Page 55 of Knot Just for Show

For starters, I had not expected anyone from my outside life—myreallife—to be here. Much less Ronan O’Neill, of all people.

I met Ronan through Kal and the boys at InkKink Inc.

He was getting a really wild piece, the most stunning cover up job of its kind I’d ever seen.

We got to talking, and before I knew it—I was standing in the middle of Calyx, his shop, as he stacked peonies, hydrangea, and snapdragons in shades of blue, purple, and snowy white in myopen arms as I blurted my vision for Pomme Verte excitedly to him without hardly taking a breath.

The weeks leading up to the opening of the restaurant had been intense but rewarding, and Ronan had been there almost around the clock making preparations with Delia, Bert, Coral, and I. We ate three meals a day together, we hung out late at night—smoking weed and drinking expensive wine on the floor of his jungle-like apartment over Calyx.

Though we’d gotten so close, so fast—as soon as the restaurant opened and I began the practice of being crushed by Pomme Verte’s steadily mounting success—our newfound friendship found itself snuffed out just as quickly.

The pair of us, busy business owners and professionals in our own rights, seemed never able to find the time to connect—the seams of our close knit ease unraveling slowly at first—then all at once. Until silence was the only thing strung between us—our lives moving steadfastly in different directions.

After I got over the initial shock of seeing Ronan, there was the matter of the rest of the guys in Ursula’s potential pack. Ash, aka KR3OSOTE— a surprisingly down-to-earth EDM star who seemed easygoing and charismatic. I wasn’t entirely surprised when I caught his scent; piney, bright with citrus, thick with sweet smoky resin, and unmistakably ‘delta’. Steady, powerful, smooth.

Lysander; compact, keen eyed, obscenely dexterous and graceful. Like some kind of painting of idyllic youth, until he opens his mouth and spouts some impenetrable specialized jargon to do with one of his special interests, or some insensitive comment about money that shows you just how much he’s never wanted for a material thing in his entire pampered existence. Once he’s committed one of those ‘blunders’ he seems much more like the silver spoon prince turned something of the infant-terrible he actually is. Talking late into the small hours of themorning, Lysander won more and more of my respect and my sympathies upon the recollection of his childhood. As someone who loved and cherished his dad, it was hard to listen to sometimes—to hear it so plainly spoken by Lysander, his ultra-calming theta scent; chamomile, lavender, and spearmint like a steaming cup of sleepy tea.

Then there’s Teddy. Teddy Wong, himbo with a heart of gold? Or, heartless hustler looking for his fifteen seconds of fame, which he could foreseeably spin off into a ‘professional reality show contestant’ career—were he so inclined.

The cynical part of me wants to write him off as the latter. When I first scented him, he practically stank of alpha. Sharp but juicy Satsuma, fresh cut grass, surprisingly soft orange blossom, and sweet smoky clove. Main character energy, wannabe pack lead shit.

Then I saw him with Lysander.

I had been getting frustrated. The somewhat awkward Lysander—stuck in another lengthy information dump about some anime series as he anxiously bounced back and forth from foot to foot—a thin sheen of perspiration beading at his hairline in the steamy summer night air.

His uncontrollable energy, his never-ending stream of nervous speech about ‘breaking the conventions of shounen and giant-robot anime’—all of it was making my skin start to crawl. A consummate control freak. I just wanted to reach out and grab his shoulders and tell him to at least stay still if he’s going to keep blathering on.

I was about to lose it when Teddy magically interceded, exploding from his chair with a loud and unexpected proclamation.

“Alright little bro—it is your shovel that will break the very surface of the grounds of our despair!” Teddy carries on dramatically—stripping off his shirt to reveal his shreddedphysique—less gracefully stumbling out of his jeans before he shouts, “INTO THE POOL!”

I had watched dumbfounded as Teddy, à propos of seemingly nothing, had taken a few long strides to the edge of the pool and cannon-balled in.

When I turned to face Lysander, wondering how he would react to such an outburst during his expository spiel, I was shocked to see Lysander’s eyes twinkling with delight and affection—his posture loaded—as if ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

Teddy’s head, sleek and wet explodes from the surface of the water and exclaims with heightened fanfare, “Save me, I save you—that’s how it works!”

As soon as the words are out of his lips, Lysander begins to shed his clothes, pressed trousers, Burberry button down, sweater vest and all—taking two bounding steps toward the edge of the pool before he doubled back to carefully fold his spectacles and place them atop his small pile of abandoned clothes.

I had looked to Ronan, more than a little bewildered as the two began splashing and roughhousing in the pool—the pair of them talking hurriedly about different martial arts and wrestling practices a mile a minute while taking turns dunking one another in the shallow water.

“Both fans of the show, I guess?” He had shrugged it off before the pair of us busied ourselves with catching up and putting together an appropriately over-the-top midnight snack for the group I had already begun to think of affectionately as ‘the boys’.

It was more than a little jarring when Teddy initially tried to slither out of saying what he liked about Ursula. If he hadn’t opened up about his worries, however eye-roll-worthy they might feel; that he might not have enough to offer a woman like Ursula beyond his looks.

Self-involved still, no doubt—but it felt honest.

Plus, I really have a hard time believing his time with us in the lounge last night was an act. A guy here for all the wrong reasons wouldn’t bother to make time for the awkward, somewhat out of touch rich boy—would he?

As soon as I have the thought, I remind myself that I am on this show—with all these strangers, to ostensibly find my mate and my pack…and I realize that I have long passed the point of things being ‘normal’ or ‘making sense’. Maybe I don’t know what anyone would do, least of all myself.

“So, how did it go meeting everyone last night?” Ursula asks tentatively after we’ve settled into our respective couches and gotten past our initial hellos.

“It went really well, honestly,” I rush to clarify, “Meeting the other guys in our—y’know our…” I trail off, realizing I was about to say ‘our pack’.

“Oh yeah?” she prompts a more elaborate response, her tone hopeful.

“Yeah, I mean—obviously I’m not going to tell you what anyone looks like and stuff, but you certainly can’t be accused of having a ‘type’ as far as your taste in men goes,” I laugh, doing my best to play coy without being obnoxiously vague.

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