“No.” He stops me as I reach for the phone. “It’s going to be much funnier not to.”
“After everything we’ve all been through, you want this to be funny?” I narrow my eyes at him. “Simon, you’ve fucked up my head, you’ve fucked up my heart, and none of it is funny…”
He wraps his arms around me again, holding me comfortingly. “I’m so sorry,” he says. “I don’t think it’s funny to mess with you. But I do think it’s hilarious to fuck with Veronica. Has she been particularly good about all of this?”
“No,” I sniff. “She basically told me to not bother looking for you and then I think she fired me, but I’m not sure.”
“Right, so she’s due to be messed with, right?”
I sniff and laugh, because he’s so fucking incorrigible. He should be freaking out on his own behalf right now after all he went through, but he’s not. All he wants to do is get back to work and back into trouble. I guess I have to respect that.
CHAPTER 7
Simon
I can’t blame Veronica for all of this. It’s a mess I made, after all. I can, however, blame her for making Lydia’s life miserable, and cancelling the search parties as soon as she did and not using her knowledge of what likely happened to me to help find me.
Before I get some petty revenge on Veronica, I still have to convince Lydia that this is all a good idea. She is not happy at all, and I suppose I do not blame her.
She frowns at me.
“Don’t you think your friends and loved ones will be relieved to know you’re not dead? Shouldn’t you reach out to your family and stuff, not go back to work?”
“They’ll find out today, don’t worry. The person who most deserves to know I am alive already does,” I say. I want to cup her face in my hands and kiss her perfect nose, but I am aware I have the stench of a failed wild thing on me. I need a bath.
“Take me to my place,” I say. “I’ll get cleaned up, and then we will go into work.”
“Won’t your parents be worried? Shouldn’t we see them?”
My parents sent me to boarding school when I was five and have checked in periodically since then, right up until they divorced and my mother married her therapist and my father took up a position in the government that leaves him working away from home a lot in ‘economic’ positions. They probably don’t know I am missing.
“I will let them know,” I say, wanting to reassure her. “But right now, I need to get cleaned up, and dressed, and…”
“You’re right,” she says. “This is your mysterious disappearance. You should get to handle it the way you want.”
There’s almost an eye roll as she says it. She manages to avoid that particular mode of disrespect, but her tone is still absolutely dripping with sarcasm.
She’s getting her attitude back, and I like it, because it means she’s feeling better. I know I’ve put her through hell. I know I owe her a debt I can’t ever repay because this beautiful woman, who had every reason to run like hell the second I disappeared, came and waited for me. She stayed in place while everyone else gave up. My own family wasn’t in the parking lot. But she was.
I am going to marry Lydia. I am going to make her my wife, and we are going to raise a family because I want a life with her.
Now, how to tell her that the company essentially selected her as an experimental broodmare? And that I was part of it, willing to sleep with her while under the effect of my experimentalsubstances to see what might emerge from her loins? That’s going to be a difficult conversation best had another time.
“You should rest,” she says. “Actually, you should see a doctor.”
“What doctor is going to be able to read the lab results from having recently turned into a wolf due to gene experimentation and give me useful feedback?” I pose the question in as little of a condescending way as possible, but still somehow feel I sound like a complete prick.
“True,” she frowns. “But you might need minerals or something.”
“I will look into it,” I say gently. “Can we stop at the nearest fast food place?”
“Yes,” she says. “Definitely.”
* * *
“It’s too early for burgers.” An understandably disinterested voice crackles through a speaker that has probably never worked, not even when it was first installed. Most of these places have touch screen ordering now. You don’t get to talk to a sleep-deprived college student who is probably still drunk from last night. This is an experience that is disappearing from the cultural experience. I’m going to miss it when it is entirely gone. Suddenly all human interactions seem precious.
The fact that we can talk is amazing and beautiful and the fact that we can do it at distance makes my eyes want to well up with tears. I blink them back because wolves don’t cry in the drive-through.
