Once Upon a Shifter (17 page)

The cabin was cute. Abandoned and falling apart, but cute. It had a tiny kitchen with a rusted pan hanging on the cracked tiles, a sofa with hand crocheted pillows like her grandma used to have and a small cot in the corner. It was just like the kind of place that Angie wanted to get one day to escape the city for the weekend. No electricity. No Wi-Fi. Just her, alone with her thoughts.

Sidney burst through the tiny door and smacked his head on the low doorway. Well, she was almost alone with her thoughts.

He bent down and fiddled with the fireplace as she searched the kitchen cupboards for food. There were a couple of cans with faded labels behind a spider’s web. She checked the expiry date on a can of soup.
2001.

“I can get this working,” Sidney said. “It will be nice and cozy in here.”

She looked around. “Only one bed,” she said.

He grinned at her. “Perfect.”

“Perfect you’ll sleep outside?”

He rolled up his sleeve over his huge bicep. “I’ll arm wrestle you for it.”

She glanced at his arm and then looked away with her heart rate increasing.

“There’s nothing to eat,” she said. She was getting hungry. He must’ve been starving as big as he was.

He snorted. “We’re in the wilderness. There’s food everywhere.”

“Okay Chef Ramsay go make me something.” She crossed her arms as he left the cabin.

He stumbled around looking at the ground with an eyebrow raised. “Here,” he said, pulling out a green plant from the ground. “These are edible leaves.” He plucked a leaf off of the stalk and handed one to her.

“That looks like poison ivy,” she said, stepping back and keeping her arms crossed.

He snorted a laugh and stuffed five leaves into his mouth. “See? Delicious.” Angie looked away from his food-filled open mouth. He pulled up another plant and ate it too. “This is the Coniferson Atlantis plant. Highly nutritious.”

Sidney handed her a leaf and she reluctantly took it. She tasted the tip of it and spit it out. “It’s so bitter,” she said.

“That’s the best part,” he said, shoving some more into his bathing suit pocket. “What else?”

He walked up to a maple tree and pulled off a strip of bark. “You can eat this too,” he said, putting it into his mouth. He gagged and choked as he struggled to chew it down.

Angie walked around to the back of the cabin and squealed in delight when she saw an overgrown vegetable garden covered in weeds. She stepped over the small fence and knelt down. There were still some veggies growing among the weeds and she began collecting them. A cucumber, some green peppers, rhubarb, zucchinis, and even some kale.

She had more than enough veggies by the time that she was finished. She walked back around the cabin and Sidney was biting the bark right off of the tree. “When you’re done chopping down that tree there will be a salad inside waiting for you.”

Sidney spit out a mouthful of bark and stared at her arms full of food. He lowered his head and followed her in.

Sidney ate the last veggie on his plate and leaned back in his chair. It groaned under his weight. Angie had made two huge salads, well one huger than the other, while he got a fire going in the old, cast iron stove. There was an old nest inside, probably a possum nest, that was long ago abandoned. The dried up straw made perfect kindling.

“That was good,” he said, rubbing his stomach. It was better than the leaves he found and the bark on the tree. He could barely eat them but forced himself. He didn’t want to look stupid in front of Angie.

Angie had told him all about her work as a Quantum Electrochemist over dinner. Normally Sidney understood everything but most of that went over his head. He must’ve been tired or she probably just wasn’t explaining it properly. It was okay. He loved the way her lips moved and how her eyes lit up with excitement when she talked.

“There’s some games on that shelf over there,” she said, pointing to the small bureau beside the bed. “Want to play something?”

Sidney went over to investigate, keeping his head bent against the low ceiling. There were a stack of dusty boxes. Monopoly, Life, Clue.

He pulled out a box and showed her with a grin. Twister. She shook her head no.

“Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit?” he asked.

“I’d say Trivial Pursuit but it wouldn’t be fair.”

He frowned. “Why do you say that?”

She chuckled. “Do I really have to…” she trailed off. “It would be like you playing Serena Williams in a round of tennis.” He glared at her. “And you only have one arm.” He puffed out his chest. “Okay no arms.”

“We’re playing this,” he said. He brought the Trivial Pursuit box to the table and they set up the game.

“Your funeral,” she said, choosing the green pie.

Sidney sprung up and headed to the kitchen. He opened a cupboard for something that he had seen earlier when he was searching for matches. This would level the playing field a little bit.

“Since you’re such a genius,” he said, “let’s play this my way.” He pulled out an old bottle of Scotch and slammed it on the table. “Every time you get an answer wrong you take a sip.”

She rubbed her small hands together and glared at him. “You’re on.”

Sidney was drunk.

Angie was feeling pretty tipsy herself but her pie piece was almost full. She was just missing the sports category and she would win the game.
Always fucking sports
.

She had taken a few swigs of that horrendous liquid herself because she missed a couple of answers. John Lombardi, Charles Barkley, Nolan Ryan…why the hell would they put a sports section in an intellectual game?

Those were the only questions that Sidney had gotten right. And now he was drunk.

Not sloppy drunk, hilarious-make-Angie-almost-pee-her-pants-laughing drunk. She was actually having a really fun time with him.

“Which sailor discovered the Hawaiian Islands?” she stuttered. The small print was starting to get blurry.

“Popeye,” he said.

“No,” she said laughing. He bit his lip and scrunched up his forehead when he was thinking. Angie loved when he did that. It was so cute. “Captain…”

“Crunch. Kangaroo. America. Jack Sparrow.” He grabbed the almost empty bottle and shook it. “Please don’t make me drink anymore,” he begged.

“We were looking for Captain James Cook,” she said, lifting her leg up on her chair and resting her chin on her knee.

“Didn’t I say that?”

“Everybody but him,” she said giggling. “Drink up.”

He poured the scotch into his empty, pie-shaped, playing piece and took a shot. She slapped the table, cheering him on.

Sidney slammed down the makeshift shot glass on the table and raised his arms in the air like a runner crossing the finish line.

“Alright smarty pants. Your turn.”

Angie rolled the die and got a three. “Yes!” she squealed. She moved her pie piece three spots over to the big orange square.

“For the win,” Sidney said, picking up the card. He squinted at it and swayed in his chair. “The letters keep jumping around.”

She reached across the table and plucked the card out of his hand. She read the question keeping her finger over the answers. Angie never wanted to win by cheating. There was no pride in that.

“Who was the last heavyweight, bare-knuckle boxing champion?”

Sidney laughed and crossed his big, muscular arms. “Good luck with that one!”

Angie lowered her head and tried to stop the alcohol induced, swirling of her mind. She knew this one. Her grandfather had black and white pictures of bare-knuckle boxers all over the bar in his basement. One was signed by a heavyweight champion. She remembered her Pappy saying that he was the last champion ever before they changed the rules. He was born on the same street in the South End of Boston as him.

What was his name?
The scotch was making it hard to think.

It finally came to her. She could see the picture clearly in her mind and the big, loopy signature scribbled across it. “John L. Sullivan!” she said, throwing the card at him. She jumped out of her seat and danced around the cabin, shaking her hips to imaginary music.

Sidney stared at the card with narrowed eyes. The card looked like a postage stamp in his large hands. “I can’t see,” he said. “Is it right?”

“Of course it’s right,” she said, shadow boxing.

“You think you’re so smart,” he said playfully.

“No. I know I’m so smart.” She threw a right hook and then a left uppercut. “That full green pie on the board says I’m so smart.”

“I know something you don’t know,” he said, leaning on the table.

“What? How tree bark tastes like?” She jumped in the air with her hands up like she just won the imaginary boxing match.

“Come outside and I’ll show you.”

Sidney’s shirt caught around his shoulder and he yanked it. A ripping sound filled the outside night as the shirt tore in half.

“What are you showing me?” Angie asked in the doorway. “How to get mosquito bites?”

Sidney needed to impress her. He had lost the game. She was smarter than him. He needed something big. He was drunk and this was all he could think up.

But people always seemed impressed whenever he did this.

“Watch this,” he said. He urged his bear forward, pushing him to the surface. The burning started as his body grew even larger than before. He grimaced in pain as his bones snapped and his muscle tissue tore. His nose was on fire as it extended away from his face. His skin disappeared behind white fur.

Sidney was a polar bear shifter.

He was still drunk, watching Angie through the eyes of his bear. She was standing in the doorway watching with fascination. Not fear or panic. Fascination. Like a scientist discovering a new species and observing it.

Sidney’s bear was fixated on her. Normally he would’ve wandered off into the woods by now. Done bear things. But he couldn’t stop staring at her.

Sidney felt a strange, sudden pull towards her. His bear was purring and shaking in a strange way. It wasn’t like anything that Sidney had ever felt before.

Oh crap.

His bear was bonding to her.