Speaking From Experience

Ok, I will walk to school if I have to, but I don't really want to.

After a minute of debating with myself, I walk down the street towards the pack house. David's Tesla is still parked in the long drive, right next to Taylor's blue truck. I jump into the bed of the pick up and hide under an old blanket.

I wait until I hear the two dominant wolves draw closer. The sound of blood rushing in my ears drowns out whatever conversation they are having. Taylor opens a door and I feel the shift of the weight as he climbs in. The engine starts, and I let out a sigh of relief as we pull away from the pack lands.

However, after only five minutes on the road, the car takes a sharp left turn that I know is not part of the normal drive to school. Taylor pulls to a stop, and I hear the creak of the stiff back window sliding open.

"Why are you hiding back there, man?"

I flush as I poke my head out of the blanket where I've been hiding. "Um… I'm avoiding David," I say lamely.

Taylor chuckles. "So I guess you rejected him last night?"

"Not exactly."

He gives me a curious smile. "Well, you can tell me all the deets on the way to school." He pats the seat next to him. "The coast is clear, come on. I don't let people ride with me without a seatbelt."

I smile at him, shaking my head as I hop out of the truck bed. "I'm pretty sure I could survive getting thrown from a car," I tell him.

"Probably." He raises a single finger in challenge as I climb into the passenger side. "But what if your neck hit a street sign while you were flying and you were decapitated?" I stare at him like that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Probably because it is. "Plus, even if you could survive doesn't mean it would be comfortable. Do you know how painful breaking a femur is?"

To be honest, despite how many times I've been on the receiving end of Luke's stone fists, I've never broken a major bone before. Plenty of noses, fingers, and toes, but legs and arms? Never. "Uh… doesn't it just feel like shifting?"

"Goddess! No!" He starts the car and pulls back onto the forest road. "It hurts so much worse for so much longer! And displaced fractures take hours to rejuvenate!"

"Speaking from experience?" I chuckle. It's my first real laugh since…

"Yes, actually." He grins at me. "Now, enough about me. What happened after you left the party?"

I groan. "I don't want to talk about it." Even thinking about David is the last thing I want to do right now.

"Et tu, Brutus? Come on, you have to spill! Davy wouldn't tell me anything, and I just don't know what I'll do if my other bestest friend refuses to talk!"

I sigh, but a small smile graces my lips. The worries of the last few days dim to a dull ache when I'm with Taylor, his ever present playfulness seeping through the cracks in my frustration and hurt. He doesn't treat me like glass, and I like that about him.

"He wasn't my mate," I finally give in.

"Serious, bro!? That's great!" he beams. "Why don't you seem happy about this?"

"Well, besides the fact that I seem to have lost the ability to feel happiness at all," I say sarcastically. "He wants to mark me anyways."

"What?! Wow, bro, I did not see that one coming. To think straight laced Davy had it in him. What are you going to do?"

I shrug, my momentary high fading until I'm left feeling empty and tired. "Nothing. I've already dealt with it. I told him I never loved him after he proposed."

"Wow, harsh. Didn't think you had that in you, if I'm being honest." When wasn't he?

"Honestly, me neither. I should probably feel more guilty about it, but I can't find it in me to care right now."

In truth, I am struggling to feel anything right now. The reprieve from anger I sought yesterday by almost drowning myself finally comes, but it doesn't feel like I thought it would. It doesn't feel like anything at all. I'm sure this respite, if I can call it that, won't last for long—I can already sense my buried emotions bubbling just below the surface—but I'm not sure I want this emptiness to stay anyways.

"Hey, man, I'm so sorry about Addy," Taylor says after a beat of silence.

"I didn't even really know her," I tell him dispassionately.

Taylor hums. "Doesn't mean it hurts any less."

I give him a curious glance. "Speaking from experience?"

"Yes, actually." He smiles at me, his eyes bright as though he just told a good joke, but I sense something else behind his easy-going facade. Old me might have ignored the discomfort in his expression or tried to change the topic. I never wanted anyone around me to be upset, always so focused on pleasing others, always tiptoeing around expressing my true thoughts and feelings out of fear. Now, I feel strangely liberated from those urges.

"Do you… do you want to talk about it?" I try.

Taylor bites his lip and it occurs to me that he looks… nervous? It's not an expression I'm used to seeing on him, so it's strange.

"It's not the same as someone dying," he says slowly. "But when Mum and I left our pack, I lost a lot of people. I was only seven, and I was too young to really even know—let alone care about—most of my old pack." This is the most I've ever heard Taylor talk about his life before joining the Grandville Pack. I hold my breath, afraid that I might disturb the spell that has him opening up. "But, even people I barely knew, old classmates or my distant cousins, I still miss sometimes."

Even after all this time? His confession seems to confirm my suspicions and fears that maybe I will never get over this, that maybe things will never be normal again. He shifts slightly, sensing my surprise.

"It's stupid really, but even people I thought I hated… people who…" He hesitates before, "drove us away, I still wish things could have worked out differently. Sometimes… I wish I had known them better or had more time. I used to think I just wanted to understand why they did what they did, but... I think I understand why now, and I just wish they hadn't."

I stare and stare, numb with shock. Who hurt you? I want to ask, but I feel like I might be pushing my luck with how much Taylor has already shared. So instead, I just reach out to where his hand is resting on the gear shift and squeeze it gently.

"Thanks for sharing, bro. And for saying you're sorry. I'm sorry too, that that happened to you."

"Thanks, Cam." And then he smiles at me, warm and easy, all traces of sadness gone. "Now, let go of my hand before your gayness rubs off on me. I am already more disappointed than I care to admit that we aren't soulmates."

I laugh lightly, but let go of him. "How do you do that?"

"What? Admit having a mini gay panic everytime I see my best friend, despite my raging heterosexuality? I'll tell you: I am supremely confident that my formidable straightness will always win out in the end. Only heteros who are insecure about their sexuality won't admit to having fantasized about boning their guy friends every once in a while."

"Oh my goddess! No, that's not what I meant, but you know what? I'm pretty sure some guys won't admit to that because they actually don't fantasize about having sex with other men."

"What? That's ridiculous, of course they do! Just like gay guys fantasize about girls sometimes."

"Definitely not true. I've never done that."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Huh. Welp, that'll teach me to never speak without experience again."