Page 20 of Meeting Her Mate
“All right, keep your secrets,” Maliha said, shoving me gently. “Well. I gotta head to work. It’s a shame you quit. Now I don’t have anyone to talk to during the evening shift.”
“You know I had to quit. Otherwise, I’d have stayed there forever and never would have taken a chance to apply for a better job,” I said.
“Yeah, but Beckett Pharma, really? Those corporate overlords?” Maliha scoffed.
“Hey, they’re paying three thousand dollars a month for the position of lab technician,” I said. “Withonsite training. No previous experience required. How often am I going to get an opportunity like that?”
“Well, the manager did tell me to tell you that you’re always welcome at the diner, and in case things don’t pan out with your job hunt, you can come back,” Maliha said. “And she actually meant it. Like, she wasn’t being sarcastic or anything. You know, you really carried the whole diner on your back during the evening shifts, not that the manager would ever admit it to your face.”
“Well, tell the manager that if things don’t work out, I’ll consider coming back for a ten percent pay bump,” I said. It was then that I stepped into my apartment for the first time, coming to grips with the realization that this new, small, cramped, claustrophobic place was going to be my new home indefinitely. At least the view from the window was pleasant.
Maliha gave me a quick peck on the cheek and squeezed my shoulder as she left. I busied myself with bringing the rest of my stuff into the apartment and setting my cupboard up with my clothes.
Quitting the waitress gig because I was looking for a new job was just the reason that I’d given to Maliha and the manager. The real reason was the diner’s vicinity to the commune, making it a hub for members of the Grimm pack to get their lunch and dinner whenever they were in town. I had no intention of coming across my pack members, not after the humiliation I had gone through in front of them. That’s also why I quit my job at the wharf. Half the pack worked there.
The other reason was that I had come across a job opening at Beckett Pharma. It was after the three-day slump during which I mourned over what had happened, mainly through emptying bottles of Jack Daniels and being completely blitzed out drunk. As hazardous as that was to my health, it did grant me some closure. Alcohol has a funny way of doing that. It chips away at your liver and your sobriety and leaves you with few platitudes in return. Not to mention, when you do come out of that hangover, you feel like you’ve got a new lease on life. You also swear that you’re never going to drink that much again, but that’s mostly a hollow promise.
Maliha had been patient with me during that week, but even her patience had its threshold, which I felt that I had started toeing the line with. She had a very non-confrontational nature, so the closest she got to telling me to get my own place and get on my feet was by showing me the job ad in the local newspaper and telling me that it was worth a shot.
I pored over that ad a dozen times. I even used one of Maliha’s old laptops to create a resume and send it to Beckett Pharma. Three thousand dollars a month after taxes for the positions of lab technicians, operators, and data entry personnel. The two jobs I’d recently quit provided me with barely fifteen hundred dollars combined. This new opportunity would allow me to improve my credit score while saving up enough money to get the hell out of this city.
It was just nine in the morning. My interview was scheduled for noon today. I had some time to myself. Truth was, I was so surprised when I heard back from the HR rep from Beckett Pharma. I even inquired as to why he had called me. He told me that they were only considering people who were from Fiddler’s Green. No outside hires.
I didn’t comment on the strangeness of that statement. I was just too grateful to get a shot at an interview that would hopefully set my life straight.
It had been a week, and no one had called me. Will hadn’t come to apologize to me, and no one had even bothered to find out where I was living. That was how little regard that pack had for me.
I set an alarm for eleven o’clock and crashed on my mattress, staring at the gentle waves crashing on the shore as I struggled to stay awake. It had been a tiring week.
I woke up with a start, my heart beating fast in my chest. The alarm was blaring, and a loud wind was crashing against the window, rattling it in its frame. I guess that was why the previous tenant chose to ditch this apartment. It was a hellish noise, the wind whistling through the cracks in the frame, clanging against the metal lattice of the window.
As freaky as that sound was, it woke me up just in time to head down to the interview. I fixed a quick cup of coffee for myself, took a five-minute shower, dried off in my room, hoping no pervert was staring from the beach, and got dressed in the most professional-looking ensemble that I had. I’d just bought it a day ago from the thrift store downtown. It was a peach skirt, a white shirt, and a peach coat with a maroon belt. I looked at my reflection and chuckled at the air hostess-looking stranger staring back at me.
Considering the ten minutes it took me to sprint down the stairs, the added fifteen minutes it took me to drive downtown to the only skyscraper in the city with its top blaring Beckett Pharma in blue neon in the middle of the day, and the five-minute walk it took from the parking lot across the street to the entrance of the building, I made good time. Hell, just in time to get in the building and tell the receptionist that I was there for my interview.
“What the fuck?” I gasped as I noticed the figure coming out of the front entrance. I forgot all propriety and immediately ducked behind the giant fountain in the courtyard, hoping that the person hadn’t seen me.
It couldn’t be. Was it really Maurice?
I ducked my head out to see, and immediately, my suspicion was confirmed. Worse than confirmed: He was staring in my direction, locking eyes with me. It was Maurice Grimm, dressed in an elegant suit, holding a half-smoked cigar in his hand.
The second I realized that he had seen me, I crouched behind the fountain and receded into the decorative bushes behind me, praying to God that he hadn’t seen me.
What was he doing here?
I had no view from where I was hiding, but I could smell the stench of the Cohibas cigar he had been smoking becoming stronger, followed by the heavy thud of his footsteps.
Fuck!
Chapter 8: Will
“Your bloodwork’s come back from the lab,” Dr. Morris, the commune’s designated healer, said as he gravely took off his stethoscope and set it on the table. “And I’m afraid it’s not good news.”
I expected no good news when I walked into this clinic. The interior design of this place was throwing me off. There were ancient tomes of old medicine on one shelf, which I had managed to salvage from my old home in Germany. But then, right on the next shelf were all these glossy, slick books on modern medicinal topics such as pharmacology, anatomy, and pathology. It was a strange mismatch, a hodgepodge that jarred the senses to look at.
“What does the bloodwork tell?” I asked bluntly, my attention still derailed by the odd design choice of the clinic. There were charts of werewolf body anatomy with Nordic runes written all over them, but then there were also promotional posters of Zoloft, Lexapro, and Venlafaxine, creating discord on those brown walls. Ugh. Brown walls. Why weren’t they plain white as most clinics?
“Oh. I can explain,” Dr. Morris said once he noticed that I was more concerned with how the clinic looked than I was with my diagnosis. “All the old stuff, that’s from the first generation of Grimms who set up this clinic. I felt it sacrilegious to touch what they had left behind. I’m the sixth doctor to hold this office, and it’s been a custom amongst the doctors of the commune not to touch the stuff the previous doctors left behind. Our way of honoring our legacy.”