Seth blinked water out of his eyes, finally sucking in a harsh breath. “Is there—is there a bear or something?” he managed to ask.
That maybe would explain the tackling. Seth was pretty sure they should be running, though, if there was really a bear involved. Or maybe playing dead was the right move? Seth couldn’t remember right now in all the confusion.
He was almost positive he wasn’t being mugged. The guy peering down at him wasn’t asking for anything, or trying to hurt Seth beyond that initial tackle. He was just…staring, silent and still and with a predator’s focused intensity.
He had dark eyes, this stranger. Seth could kind of see them now. Or were those…black eyes?
Seth blinked some more. But no, they were brown, although the pupils were kind of blown. Maybe the guy was on something, lost in a bad trip. Maybe he thoughtSethwas the bear.
He didn’t smell like a vagrant, although that was judgmental of Seth to think, and he needed to remember to chastise himself later. The guy smelled like the forest, kind of like cedar and damp earth. Seth had the strange urge to lean in closer and huff a deeper breath.
Except the guy was still pinning Seth to the ground, vibrating with some strange, feral energy, so maybe Seth should focus on that and not on the way the guysmelled.
Before Seth could ask him what he might have taken, and if maybe he needed to head to the hospital, the stranger finally spoke.
“I want to eat you,” he said, so low and soft the words were almost lost to the rain. His voice was oddly pleasant. “I want to eat you so bad.”
And then the weight suddenly lifted off Seth, the figure looming over him gone in the next instant.
By the time Seth scrambled up off the driveway, his pants soaked through and stuck to his thighs and bits of gravel trapped in his hair, there was no one there. Just the rain, and Seth’s open trunk, and the now-soggy bags of leftover pastries.
What in the actual fuck?
2
SETH
An hour later and Seth had mostly recovered from the bizarre encounter in his driveway.
He still didn’t exactly love that he’d been thrown to the ground with zero explanation (and no, “I want to eat you” didnotcount), but he’d come away unscathed, and twenty minutes under a hot spray had soothed the indignity of cold, wet gravel in his hair.
Now he was fresh and clean and cozy in his sweats, a hydrating face mask in place as he happily housed down some microwaved ramen on his couch, his phone tucked between his cheek and his shoulder.
It wasn’t the most comfortable couch in the whole world—the rental house had come mostly furnished, and the furniture it had included was relatively outdated. Like, a chintz sofa with a hard back wouldn’t have been Seth’s first choice, but whatever. The vibe was kind of retro, even, if he sort of squinted in dim lighting. Sethhad decided to invest in some vintage accent pieces to set it all off. Maybe he’d go thrifting for some lamps on his next Monday off.
For now, he was overcompensating for the discomfort with an abundance of fleece blankets. And, of course, recounting the whole ordeal of this terrible day to his cousin, Benny.
Seth had started the phone call off with the appropriate bitching and moaning over the slow start to Coastal Crumbs, and he’d just finished with the tale of the stranger in his driveway.
There was a beat of silence as Benny processed. It didn’t last long.
“Maybe he meant it sexually,” Benny mused in his deep baritone, calm and cool as ever. “Like he wants to eat your ass. Kind of a compliment, really, if he wants to eat it more than anything.”
Jesus.
This was exactly why Seth had called his cousin though. No one else would’ve taken the wind out of Seth’s sails in quite the same way. He swallowed his latest bite of ramen in a hurried gulp. “You know, I love the way your brain works, but no, I’m almost positive he didn’t tackle me in the rain to whisper that he wants to eat my ass.”
Benny hummed doubtfully. “You haven’t been doing your squats, then?”
Seth hadn’t been doing his squats for the past twenty-six years, so he changed the subject. “I’m pretty sure he stole some of my leftover pastries too. The count is off.”
“Don’t you give those away?”
“Yes, but he didn’task.”
“You would have said yes, though, right?”
Seth let out a huff as he set his mostly empty ramen cup on the coffee table. “Obviously. He seemed like he was in a rough way.”
