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Work came and went. Millicent, my boss, was away at some conference for another day, and outside of Professor Duggan, the library saw light use at the beginning of semesters.
Of course, we were halfway through, and there were still only a few people hanging around in the cubicles, and one guy rolled up in a furry ball, asleep in the corner of a study carrel.
I couldn’t go ten minutes without thinking about Crag’s paws sinking into the ground as he stared at me with those gorgeous, burning eyes. How had I missed those deep, intricate, tribal tattoos that ran down the sides of his cheeks like ancient tears?
I had to shake myself more than once. I managed to avoid embarrassing myself, mostly, except for one time I got caught staring off into space and grinning.
Luckily, the guy who came up to me probably just thought I was off my gourd. Staring off into space, grinning and giggling? Yeah, that’s got a different connotation on a college campus than it does most anywhere else.
But, when a college kid thinking you’re stoned is the most exciting part of a day, that’s a pretty dull day.
A dull day that didn’t stay dull long.
Right after Henry took off from lunch, I was hoping for a long spell of quiet when Quigley Daniels wandered in. He straightened his backpack and approached the front desk.
“Hi,” he said. He’s an attractive guy, I guess, but about ten years too young to be my type.
“Hey Quigley,” I said. I was finishing some filing, and he was just standing in front of the desk fidgeting. “What’s up?” I asked, turning from my computer to him.
“Hey, uh,” he scratched one side of his ginger-haired head, then the other. “I was wondering, uh...”
Please don’t ask me out again, please don’t ask me out again, I thought.
“I was wondering, like...” He started habitually scratching his pronounced nose, very slowly. Imagine a wizard stroking his beard in thought, but instead of slowly stroking a beard, the wizard slowly scratched his nose. He’s a hyena, and hyenas scratch, but never this much. Either he was currently having a poison ivy problem, or he was going to ask me an embarrassing question.
Oh God he’s going to ask me out again and I’m going to accidentally say yes. Why do I always manage to do that? You’d think I’d learn like one lesson ever in my life. Don’t go out with college kids unless you’re ready to pay for dinner and a lot of beer.
“Look, Miss Larue, I was wondering, why doesn’t the library have any videogames?” he asked.
I wasn’t listening though. I’d gotten myself so keyed up for an embarrassing date offer that I guess I wasn’t going to let all that mental preparation go to waste.
“Quigley,” I said, “you’re a very nice guy and I’m sure you’re a lot of fun to be around. I respect your dad a great deal, and I hope he’s doing well, but I just can’t go out with you. I made it a rule not to date... wait a second,” I said. “What?”
He was blushing so furiously I thought he might have actually caught on fire from the inside. “I... er... videogames?”
“Oh God,” I said, laughing. “You weren’t asking me out.”
I could have absolutely died. “Okay!” I said, letting out a slow whistle. “Right, so, fine, that was about as awkward as anything could possibly be. What are you actually asking me? Videogames?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Uh, I mean, you got like books in here, right? And some movies? So like... why no videogames?”
I could have kissed the kid for not trying to hit on me. It’s hard to explain but after two years behind this desk, I’ve trained myself to react to being the “young, pretty one” in the room. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think of myself as either of those things, but college guys don’t really seem to notice.
When something that wasn’t that happened, I tended to get a little flabbergasted. Luckily, I was rarely ever caught off guard. Certainly not like this.
All I could do was chuckle. “Well,” I said. “I mean, we have books because it’s a library, and we’ve got a bunch of movies because there are film classes. And film classes need movies to get taught.”
He held up a copy of Cobra, a Sylvester Stallone action movie from the early 80s. On the front, there was Sly with no shirt, and that sneer he always had on movie covers. “The film class uses this?”
“I... well, no probably not,” I said. “But I’m gonna guess that you can guess why there aren’t any videogames here.”
Quigley shrugged. “There’s a class in the English department about analyzing videogame stories.”
I took a deep breath and sighed a little more irritably than I meant to sigh. “Of course there is. Seems like there’s a class for pretty much everything. How about that weird one in the Biology department about... you’re really serious about this videogame thing, aren’t you?”
Suddenly I kinda wished Quigley was here to hit on me. At least I’m equipped to handle clumsy advances. Instead, he just crossed his arms. “They’re just as valid as anything else,” he said very sternly.
“I like Super Mario Bros.,” I said, grasping at anything to say to relate in some way to this alien life form that was present in front of me. “Is that...?”
He let out a scoff. Luckily, my office phone started ringing before he could get really cranked up. “Sorry,” I said, “one second, okay?”
I picked up the phone, looking out the glass front of the library to see Henry waving. “Hey,” she said. “Figured you might need a save unless you were just really hard up to talk about Nintendo games.”
“How did you know?” I asked, grinning and looking at the desk so I didn’t accidentally laugh. Luckily, Quigley stepped away a little bit, and started looking at the DVD racks. “I have no idea what to say to this guy.”
“I knew because that’s Quigley Daniels. He’s in one of my history classes, and somehow manages to tie every single discussion point back to computer games.” Henry laughed. “Drives Duggan nuts. Anyway, speaking of Duggan, I gotta get back to my office. He’s got me grading a pile of essays. “You doing anything later?”
I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. “Yeah, Crag, he’s... well, he’s coming back to town tonight, and—”
“Be careful, Viola,” Henry said.
“Careful? Of what?” I asked. “He’s a good guy, we’re just gonna go out and—”
“This is me you’re talking to, Viola, it’s me, Henry. How long have we been friends? I know you, okay? I’m not gonna lecture you but... yeah, just be careful.”
I laughed nervously, like I didn’t know what she was talking about. “What’s so dangerous? What am I looking out for?”
“Your heart,” she said.
That hit me in the chest like a rock thrown out of a train. “Oh,” I said, gulping.
“Sorry, but I had to say it. Let me know how it goes, all right?” She asked. “I’m pulling for you girly, but I don’t want to see you hurt. By the way, did you notice his eyes last night?”
“The color? Or those tattoos?” I was just about chomping on my lip to try and hide my excitement.
“Oh God, Viola, those tattoos,” she said. “I mean, tats aren’t exactly rare in a town full of inked up werewolves and werebears, but still... holy shit, but they somehow make him even hotter.”
I let out a hollow laugh. “You know,” I started to say then stopped myself before I got to the part about him chasing me through the woods and cornering me. Somehow, I didn’t think a story about my crush rampaging around after me through the woods was exactly what she wanted to hear.
I gulped. I just called him my crush. What am I? Eighteen?
“You okay?” Henry asked. “Sounds like you just swallowed a frog.”
At that, I chuckled. “No, I was just thinking about all this stuff. Anyway, it’s nothing you want to hear. Nothing we haven’t talked about a thousand times. I’ll call you later?”
Quigley Daniels got bored of waiting and took off. He shot Henry a weird look on his way out, but she just smiled and waved. “Thank God that’s over, huh?” she asked. “All right. Good luck tonight, and remember what I said.”
“I will,” I promised. “I’ll call you later.”
*
The thing that arrived in front of my apartment was not a motorcycle.
I mean, it was technically two wheels arranged in a line on a frame, but... holy shit.
I heard it coming from like halfway down the street, and I wasn’t even in the part of my apartment that faces the parking lot. At first, I figured that it must be some kind of diesel-chugging semi, or a big giant truck or something, but no.
No, of course it wasn’t.
As soon as I heard it, I checked my watch and went outside.
The thing that roared into my parking lot, and probably irritated the hell out of my landlady, Mrs. Whipplebottom, was the biggest, chrome-blinged-outest thing I’d ever seen. To be fair, everything irritated Mrs. Whipplebottom though. I looked back to see if she’d poked her head out yet to be nosy, and wasn’t surprised at all when she pulled it back inside and shut her door. She slammed it so hard the knocker bounced twice when it swung closed.
Overhead, the fat, yellow moon, laid a path that seemed to run between me and Crag, but the second he killed the engine on his bike was the last time I bothered looking at anything else.
His quiet intensity made my entire being quiver. “H... hey there,” I said. “Nice to see you.”
Crag didn’t answer. Instead, he flashed half a grin that curled up at the corner of his mouth. “God, you’re gorgeous,” he said.
To the point, I thought, giggling a little and blushing despite myself. I like to the point.
“You too,” I said. “Er, I mean, not gorgeous, but...”
In four huge steps, he closed the distance between us and swept me up in his massive arm. Crushed against his chest, I took a breath. His leathery, spicy scent filled my nose and a second later, the warmth of his mouth filled my soul.
“Oh,” I gasped, when he pulled away. “Oh my goodness!”
“I didn’t think about anything else all day,” Crag said. “I had two fights tonight. Couldn’t tell you who they were against.”
“Isn’t,” I paused, giggling nervously and curling one of his shaggy locks around my finger. “Isn’t that dangerous? I mean, not knowing what’s going on and—”
He grabbed the back of my head between both of his huge hands, and tilted my head upward. I drank him in – his dark brown eyes, the dark, rough stubble all over his cheeks and chin – and then let my gaze fall on his tattoos.
“What are these?” I asked him, running my finger along the one on the left side of his face. Up close I could see that they were very, very intricate designs with all kinds of things drawn into them. “They’re a lot more delicate than I remember.”
“They’re for my brother,” Crag said. “The one on the left has his name in it. And all the swirling things are designs he made. Things from my clan, or I guess, our clan, used to be. Kind of like the bear version of a coat of arms.”
I had not expected things to get so serious so quickly.
“Did something happen to him?” I asked.
He grunted.
“Oh,” I caught myself. “If it’s not something you want to talk about, that’s fine. I didn’t mean to get all personal. I always ask too many questions. But... this is going to sound really weird. You relax me. For some crazy reason, you make my nerves feel a little less frazzled. It makes me, uh, want to get to know you more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Crag shook his head. Almost immediately, I went from wishing I hadn’t asked to really glad I did. His intensity just burned straight through me. His skin was so hot, and the smoldering gaze on his face so penetrating, that I felt like we were being a lot more intimate than just standing in a parking lot and talking.
“If I didn’t want to answer,” he said, his voice almost a growl, “I wouldn’t have answered. My brother, yeah, he’s dead. It’s been,” he trailed off, like he was trying to remember. “It’s been a while. I try not to think about it too much. I get strength from him when I need it, or from his memory.”
“Like when you fight?” I asked.
He shook his head again, never taking his eyes off me. “No,” he said. “I never need help with that. I only need help with things I can’t figure out.”
“Like what?”
“Things that I don’t understand on my own. Things I feel like I need help with, you know?” he ran his thumbs along the sides of my face. “Like you.”
Oh my God did my knees just about turn into water. What on earth had I done to get this guy? If there was a diagram a million miles long, and on one side was Reid and on the other, this guy, two bears could not possibly be more different. Reid was loud and angry and proud with no reason to be. Crag was a thousand times more intense. It just pulsed off him in waves. But he wasn’t loud. He wasn’t bombastic and full of brags.
Thinking about it, Crag wasn’t much like anyone I’d ever met.
“How did I never know you? You grew up here, we left town around the same time. How did we never come across each other?” I asked, running my hand along one of the lines in Crag’s forearm as he held me tight.
He took a deep breath, his chest flexing against mine. I could have stood there feeling his breathing forever and not gotten tired of it. Or well, maybe I would have liked to feel him breathe against me with a little less clothing...
“Bears,” he said. “The Morgan bears. We keep to ourselves. Even more than most bears, but... that’s just kind of our little thing. Hey,” his voice turned up a little in pitch, like he was getting excited about something. “That’s all history though. This is right now. You and me, this is the present.”
He had this way of saying things that just made me tremble. A combination of his deep, booming voice, the softness of his speaking, and the way he kept flexing his massive chest against me had me just about ruined by the time he pulled me toward his huge motorcycle.
“Speaking of your name,” I said with a grin. “Is it really Crag?”
Shaking his head from side to side, Crag smiled. “That’s one of them.”
“Huh?”
“Bears, you know, we have a lot of names. Morgan is my family name, Crag is my common name – the one people call me. I got it because I was born bigger than anyone ever at Jamesburg General, and they figured it was a good one. I have other names too, but we bears believe that your names are sacred things, only for people you trust.”
He leaned close and whispered one word into my ear. “Ash.”
“That’s... your name?”
Crag – Ash, I mean – nodded. “Don’t tell anyone. Keep it between us, all right?”
I got a very serious look on my face, like I’d just been given a great secret. Solemnly, I nodded. “I will,” I said.
“It isn’t that serious,” he said, laughing. “But it’s one of those things. I only give it to people who I trust.”
I cocked my head and opened my mouth open slightly. “But... me?”
“Don’t ask,” he said. “Anything I say would just be made up. The first time I saw you, off in that crowd last night, and then again at Lex’s place... I’ve never felt like that before. Never. I don’t know how, but I know you’re something special.”
I had no idea how to respond. I just stared at him, dumbly, and blinked.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve wasted enough time. I gotta get going early, so we gotta make the most of tonight.”
“Where are we going?” I asked. “Oh also I’ve never been on a... Oh!”
The motorcycle roared to life underneath me, throbbing and thumping as I squeezed it with my thighs. I wrapped my arms around Crag’s rock-hard stomach, and held on for dear life.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, snarling a grin. He spun the bike in a circle and the back wheel screamed before we launched. “I’ve had some practice.”
The air whipping through my hair was a revelation.
The throbbing, thumping, pounding rhythm between my legs matched my speeding heart. Before long, we were outside of Jamesburg, and right in the middle of nowhere.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked, not really caring, when we pulled off onto the side of the road.
He smiled. “Place I used to go all the time as a kid. I always wanted to take someone special out here, but...”
I cocked my head, feeling very fox-like as I did. “But what?” I asked.
“But I never found anyone special.”
I was damn near on fire. All I could do was smile like an idiot.
“Hold on again,” he said. “And keep smiling. You’re gorgeous when you smile. And this is going to be bumpy.”