Page 1 of The Grizzly Situation
Chapter One
ULY
“Uly,can’t you get through a shift without breaking something?” My uncle sighed and shook his head, as he looked at my most current... well, breakup, I guess. “If I didn’t have good insurance, you’d have had me broke too” my boss—Uncle Dom—said, as he handed me the broom and dustpan to clean up the four cream white coffee mugs I’d dropped. The only saving grace was they hadn’t been full. This time. That day the only good thing was the coffee was cold, or else that woman I spilled on would have been burned.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Dom,” I muttered, pushing shards into the greasy receptacle. Of course, the fact the thing was filthy was on me again. It wasn’t as though I’d intended to let the dirty dishes crash to the floor. It just... happens.
He gave me an indulgent smile. “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”
Thethishe referred to was working in Expresso Shot, my uncle’s trendy and hip—his words, definitely not mine—coffee shop cum cafe on the east side of town, where thecollege kids and more affluent yuppy types gathered en masse every morning, noon, and night. I couldn’t fault him for being successful. Maybe if I hadn’t been born with ten thumbs on each hand, I could have done something similar.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Hey, how are you? I’m Ulysses James McNamara, and it’s good to meet you. My mom, Eleanor, told me that she and my dad met over a reading of Ulysses by James Joyce at a hole in the wall restaurant, and she wanted to honor that meeting by naming me after the epic hero. Privately, she told me my dad wanted to name me after him. I honestly can’t decide which would be worse. Ulysses or Herbert Ozias. Neither of them was something I’d saddle my kid with, let me tell you. Bad enough we each had a version of James, but our family isn’t all that original. Mom’s father, James McNamara? There were at least eight different James’s in the tree, most of them nuts.
Since I was a child, I’ve been clumsy. I was the kid who’d trip over invisible lines and fall face first onto the sidewalk. The one who couldn’t seem to step up onto a curb. The one who’d end up smacking himself in the eye with his toothbrush. The kid who, no matter where Matty, our Labrador retriever at the time, was laying out, oblivious to the danger that approached, had tripped over her in a dark or even well-lit room. Oh, and I was also the one whose parents took him to a sushi place and ended up pulling the top off the soy sauce, and wearing most of it home.
Yeah, that’s my life. My folks always told me my clumsiness was ‘cute’, but I disagreed. Maybe when I was like five, but now at twenty-five? It’s freaking annoying is what it is. I know the problem already, so I don’t need any psychoanalysis. When I get nervous or anxious, my motor functions go to hell. Show me a cute guy, and I’m done for. It’s why, even now, I’m a mostly virgin. I say mostly, because I did try to give a guy a blowjob once, and I learned that him pushing past my uvula made mechoke, and that choking was responsible for me biting down and.... Yeah, that didn’t end well. And no, he never called me back, in case you’re wondering.
So mostly I sit in my apartment and watch TV. It’s a boring, but much safer, life. For me and anyone in my vicinity. Usually. See, the truth is, I’m almost always nervous about something. My anxiety gets the better of me about the most inane things. Did I pay that bill? Did I promise to have something done for someone? Have I washed my underwear? Oh, God. Am I wearing clean underwear? I can just see the doctor telling my mom I was in an accident, and my underwear was dirty. The woman would follow me to the Pearly Gates, just to ensure I would never hear the end of it.
They’re annoying, but I wouldn’t trade my parents for anyone. When I told them I thought I was gay, my dad cocked his head and asked my mom, “Gay?” and she nodded, then added, “he likes boys”. Dad didn’t get it, but then again, the microwave got the same look when he had to use it, so there’s that. Even if he didn’t understand, my dad never let me feel like I wasn’t loved. Mom was the same way. On my worst, shittiest days, she would make me cookies, and we’d sit at the table, and I’d talk to her about it.
My brother, Jamie—lucky bastard who got a normal name—teased me constantly, but it was with love and affection. When he and his friends got together? That was a different story. They mocked me pretty hard.
But we grew up. Jamie said that being older and—his claim, definitely not mine—wiser meant that he was there for me. My being gay was never an issue. “Dude, just means I don’t have to fight you for girls.” I’d laugh and tell him how absurd he was being. In return he’d scowl at me. “C’mon, man. With that wavy blond hair, and those blue eyes, and those fucking dimples, you’d have girls eating out of your hand.”
I got Mom’s looks. He got Dad’s, including the pudge and the hairline you knew was going to be in the middle of his head by the time he was thirty. She was classically beautiful, a statuesque goddess come to life. Dad was... a damn good man, and I was grateful Mom could see that, instead of focusing on the slight pot belly and how short he was. The fact that Mom, at six-one, towered over Dad’s five-six, meant nothing to her. She loved him with a desperation I’d never seen anyone else have. She was his world, he was hers, and we were their little moons, orbiting and butting heads every couple of rotations. Still loved him, though, no matter how annoying a brother he was.
“Uly!” I jerked my head up, and found Uncle Dom standing there, arms crossed, scowling at me. “If you’d get your head out of the clouds, maybe you wouldn’t trip over your feet.”
Funny. Ha. “Sorry.”
He sighed and took the broom from me. “Why don’t you go on home? You’re not much use to me right now anyway.”
Another thing that triggered my anxiety. Looking foolish in front of people. If you think about it, that’s pretty funny for someone who’s constantly making people laugh when he does something stupid. Many times in my life, I wished that I could be like everyone else in my family. Confident, poised, and even a little suave.
Instead, I was just me, and I’d worked my whole life wanting that to be enough.
BRENT
“Mr. Lockhart?”
It takes a lot to spook a bear shifter, especially a grizzly, but she did it. I should have scented her well before she opened the door but was so busy trying to get through these forms that I didn’t. I looked up to find my assistant, Caitlyn Anders, standingin the doorway. She offered me a warm smile, and I did my best to return it, even if I wasn’t feeling it.
“What’s up, Cait?”
“Gregory has the car ready. He’s asking when he should expect you.”
I sighed and pushed the papers I was failing to read into the folder Cait had given me, then slipped it into my briefcase. I would do my best to study it more in-depth on the plane. To be honest, I wasn’t ready for this meeting. Finding out why one of our companies was losing money was never fun, and this one had been in the red for years, and we’d only just discovered it. The worst part, at least for me, was that they had nearly three hundred employees that could lose their jobs if I deemed their place a loss, and it bothered me that so many people were on the chopping block.
I stood to my full six-nine and gave a nod as I grabbed my case. “Sure, I’m ready.”
She stepped out of the room, and I followed, noticing, as I usually did, how efficient her desk was. Not a paperclip was out of place, papers that weren’t filed were in neat stacks. She didn’t even have a coffee cup on the heavy oak surface.
“How do you make it through the day without coffee?” I asked, as we reached the elevator that would take us from the penthouse offices of Ursine Incorporated down to the parking garage where my driver, Gregory, would be waiting to take me to the airport and start my trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Seeing as how it was October, the weather there was unpredictable. One of the benefits of being a bear shifter was the fact we handled most weather fine, although I hated when it was too hot, because in human form I sweated, and in bear form, I sweated more. I hate sweating.
She shrugged. “I’m naturally perky, I guess. Used to drive my parents insane.”
“Ursines aren’t known for being anything but lazy,” I reminded her.
