Sugar Coated

32

Delaney Linwood

Rosie and Foster sat waiting for me in the car while I ran up to my apartment to change. I tore into my bedroom. I'd left the overhead fan on and the jellyfish windchime was chittering to itself when I entered in a flurry of movement that the room wasn't used to seeing. I tore the clothes off and threw them onto my bed, shucking every piece of them that I could until I was able to pull on my old cotton jumper dress and a sweater over top of it. I tugged a pair of tights on after. Only after I got everything on did I allow myself to drop onto my bed, pulling a pillow to my chest to squeeze within an inch of its life.

I wanted to kick my damn feet like a teenager. They wanted me. The Sinclair pack wanted me. I hadn't even told Rosie and Foster, yet. I could tell they wanted to ask, but they were saving it for when were all settled together where we could discuss.

"The Sinclair pack wants to court me," I whispered the words to any of the decorations in my room like I was voicing a secret and I felt the burn of happy tears in my eyes.

I fisted Em's sweater in my hand, proof that last night wasn't just a very happy dream. Rosie must have been rubbing off on me because I was already making plans to forget to return his clothes when I brought that stupid reel of wire for the jukebox so that I would have an excuse to go back as if they hadn't already offered me every excuse to go back to their packhouse and never leave.

Rosie: You going to get your ass back down there or are you finally going to invite us up?

I snorted at nosey Rosie's text, forgoing a response instead shooting off the bed and out of my apartment to return to the car with my friends.

The drive was short, backtracking the way we had come until the asphalt turned to the bumpy streets of old money, built on the backs of carefully laid red brick pavers and the apartments divided into single-family craftsman-style homes.

We parked near a community garden before dropping into a storefront on a neighborhood corner, dripping with greenery boasting the name "Black Crow" and picked up our coffees even though it was well past morning. I copied Foster's order as always. Today it was an iced Banana Mocha latte. Rosie opted for a chai before sweeping us back into her car to scour the busy streets for a free space anywhere near the pier.

It was easily into the afternoon by the time we were laying out on a blanket in the tempered sunlight and I was about to burst.

"Sooooooooo," Foster drawled, playing with the straw in his cup.

"I am so glad you asked!" I watched the last hints of tension bleed from their faces. I felt a familiar ache when I looked at my friends and saw the way they looked at me. It was a not-quite-there wound.

They weren't the villains in that story, never had been, and never would be, but the scar of it itched when they were here to remind me that every poisonous word my mother had tried to feed to me was wrong. They loved me enough to show up on the doorstep of a pack to make sure I was ok, and even after that and in trusting my judgment and leaving me be, they came back to me the next morning with nothing but happiness solely because they could see that same happiness in me.

I hated my mother as much as a daughter could, for all of it.

I'd stared at them long enough that a fresh sheen of tears had gathered in my eyes, "They asked to court me," I whispered to them my words a stuttered mess, "and I-I'm so f-fucking happy."

"You should be, Delaney. My brainy beautiful beta. I damn well told you, you're worth everything and then some," Rosie pinned me with a perfectly manicured nail, "I'm glad you're finally starting to see it. Told you, you've been spending too much time in non-designational spaces and you should've audited our night classes with us."