Werewolf Chapter 6

A Story by RayLynn

Chapter 6

“Mom, can I talk to you?”

The next morning I traipse down to the kitchen in my pajamas and find my mom sitting at our kitchen island with a coffee mug in hand and her laptop out in front of her. I have no doubt that she’s trying to get some stuff done for work, but I really need to talk to her and don’t know when I’ll get another chance.

She glances up from the screen as I open the fridge to get something to drink.

“Sure sweetie. Just give me like five minutes to finish up this proposal and then I’m all yours.” She sets the coffee mug down and goes to work typing away.

I pour myself a glass of water and decide to eat something for breakfast while I wait. Needing to cook something sounds awful so I pull a bag of cereal down from the cupboard and pour a bowl. Pulling one of the tall chairs away from the counter, I sit beside my mom and eat my cereal while she finishes working.

“What’s the proposal for?” I ask.

“There’s going to be a conference for work next year that my boss wants me to go to, but I don’t have anything to present at said conference so I’m writing up a research proposal. I only have about 9 months until the conference which gives me only about 6 months to actually get a study done before I have to start making the presentation and writing a report. So I’m trying to figure out what I can effectively do in such a short amount of time.” She stops typing suddenly and her eyes scan back over the document before she hits the send button. “There. All finished.”

She shuts down her laptop and slides around me to go pour herself a fresh cup of coffee.

“So, what’s on your mind, honey?”

I set the spoon down in the bowl with a small metallic clink. I know exactly what I want to ask my mom, but how to do it is something I haven’t even considered yet. The truth is that I’m terrified because part of me wants to tell Lucas what I am, but part of me knows that some things are better left unsaid. The whole complex decision I’m trying to make suddenly seems too dumb and confusing to even bring up to my mom. She works so hard every day to keep her career and to be with us and to support us; she shouldn’t have to deal with my weakness of character when it comes to keeping secrets.

I glance up at my mom and she looks at me, waiting for whatever it is I might say. My mouth goes dry as I try to come up with a way to tell her that I don’t want to keep this family secret anymore and that I want Lucas to know this part of me.

“What is it, Charlie?”

“I just-” I find myself struggling to find the right words and sigh in defeat. “Mom, I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Do what?”

“I don’t want to keep hiding and lying and keeping secrets.” I push the bowl away from me and set my elbows on the counter with my head in my hands. “I can’t keep hiding this from Lucas. I love him and we’ve been together for a while and I really think things are going to work out with him and I can’t just keep this part of me from him.”

I cover my face with my hands and lean even farther forward as tears start to fall from my eyes. “I just feel like I’m such a bad person for lying to him like this and making him think I’m something that I’m not.”

After completely spilling all these thoughts I had racing around my head, I fully expect my mom to try to talk some sense into me or tell me that I’m being ridiculous. I mean, why in my right mind would I willingly tell someone that I’m secretly a huge, beastly, ugly werewolf? That’s not exactly first date material there.

My mom, to my surprise, however, smiles softly at me and comes over to sit in the chair next to mine. She sets her coffee cup down and leans toward me, resting one of her hands on my back.

“I know exactly what you mean, honey.” She rubs her hand up and down my upper back. With her other arm, she rests her elbow on the counter and tilts her cheek against her open palm. “I’ve been in that exact same place, Charlie, and believe me, it isn’t easy.”

I pull the sleeve of my sweatshirt down and wipe my eyes with it, drying all my tears. “You have?”

“Yes.” She laughs lightly and smiles at me. “I was in college when I met your father and being a young werewolf, I had no idea how to control or manage myself, let alone even think about dating at the time. But after having classes together for two years and constantly finding ourselves relying on each other for notes and studying and reviewing and hanging out, your dad finally asked me on a real date. God, I remember that day so vividly. It was right after we’d had a huge psychopharmacology exam that was worth 60% of our grade. Just hearing those words come out of our professor’s mouth, I knew I was done for, but your father wouldn’t let me give up so easily. We spent hours and hours studying together and he tried to help me understand and remember everything. Of course, I was clueless still when we walked into class for the exam and as soon as I finished it, I ran out of the room completely bawling my eyes out. I really thought I was going to fail the exam and then fail the class and then not have the right requirements done for graduation; basically I was a huge mess.”

She pauses for a minute and laughs as I’m sure the scene plays out in her mind. “I’m not kidding, Charlie, it was like those terrible cryers you seen on TV. I had like streaks of mascara running down my face and I was sobbing. I didn’t think I’d ever recover from that awful exam. But as I was sitting outside in the hallway, your father walked out and saw me sitting there. He offered a hand to help me and told me he’d take me to dinner to get my mind off it. I sobbed even harder and told him that dinner couldn’t fix my stupidity and that I’d still fail that exam regardless of whether or not I kept thinking about it. But he persisted and we ended up going to this fancy Italian place in the city. We talked and laughed for hours there, just wasting time and being silly with each other. At the end of the night, he walked me back to my building and told me that once the exam results were posted, if I passed the exam with something higher than a C, then he’d marry me someday because that would make me the most determined, intelligent person he’d ever met. I laughed it off at the time, but two days later when our professor handed out grades, I saw that I’d gotten an A- on the exam, and I never forgot what your father said to me that night.”

“That sounds like the start to a bad rom com, not real life.” I laugh and turn to look at my Mom.

She laughs too. “I know it does, but after that day we started dating and we haven’t been apart since.”

“So what did you mean earlier when you said that you understood how frustrated and scared I am?”

“Oh Charlie. I was young and in love once too, and I know that keeping secrets, especially this secret, is really hard. Your father and I were dating for almost a year before I even got up the courage to vaguely mention the possibility of werewolves existing. Of course, being the nerd that he is, he completely believed and thought it was amazing. Once I realized how much he cared about me and that he loved me unconditionally, it was easy to tell him about the darkest part of myself.”

“How did you do it though?”

“I lead in to it with asking him about werewolves in general, just to get a feel for how much he believed. Some people have no tolerance for that kind of stuff and would still insist that they aren’t real even if you show them. I knew your dad though and figured he would be okay with it.”

“Mom, I just don’t know if or when I should tell Lucas about this.” My eyes start to well with tears again. “I love him and I don’t want to mess things up by telling him too much too soon.”

“Charlie, if he really loves you, it won’t be too much. He’ll understand. Lucas is a fine young man; he’s smart, caring, compassionate, and so understanding. Trust me, he’ll be here for you through everything, even if this seems overwhelming right now.”

“Should I tell me right now or wait for a little bit?”

“That’s completely up to you. If you feel comfortable with telling him right now, then do it. But if you want to wait until you’ve been together for a while longer, then wait. This won’t change how he feels about you, even if he temporarily feels weird about it.”

I breathe in deeply through my nose and let all the air out through my mouth in one big exhale. My sweatshirt sleeves are soaked from all the crying I’ve been doing, but I use one to wipe away the rest of my tears anyways.

“Thanks, Mom. I feel a lot better about this now.”

“You’re welcome, honey. I’m always here when you need me.” She pulls me in for a hug and we stay like that for a few minutes. I lean against her and rest my head between her shoulder and neck.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Charlie.”

I pull away from her and take a couple deep breaths to calm myself down. “I’m going to go there and talk to him.”

My mom smiles at me and leans in to kiss me on the forehead. “Good. This will be a really big step for the two of you.”

“I’m just going to shower and get ready first, I probably shouldn’t show up in my pajamas.” I go over and rinse my bowl out in the sink before heading upstairs to my room.

As I start getting undressed to get in the shower, I try to plan out what I’m going to say when I get to his house. I probably shouldn’t just straight up tell him that I’m a werewolf. By the time I leave the house, I’ll need to have a plan, but right now I decide to just focus on getting ready.

I finish showering and go to my closet to get dressed, put makeup on, and do my hair.

About 30 minutes after leaving the kitchen from talking with my mom, I’m walking out the door with still no plan in mind. On the drive over to his place, I decide to just approach it the way my mom said she had done with my dad. That seems like a simple, easy plan. I pull into his driveway and walk up to the front door.

Oh god, I think to myself, this is really happening. I’m really about to tell my boyfriend that I’m a werewolf. Momentarily, I picture having a little angel and little devil on my shoulders. The angel is persuading me to just ring the damn doorbell already and stop standing here, panicking like this. The devil, on the other hand, whispers in my ear that this is a terrible idea and that I should most definitely run back to my car and leave right now.

Suddenly, without even realizing it, my hand reaches out and my pointer finger presses hard against the door bell button.

Oh f**k. This is real.

I turn and look at my car. It’s so close… I think about making a mad dash for it and start down the steps just as Lucas opens the door.

“Charlie? What are you doing here? I thought you were coming over tomorrow, not today.”

F**k!

I turn back toward the house and see Lucas standing in the doorway in jeans and a tight fitting flannel. Oh man, I think to myself, my entire world is about to change.

“I’m still coming over tomorrow, but I need to talk to you about something right now and I couldn’t do it over the phone.” I watch as Lucas’s normally loose and slumped posture gets more rigid and he swallows hard, no doubt running through an entire mental list of all the terrible things I might be about to tell him.

“Okay, come on in.” He pushes the door open and gestures for me to walk inside. I start up the steps and give one last glance back toward my car. It was so close…

As I cross the threshold and step into his house, I swallow hard and try to hide my sweating palms.

It’s not very often that I think so, but maybe the devil had given better advice than the angel...