Page 9 of Leave Me
We all nodded, because wewerein California, and I was glad to see they hadn’t changed completely.
“Let’s make a toast,” Rel interjected, holding his cup aloft. “To King’s return!”
“To King’s return!” Ricky and Red echoed. I blinked before following them in taking a gulp of the whiskey. The liquid burned a trail down my throat, and I held back a cough.
“Damn, Rel, this is the good stuff?” Red eyed our friend, who only grinned wider.
“It’s the strong stuff,” Rel chuckled.
“This is why I brought beer.” Ricky hopped up and handed us all the beer as a chaser. “I tend bar at The Barn, and I know what Rel considers top shelf.”
“I thought you did MMA?” I asked, swallowing down the beer before taking a seat. The fire was going strong, and I wanted to be sitting in case the guys started asking hard questions.
“Aw, you follow me, don’t you?” Ricky teased, sitting again and fluttering his eyelashes. “I follow your shop, Wolf Seal. You do good work.”
“Thanks,” I nodded, braving the whiskey again. It felt like we were moving on to the anxiety portion of catching up.
“And damn, man,” Ricky leaned over to squeeze my upper arm, where my half-sleeve tattoos showed below the sleeve of my white T-shirt. “You bulked up.”
“Keep talking like that, and I’ll think you’re flirting with me,” I warned, sipping my beer.
It wasn’t a challenge, not really, but I needed to know where the guys stood. Gym-bros had a thing where they complimented each other in a platonic way, but I was a queer man. I dated guys in high school, people of all genders in the city, but my old friends had barely left this small town.
“If you weren’t like a brother to me, I might,” Ricky chuckled and sat back, wiggling his eyebrows.
“That so?” I asked, a little in shock at his easy acceptance. Was Ricky saying…
“He’s bi and I’m fluid,” Rel interjected, pulling my attention. I didn’t know if he meant fluid sexuality, gender, or both, but I didn’t feel I had the right to pry. “It’s not like when we were kids, King. I use he or they pronouns at the fire station, and no one bats an eye.”
Taking in his words, I drained the whiskey and held my cup out for him to refill. Red hadn’t said anything, so I looked at him. “You a modern shifter as well?”
“Sure,” Red nodded, and I noticed he hadn’t touched his whiskey after the toast. “I’m pan, I guess.”
“You guess?” I couldn’t help asking. Red’s dad was family to me, and I always looked up to Uncle Clark, so I hoped he’d raised his son right.
“Yeah.” Red shrugged. “Hard to know when I’m more demi, maybe ace.”
Damn. I ran away because my dad said I wouldn’t be allowed in the pack, and the years of teasing in school told me I wasn’t going to be happy on Blue Lake. I’d left for the opportunity to be myself and find those who would accept me. Here my friends were, telling me they not only got it, they were part of the rainbow too.
“We should shift,” Ricky interrupted, breaking through the tension. He downed his second beer and stood to take his shirt off. “Shifting with an Alpha is more fun.”
He wasn’t wrong. I remembered the difference from when I was a pup. The sense of wholeness that came when the pack Alpha led us on arun. Except I wasn’t Pack Alpha. And I hadn’t shifted since I was a teenager.
“Sounds like a plan.” Rel twisted the cap back on the bottle, and I noticed there was less than half left. “It’s been ages, though Uncle Clark came on a run a few months ago.”
To Ricky and Rel, a matter of months was a long time between shifts.
“Have fun.” Red tipped his bottle in their direction. As far as I knew, his octopus only shifted in water. As a more reserved guy, he had admitted he didn’t want to be able to shift and run with us.
Still, I had my excuse.
“I’m going to stay back with Red,” I said, noting how our friends were almost naked beside the fire.
“Seriously?” Ricky whined, pouting in a mirror image of Rel’s full lower lip. They were older, but mentally, they were still pups.
How could I tell them I had only shifted my arms and legs in the past ten years since starting my transition? I didn’t want to go into the fear that came with the idea of shifting after a decade of changing my body to be what I imagined. So I didn’t.
“Yeah, you go on ahead. I don’t want to be worn out tomorrow.”
