.
“Honey, what happened?” Laura asks, dropping her pen.
“Bad day at work,” I mumble, sitting down at the diner bar. The seat squelches underneath me. “Put in a chocolate shake and fries for me?”
She nods and waves a hand at the line cook reading in the back. It seems like he heard.
Laura settles in on the other side of the counter. “Aunt Deanna driving you crazy with the wedding prep?”
“I saw my ex-husband for the first time in years today.”
The words make it real, and I feel woozy just saying them.
It’s like clutching my hand over a bad cut, maybe it won’t be as big and gross as I fear it is, but I won’t know until I open my hand to rinse out the blood and examine it. Right now, all I see is the gore; I don’t know if a bandage will do, or if I need someone to drive me to get stitches.
“Oh my god,” Laura says, hushed, awed, wowed, an interest in drama lighting her eyes. “Today is just the day for it, my cousin came through here earlier and let me tell you—”
She stops mid-sentence, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen her do, the color draining from her face. Her excitement falls away for a quiet horror to match mine.
“It can’t be—Shawn, was it? Oh my god. Girl, no.”
I look up at her, tearing my attention away from the emotional wound I’m trying to clean out. Fuck. Not ten minutes after I told Shawn not to say a word.
My hands grip the counter at first to ensure I don’t fall out of my seat, but then my head feels like it’s spinning. I don’t know how I’m going to do this.
“You can’t tell anyone. I don’t think I can deal with people knowing.”
“I won’t. I promise. Oh, girl,” she says, twisting a napkin nervously between her hands, shredding it to pieces as she stares at me.
I can see that she knows what happened without even asking. She had heard the story of my divorce from me many times over a glass of wine in the cottage, but I could never bring myself to say his name.
“I always thought what they did to her—um, you—was unfair,” Laura offers quietly after a moment. She swallows hard, apology deepening the lines in her face.
For a moment, I don’t know that I can stand to look at her, even though she wasn’t really complicit in it. She’s their cousin, this whole damn town might as well be theirs.
