The Void - Book I

XVI - Lunch and Heart Ache

I was standing in front of the mirror, hair curled and makeup is done, pretending like this was going to be a normal date when I knew it was anything but normal.

Rafael had sent me a text about thirty minutes ago asking to take me to dinner, on an actual date.

That, I was excited for. This, not so much.

I didn't know much about Sam, but I had heard the girls talking when I had been training with Raf and Gabe. From what I heard of their conversations, he hadn't exactly waited. Then again, if wolves were anything like humans, I knew it could all be lies.

There were plenty of times in school that guys and girls alike would lie about who they slept with to sound cool, or to gain brownie points with their friends when everyone knew they had never actually spoken to each other a day in their lives.

All I asked for from both of them was honesty.

I was finally done pitying myself and decided it was time to go on this lunch date with Potential Mate #1.

I walked across the hall and knocked on his door. It was 12:45, and I had not rested a bit. I showered, cried, sat in the shower until the water ran cold, then got in the bath and shaved my legs and cried some more. I did my makeup, then cried, and had to do it over again.

Crying seemed to be my only answer. It made me feel a little bit better, but crying about this wasn't actually going to get me anywhere. So it was about time for me to woman up and get my shit together.

He answered the door and was finishing up buttoning his shirt.

"Ready to go, Deirdra?"

"Absolutely, where are we going?"

"There's a restaurant in town called Twisted Simply. They have great food and even better drinks. It's on pack land, so you needn't worry about an ID or anything. In werewolf world, we're allowed to drink in town at age 18. Able to shift, able to drink."

He was laughing at his own joke and I gave a simple smile. I wasn't really in the mood to laugh, and I knew he could tell.

"I'm sorry, Dee. This has got to be hard for you. I couldn't imagine being in your shoes, but just know it will work out exactly how it's meant to, okay?"

"Okay. Thank you for being so understanding, Sam. I am truly looking forward to this."

Not a lie, but not exactly the truth either.

After a short walk through the pack and into the downtown area of the pack, we were there.

As soon as we stepped inside I was overwhelmed by the divine smell of the food, cue the super un-lady like growl that my stomach chose to make.

A furious blush rose to my cheeks as I placed a hand over my overly excited, and empty, stomach. "Sorry. I haven't really eaten since the night we all had those margaritas together. I was so nervous the day of the shift that I couldn't keep anything down, not that I had really wanted to eat anyways."

"You should eat, Deirdra. You'll find that wolves eat a lot more than humans do. But thankfully, our fast metabolisms burn it all up, so we're saved from obesity."

I laughed with him on that one, if only we could say the same for humans, we probably wouldn't be dealing with such an epidemic in the US.

We sat in the bar at a high top table and a young girl, probably around 16 or so greeted us.

"Good afternoon Alpha, Luna."

She bowed her head in respect, but I paled at her words. The news really did travel fast in the pack, but it didn't look like either one of us was going to correct her.