Werewolves & Wisteria by A. L. Tyler Read Free Book Online Page A

ready and settling in the week before classes.”
    I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say to someone who could be so broken in one moment, and so nonchalant the next.
    “I know you were there,” he said. He looked away, uncertain. “It didn’t look any easier for you. So I just thought, sandwiches might be easy…”
    I couldn’t help myself, and I pulled him into a hug, which he hesitantly returned.
    “Thank you,” I whispered.
    He patted me on the back, and I let him go. “For what? This wasn’t your fault.”
    “For still being you, after all of that.” I ripped a paper towel off the roll by the sink and used it to dab at my eyes. “Gates hasn’t been the same since… Gates got turned into a cat. Did I tell you that?”
    “Your sister told me,” he said, leaning back against the edge of the counter.
    I nodded, wiping my nose with the paper towel before tossing it in the trash. “She hasn’t been nearly as loud-mouthed since it all happened. I kind of miss it.”
    He cracked a smile, shifting, and I was once again reminded how much weight he had lost. “Do you remember when that teacher asked her if her name was a weird Mexican thing, and she called him a—?”
    “Yeah,” I said, grinning through my tears. “I remember.”
    “And then she kept calling him Mr. Bunker for the rest of the year?”
    “Yeah,” I laughed.
    He smiled at me. “I’m glad she’s not lost in Hungary. Or dead, I guess, is what most people were saying. Come on, let’s go get dinner.”
    “Oh—!” I stopped him just as his hand landed on the door, and rushed over with the protection charm that Lyssa had left for him.
    I explained what he needed to do, and why. Charlie added an addendum to look out for Walter, or any of his kin, who might be around. Vince brushed off our warnings like they were nothing, though I could tell from the look in his eye that he was paying very close attention to how the charm needed to be used. He asked me to meet him back at the sandwich place by the apartment in an hour so that he would have time to find a place to bury the charm.
    I spent that time changing my clothes five times, and then trying to do my hair without it looking like I had actually done it.
    “You just saved his life,” Charlie called from the living room, where he was lying on the couch and watching the news. “He’s seen you right out of bed. You’ve seen him naked—”
    “Covered in fur!” I corrected.
    “—Do you really think he cares what your hair looks like?”
    I didn’t answer. I had tried putting it up. I had tried leaving it down. I had it pulled back into a ponytail, but quickly decided that it made my head look small and bald, so I let it back down again.
    I came out of the bathroom, and checked the clock. I still had fifteen minutes.
    “Wear a low-cut shirt,” Charlie teased. “He won’t even bother looking at your hair.”
    “Unhelpful,” I replied.
    I finally slipped out of the apartment and thirty feet down the sidewalk to the sandwich place. I saw Vince waiting for me at a table by the window as I approached, and gave a little wave.
    We ordered our food, and he paid, and made a comment about my hair. I thanked him for the compliment and asked about his mother, and he said that she was happy to hear from him. We sat down and ate our food, and talked about the classes that we had signed up for, and pretended that nothing had happened. He mentioned that he might see about switching his schedule in the first two weeks to more closely match mine, just in case he had to miss any lectures. I said that would be great, because he took better notes than I did anyway.
    We skirted the issue the whole meal, and when we were done eating, we went back to the apartment. Charlie blinked at me through narrow eyes, still lounging across my couch, and Vince asked me if I wanted to come downstairs to watch a movie.
    His television was bigger, and his couch was less occupied.
    So that was what we