Longing For A Luna

Chapter 11: Coffee With A Prom Queen II of II

One of Nick’s grandmothers had a mark; a noticeably pink, raised scar. He recalled she always told her family it was because her parents had migrated from an uber-traditional pack in a rural area of the old country. They wouldn’t allow her to marry Nick’s grandfather unless they promised in front of a shrine of the Moon Goddess to mark each other. I had never seen anyone in person with a mark before today. Most werewolves had stopped the practice a long, long time ago.

But as we moved forward and dealt with changes the Rebirth had brought, marking was beginning to make a comeback.

“Oh yeah,” she replied, “My Nan and Pa, who were my great-grandparents on my mom’s side, marked each other.”

“Were they traditionalists?”

Sarah threw her head back and cackled loudly, “Ha! Not those two. Nan said Pa was a ‘possessive fool’ when they were younger and marked her because he was afraid someone else would steal her away from him. She was so mad at him that when she marked him back, she bit too deep. He almost bled out and had to go to the hospital.”

“What happened after that? I’m assuming he forgave her if they had kids and grandkids.”

“Oh, that was par for the course for those two,” she wrinkled her nose up, “Nan and Pa were very…I can’t believe I’m saying this about old people, but they were very passionate. They fought hard and loved hard. My cousins swear they both died from heart attacks while screwing each other’s brains out in their 90s.”

My hand flew over my mouth and I squeezed my eyes closed tightly.

“They did not! Oh Goddess, I need something to get that image out of my head.”

“How do you think I feel?” Sarah laughed, “All of my childhood memories are now tainted.”

I joined Sarah in laughing. The Rebirth had at least brought some interesting stories out.

‘I don’t know,’ Ana commented, ‘Could’ve gone without hearing that one.’

“Hey, you wanna take a walk around the duck pond?” Sarah asked after we finally got control over our laughter.

“Yeah, let’s go,” I answered as I stood up, “Sorry I wasn’t able to meet up for a mani-pedi session yesterday. But I’m glad we were able to catch up today.”

“What do you mean?” Sarah wondered, looking confused, “I’m sorry, did I forget we had talked about getting mani-pedis together yesterday?’

“No, we didn’t talk about it. Nick said you had asked him if I would be up for it yesterday.”

Sarah shrugged, “I don’t remember saying that to Nick, but things were so hectic this week at the firm. Kind of weird he’d say I asked him, though. Usually, I would just text you.”

“Yeah,” I murmured, thinking back to what Nick said.

‘Don’t overthink it, Dani. Sarah said things were hectic at their office. He probably just got his wires crossed.’

I hoped Ana was right, but I remembered how he wasn’t happy I was going to be gaming with Ben while he and Murphy were at the football game. He’d done stuff like this before, early in our relationship, when he was adjusting to the fact that my best friend was a guy. Little “misunderstandings” like this would happen any time I was going to spend time with Ben.

I decided to bring it up with Nick later and focused my thoughts on spending time with Sarah now. Coffee and walks with her were one of the things I missed the most when we were on lockdown after the Rebirth. It was nice to enjoy some girl time now that we could move around the city freely again.

We walked over to the pond and chatted about movies and music. We had both loved the same bands in high school and often talked about going to a concert together since neither of our partners had the same tastes in music. The bands we wanted to see always seemed to skip our city so we'd have to wait until the issues caused by the Rebirth were sorted out to make plans.

By the time we both said goodbye and headed home, I had almost forgotten about that situation I wanted to talk with Nick about. Almost.

Before I opened the door to our apartment I ran through the quick mental checklist my therapist had worked with me on. I hated confrontation and avoided it, but that in itself had caused problems. Taking a deep breath, I unlocked the door to enter and reminded myself to listen to Nick with an open mind. There was no need to lose my s**t over this, even though I was pretty sure he’d made a weak attempt to keep me from spending time with Ben.

All I knew was that he better have a damned good explanation.