“Is that so?” Mom asked. “How do you figure?”
“He’s really nice,” Joe said seriously. “And smells good. And he makes me happy. And I want to do nothing more than put my mouth on him.”
“Ah well,” Thomas said. “We tried.”
“He’s our little snowflake,” Elizabeth told him.
“You want to what?” I asked Joe incredulously.
He winced. “I didn’t mean to say it like that.” He was sweating much more heavily now as he looked back at my mother. “I want to court your son.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It means I want to provide for him to prove my worth,” Joe said. “And then, once he agrees to be mine, I’ll mount him and then bite him and everyone will see that we belong to each other.”
I was wheezing something awful.
“Joe,” Elizabeth called in from the window. “Maybe not talk about that part just yet. Or ever.”
“Right,” Joe said, pulling on his bow tie like it was too tight. “Forget I said that part.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Mom said, looking between me and Joe.
“Mounting?” I managed to say. “Of all the things you could have gone with, you went with mounting?”
“I’m nervous!” Joe cried. “It’s not my fault! That was the only thing I could think of!”
“You have it written down,” I hissed at him.
“I mean,” Mom said, “you just threw it out there like it was nothing.”
I ignored the sounds of choked laughter coming from behind me.
“Okay,” Joe said. “Let’s try this again. Hi, Maggie. How are you? These flowers are for you. I think your son is the greatest thing in the world.”
Everyone fell quiet.
“Do you?” Mom asked.
He nodded. “I do. There’s a lot you don’t… know. About me. Things were… hard. For a while. Sometimes, they still are. But Ox. He—just. I have nightmares. About bad men. About monsters. And he makes them go away.”
I tried to swallow past the
lump in my throat.
“And I’ve been waiting,” Joe said. “For him to look at me like I looked at him. And he finally did. He finally did. And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure it stays like that. Because I want him for always.”
“You’re seventeen,” she said. “How can you possibly know what you want being so young?”
“I’m a wolf,” he said. “It’s not the same. We’re… wired differently.”
“And if he says no?”
Joe paled. “Then, uh. I guess. I will. Be okay? With that?”
“Would you?”
He nodded, hands clenched into fists at his side. “Maybe not. But I would respect it. Because Ox is my best friend above all else. And I would have him any way I could.”