He let out an indignant sound. Threw up his hands. “Don’t say it like this is actually a thing I want to do.”
“So then just tell me what is making you lose it enough to stop seeing me.”
“Youare.Youare what is making me lose it.”
She could see as soon as he’d said it that he hadn’t meant to. That he’d just gotten lost in the argument, and frustrated enough that he hadn’t been able to help blurting out the words.
But she couldn’t comfort him about it.
She was too busy trying to swim through a sea ofWhat The Fuck.
And when she finally reached some kind of shore, it wasn’t a good one. It was a suspicious one. A very suspicious one. “Oh, I get it. This is a joke, right?” she said.
Much to his irritation. “What sort of joke could it possibly be?”
“The one where those jerks pop out and start laughing the second I believe this ridiculousness. Even though I swear to god I never will. And even if I somehow could, you know full well that I wouldnotbe into it. That I’d die before I started mooning over you,” she said—and hated that it felt like a lie.
But loved that she’d managed to say it anyway.
And loved even more that his expression said he believed it.
“Okay, for starters, the idea of you mooning over me is so ridiculous I want to laugh my ass off. In fact, Iwouldbe laughing my ass off, if I didn’t have to be extremely serious when I say: absolutely none of this is a joke. None of it. This is just the truth. Everything I’m telling you is just the very humiliating truth.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Even though it’s absurd.”
“Yes, it is absurd. But then so is being a fucking werewolf.”
“Being a werewolf is not enough to explain this, and you know it.”
He went to protest then. She saw him do it. She saw him wind up whatever he wanted to fire back with. But he stopped, and he blew out a breath, and kind of shook his head. And she knew what he was thinking:
Fine, you have a point there.
Though the realization didn’t exactly hold him for long. He seemed to consider for a second, and then she saw his eyes gleam. And she knew he’d come up with another way to make this madness work.
“Okay, so what about if I have other mitigating circumstances,” he tried.
And she couldn’t help going with him on that, just a little bit.
“What kind of mitigating circumstances, exactly?”
“Well, you know. I haven’t had sex in a while.”
“A few years of no fucking is not going to cover this, Seth.”
“Yeah, but I don’t exactly mean a few years. I mean more than that.”
“Well, how many are we talking here?”
He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. And the expressionon his face was pure reluctance and embarrassment, she knew it was. But it didn’t make his eventual answer any easier to swallow. “All of them,” he said.
As if that could ever possibly make sense, instead of being so ridiculous she almost didn’t get it at first.
She started to ask him what he meant—and then it hit her.
And oh god, he just could not be serious.
“There is absolutelyno wayyou are telling me you’re a virgin,” she said. But here was the real kick in the pants—he didn’t even take it back. He saw how hilarious and impossible she found it, and stayed the course. He doubled down.
