Page 10 of Eager Beaver
“Free food, obviously,” I said, and he smiled at the joke, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. In truth, the thought of someone else asking him to dance, getting to hold him close, triggered such extreme jealousy in me that I could barely breathe. My beast’s teeth were damn sharp when he nipped at me to be more than our mate’s fake date.
Letting Fable go to this reunion alone was never an option.
7
Fable
Thereuniondancewasbeing held in my old high school gymnasium. There’d been a dinner too, but I’d spent so long panicking over what I was supposed to tell these people that we’d missed it entirely. I realized now, as I grabbed a glass of rum punch, that skipping a meal was probably a bad idea. The strong drink hit my stomach with a fruity splash.
“You know, I think this place has shrunk,” I said, scanning the room for familiar faces. The room was draped in blue and silver garland, with a huge banner declaring CLASS OF 2015! The music was loud and the lighting was dim, the polished floorreflecting flecks of light as the disco ball overhead did a slow rotation.
“Or maybe you’ve just outgrown it,” Guy said, his richly accented voice sending a shiver through me.
“I should hope so,” I said with a grin. I set my empty cup on the table and grabbed another. It might’ve helped to steady my nerves having Guy at my side, but I was still dreading the question of what I did for a living. There was nothing impressive about me being an insurance agent. “I guess we should make the rounds.” My lip might not have been stuck out, but I couldhearthe pout in my voice.
“Come on then,” Guy said, setting his warm hand on my lower back and nudging me forward. “I’ve got you.”
The first person to find us was Edwin Silverstein, class valedictorian. We’d always been friendly toward each other, even though there was a thread of competitiveness underlying every conversation. “Fable Everly, is that you?” he drawled, swanning over. He was dragging a busty blond woman behind him, and she took tiny, quick steps in her five-inch heels just to keep up. Edwin slapped me on the back. “I hardly recognize you.” It felt like a dig at my appearance.
“It’s only been ten years. Maybe it’s time to check your prescription; your eyes must be failing you,” I said snidely.
He tittered tightly before clamping his arm around the blond’s waist and tugging her into his side. “This is my wife, Bianca. She’s a former Miss Pinevale and is also the mother to our four-year-old twins, Tanya and Tawny. They haven’t even started school yet but can already read at a second-grade level. I graduated from Harvard Medical magna cum laude, joined my father’s medical practice, and as soon as he retires, it will all be mine.” His grin was like a shark’s—if the shark used peroxide to bleach his teeth, that is. “That’s me in a nutshell. So, whathave you been up to these last ten years? Something terribly impressive, no doubt.”
Something about Edwin’s haughty attitude dug its claws into me, exposing every doubt I’d ever had about myself. I actually looked down at my stomach to make sure my guts hadn’t spilled out onto the gymnasium floor. “I… I’m—” I stuttered, cheeks flaming, but before I could get any further, Guy’s hand snaked around my waist and pulled me back against him, his rock-hard presence steadying me in a way I didn’t know was possible.
Guy reached around me and extended his hand to Edwin. “Hi, I’m Fable’s husband, Guy. We met when he was traveling abroad as a pilot. We wanted to wait to start our family because he was just accepted into NASA, and we know there will be plenty of time once he’s home from space.” Edwin’s jaw hung slack, and instead of waiting for a reply, Guy simply slapped him hard enough on his shoulder that Edwin stumbled back a step. “Nice to meet you. If you’ll excuse us, please. We have someone more important to talk to.”
I let Guy swoop me away, and I couldn’t hold on to my laughter any longer. Tears were streaming down my face I was laughing so hard. “Guy! I thought Canadians were nice, but that wassavage!”
He just shrugged like he hadn’t just put my high-school rival in his place. “The guy was being a dick. I don’t care if rainbows shine out of his ass and his kids canfly, he had no right to make you feel like you are anything less than perfect.”
“But you lied! What happens when he looks me up online later and finds that I am not, in fact, part of NASA?”
Guy looked down his shoulder at me, his smirk illuminated in the flashes of disco light. “You won’t have to see him again until your twenty-year reunion. Let him stew on it for a decade, and then we’ll tell him an even better lie next time.” His smile fell as he realized what he said. “Not we. I meant you.”
It was like a gut punch. Of course it would just be me, but it was too late. I’d already pictured it. Ten years from now, with Guy still at my side, now with kids at home. I downed the last of my drink, belly warm and limbs tingly. A few more of those and I might even be able to convince myself that it was my reality. That after tonight, we would go home to our postage-stamp yard and white-picket fence. I might not have known him very well, but I could already tell he would be an attentive husband, an involved father to our children.
Case in point, when I reached for another glass of punch, Guy deftly plucked it from my hand and set it back on the table. “You need to eat first,” he said, guiding me toward the snack table. “You’ll need to be sober if you’re going to keep up with all the lies we’re about to tell.” He said it playfully, with not a single bit of judgment.
And sure enough, when the next Judgy McJudgerson came by to ask me pointed questions about how big I’d made it, there was Guy with a ridiculous response.
“He can’t tell you what he does for a living or he would have to kill you,” he said with a furtive wink when Neal Peterson curled his lip at me in a sneer.
“Did you hear about the tiger that escaped from the zoo? No, of course not, because he captured it before it could eat anyone,” he said with a shake of his head to Sabrina Reichs.
“…And then when the particle accelerator’s rotations reach a speed of— Are you leaving? I’m not finished explaining his research on subatomic particles.” Martin Katz was backing away after a ten-minute explanation of my work as a physicist.
I leaned into Guy’s shoulder, muffling my laughter in his chest. It might’ve been the alcohol running through my veins that had reduced my impulse control to nil, or maybe it was just that this amazing man had made this one of the best nights of my life. I hadn’t stopped laughing in an hour. This was nothing likewhat I thought my reunion was going to be like. And it was all thanks to Guy.
“How did you know all that stuff about particle physics?” I asked him through hiccupping giggles.
“I watch a lot of late-night TV,” he admitted shyly. “I have a lot of time to myself.” His eyes were filled with a sheen of intense longing—or maybe it was just the lighting, making me see something that wasn’t there.
I laced my fingers with his and walked backward, taking him with me. “Dance with me?” I asked, and he nodded, following dutifully, eyes locked on mine.
The dancefloor was mostly empty, just a few couples swaying back and forth to some gentle Christmas ballad, the lyrics lost through the outdated speakers overhead. For all the people here, though, my full attention was on this one man. I’d met him just yesterday, and though I’d woken up in his arms by accident this morning, it felt like the most natural place in the world to be. A man his size should’ve lumbered or stomped, but he was surprisingly agile as he drew me into his arms.
With a mischievous smirk I was already half in love with, he took my hand and spun me out, the room passing by in blurry circles around me, before he pulled me back in. I landed on his chest with a breathless giggle, my hands finding a home on his firm pecs.
