Page 41 of Meeting Her Mate
“Yeah, sorry about that. Maliha has a strange sense of humor. She probably thought it was hilarious to get you drunk.”
I was too far gone to speak anymore. In silence, I drank the coffee, enjoying its bitter flavor surge through my mouth. She was not kidding. It was extremely strong. By the time I had finished it, my head was no longer spinning, and my body felt back to normal.
“Why did you come here?” Alexis asked, this time gently and with much less worry in her voice.
“The way we left things off last night, it felt strange. We kissed, and I don’t know what that means,” I said, rubbing my temples as a faint headache started growing.
“Oh.” This was followed by a long spell of silence. “I don’t know what it means either. It was a very human moment. I was vulnerable and feeling quite worried. I’m sorry about that.”
She’d done what I had feared she would do. She’d gone defensive. I had to set things right.
“Please. Don’t apologize. It was both of us,” I said. Now that I was sobering and the emotional baggage was resurfacing, the rage was coming back too. And it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Whatever kind of relationship Alexis and I had formed, it was in a very delicate state. A mere shout would shatter it.
“Hey, I have an idea. Do you wanna just hang around? Let’s just do that, shall we? Not as rejected mates, not as partners in crime, not as people who kissed last night, and not as werewolves. Just two people, vibing,” she asked. “It would take the pressure off.”
I smiled at her. “That sounds like a wonderful idea.”
“But there are ground rules,” Alexis insisted, counting the rules on her fingers. “You don’t get to mope about your whole sob story, and I won’t start self-pitying about my sorry-ass life. We’ll just spend some time together, as you did with Maliha, although I promise I won’t make you drunk. Also, nothing sexual will transpire. No kisses, long hugs, nothing like that. We’re not ready to cross that bridge yet, if ever. Lastly, you’re not going to be angry at me, and I’m not going to be impatient with you.”
I got up, no longer swaying, and held out my hand. “A gentleman’s agreement.”
“Agreed.” She shook my hand firmly and smiled at me.
***
If I could say one thing about humanity’s evolution in the past seventy-six years, it was that they had become more decadent. There was no other word for it. Alexis took me to this strange shop called a 7-Eleven. It just so happened to be quite near the apartment building.
This was the first time I was walking into a modern-day store. The thousands of colorful items displayed on shelves, racks, and in the aisles were just too bedazzling and confusing to look at.
“What are we doing here?” I whispered fearfully in Alexis’s ear as we walked further into the store.
“We’re fixing our mid-day munchies,” Alexis said gleefully. “Catch!” She threw a huge bag of something called Doritos at me, which I caught at the last second. From the description written quite boldly across the bag, the contents seemed to be quite spicy. Spicy Nacho, whatever that meant.
“Here, you go, some Twizzlers, some fizzy gummy worms, Skittles, and a mega-size Mars bar!” Alexis just appeared out of a random aisle and unloaded the contents on my arms. I was already struggling to hold the overlarge bag of Doritos.
“One human cannot possibly eat all of this,” I said in protest.
“Just shut up and let me do this for you. You’ll get to see what you’ve been missing out on,” she said, trailing towards a machine that seemed to dispense red and blue colored ice.
“What is that?” I was too afraid to find out what that swirling liquid inside those containers was. It seemed like some classified military chemical was on display.
“That’s a Slurpee. Utterly cold, utterly delicious, and it’s gonna give you a brain freeze. Take your pick! Red or blue?”
“Okay, the blue one,” I said, finally giving in to my curiosity. As I said, decadent.
Five minutes later, when we both emerged from the shop with the junk food and the huge cups containing the Slurpees, I was at a total loss for where to sit and eat this hodgepodge meal.
“Come,” Alexis beckoned me. She was going behind the 7-Eleven building. Given my recent experience, I was a little too nervous as to what fresh hell she was hiding back there.
Behind the building, there was a lot of colorful wall art and a ton of colorful curse words.
“Is that like modern art?” I asked, pointing at the wall.
“That’s just graffiti. People use spray paints and vandalize all sorts of property. It’s counterculture. You know, punk, anarchy, hipster stuff,” she said.
“I don’t understand it. You must explain what all of that means sometime,” I said, still looking at a rather obscene cloud of blue paint spelling out the word “ASS!” What did that achieve? Painting that word on the back of a departmental store?
“Look here. You’re focusing on the wrong thing,” Alexis tugged at my sleeve.