HIS HUMAN LUNA - A REWRITTEN VERSION

CHAPTER I

Sesil Cohen

∞

"NO." THE ONE-SYLLABLE WORD echoes in the nearly empty classroom as I zip up my bag.

Mara, the best friend who I'm very much thinking of revoking her bestie rights, lets out another huff of frustration. She's been rotating between that and a half-suppressed shriek of come the fuck on, Sy. Both of which are not really working against my hard refusal. But well, Mara is nothing if not annoyingly annoying and annoyingly persistent, and I wouldn't put her above begging for the next decade if I don't yield to her request. There came times when her strong will and no-nonsense attitude were very much appreciated. Right now, however, is not one of them. And today's flavor just happens to be dumping all of the obvious reasons labeled as we fucking shouldn't and go out clubbing.

For one, why would we go out of our way to party? My stuffy, introverted, chronically exhausted butt finds no logical answer to this particular question.

As far as celebration reasons go, we passed some of our midterms but neither of us is particularly confident that we've nailed any of them. And let's not talk about the Business Statistics papers that I have to submit by the end of next week. Judging by the crossing my eyes have been doing over all that quantitative analysis nonsense, the only kind of submission I'm in the business for will be for a sweet, three-month coma. Besides, finals will be all up our asses in no time, and between our classes, my student job as an ambassador, and my other part-time job, I'd rather spend what little time I have left lazing around my house, eating junk food, and binge-watching gory, PTSD-inducing episodes of anime. Thank you very much.

The only hitch in my perfect plan is having a best friend that doesn't favor putting her ass down.

"Sesil, common. Jay will be there."

The name makes every muscle of my body tighten, and that pretty much seals the deal. Mara, just like a lot of girls, thinks of Jay and the rest of his kind as the epitome of wonders. Granted, they are unlike us normal, boring humans; the working remotely to our tedious nine-to-five. Why you ask? Because there is honest-to-god real magic running along their bloodstream, they can shapeshift into horse-sized wolves and have such fascinating dynamics in the communities they call packs.

I would've been as much wowed if not more had I not seen one of them tear into my father and chew the life out of him.

Sure, my father was the human equivalent of a garbage can full to the brim⸻if you don't take it out, it soils everything around it⸻and a very sick side of me might've been relieved that he no longer lives, but that doesn't necessarily win the werewolf kind any points in my book. It might've even cost them some. That night brought out parts of me I wish to have kept hidden; parts I wish to have never known about myself.

So, unlike the rest of the female population in NYC and every other city in which a Pack is taking sanctuary, I've seen enough of these creatures to last me a lifetime and I'm not holding my breath for a re-do. My old therapist can testify to that too.

Mara doesn't know about any of it and I would like for it to stay this way. What happened three years ago is a time of my life that I call the old and it is a sequence that I left when I not so subtly used my tuition as an excuse to leave Boston and come to NYC. Mara is a part of my new.

My mom, unlike me, refused to move out. She has a bakery she's sweated for years to create from scratch and she's always been such a hardass when it comes to breaking her usual routines and wandering out of her comfort zone. That's something she and I have in common. But even that didn't stop me from being selfish enough to leave her and a city I could no longer see as my home.