NOVEL WEB Chapter 9: Ducks By The Lake
McKenzie looked like a Disney princess. She knew she did, and it was entirely on purpose. If she was going to have to suffer the onslaught that was Toby, she was going to have to pull out all the stops, and so she did. In the late afternoon sun, she sat by the water and let the sun shine on her face, the warm breeze running through a few loose strands on her face that would frame her perfectly. She knew it would.
She blinked lazily a few times, as if she’d forgotten where she was, and tried not to make it obvious that she was checking to see if Toby was looking. He had been the first time and had turned away with a sort of… gentle smile? She’d expected bashful blushing, but this roguish country boy managed to carry himself with a relaxed comfort that made her want to push him into the lake. Still, he’d looked, that was something. The second time she looked, however, he had one of the ducklings in his hand and it had fallen asleep and he was running a finger over its little head and why? Why was this working for her? He looked up and caught her staring. If she’d been wearing her hat, she would’ve tried to smother herself with it. This, she made a note to herself, was why she should always have a pair of sunglasses on her.
Whatever. Fine. It was fine. Toby was fine. Hella fine, her useless hindbrain said. ‘While that’s fair,’ she argued with the little voice, ‘I am also hella fine. Best not to forget that.’ She huffed slightly. Stubble, hindbrain responded. ‘Yeaahhhhh,’ was all she had as a response to that. But she did have to do or say something, right? Like, it’s not like it wasn’t nice and enjoyable, to just sit here with him, but she did want to do more with her afternoon. Whether or not that involved Toby remained to be seen (like the rest of that taut stomach with that little line of fur going down) and she was keeping an open mind. But he was petting a sleeping duckling! Who does that? She couldn’t just disturb a sight like that. She was fairly certain she’d be tried at the Hague for interrupting him. On the other hand, he looked so big and kind and yet strangely vulnerable. Had he always looked like that? Actually…
“What’s it like?” she blurted out. Toby looked up at her slowly, making sure not to disturb the little snoozing treasure in his hand. It looked like a small, yellow stuffed animal, its siblings and mom lazily paddling nearby.
“What’s what like?” Toby asked. “You mean this? It’s soft, mostly. Fragile.” McKenzie rolled her eyes with a smile. She didn’t want him to think she was actually annoyed, after all. Gotta stay in control of the situation.
“Being a werewolf, I mean,” she said. “Like, is it very different from what you used to be like?” He seemed to think on it for a moment, so she continued. “I mean, you seem to wear your emotions on your sleeve. Is that a… wolf thing?” He raised an eyebrow and gave her a half smile.
“Like a puppy, you mean?” Ever so gently, Toby tickled the duckling under its beak until it blearily opened its eyes, and he gently lowered it onto the grass at the edge of the water, and then laid back with his arms under his head. His shirt rode up, exposing his stomach again. Fuck. “It’s complicated,” he said, oblivious to the fact that McKenzie’s reactor core was reaching critical mass just a few feet away. “Like, yeah, I think my emotions are closer to the surface, and a few things, like enthusiasm, fear, that kind of thing, feel more… real than they used to, I guess? But a part of it is also living here, where all of the little social rules and stuff don’t apply as much… I’m a lot more free to express myself than I would out there, and I like it better that way.” He propped himself up on his elbows to look at her, his hair tousled and his shirt sliding down to cover himself up a bit. “I guess I’m just a lot more open about how I’m feeling because I want to be. Being a werewolf is just kinda adjacent to that.” He pushed himself up and leaned on his knees. “I used to have to… hide a lot of stuff that I don’t anymore.”
“Oh?” McKenzie asked, her brain more-or-less manageable now that she no longer had a desperate need to find out what his abs felt like from up close. “I mean, not hiding is great, of course.”
“Oh, yeah.” He looked at her a little strange, in a way she didn’t quite know how to interpret. “You’re… cool about queer stuff, right?” he asked. McKenzie nodded. Not only had she never had an issue with people of various identities, but when Elliot had come out, she’d come out to bat for her. The concept of discrimination based on things like that was radically useless to her, and she was going to say it.
“Yeah,” she said. “I wasn’t sitting outside the meeting to picket, if that’s what you’re asking.” She stuck her tongue out. “Live like you are, all that.” Toby nodded.
“So…” Toby said, scratching the back of his head, “this is going to sound unrelated, but hear me out here…” he paused again, clearly looking for the right words. It was strange seeing him not be able to effortlessly steer the conversation this way and that. Strange seeing him uncomfortable. “The first time I turned into a… wolf… it was a revelation.” McKenzie nodded. She could imagine that much.
“It sounds like it would be freeing,” she said. “Suddenly being an animal. Strong. Unable to hide emotions, that kind of thing.”
“Yeah, there was that. A lot of that, of course. But at the time I still didn’t really believe things like that, things like me, existed, and it was eye-opening. The world suddenly became a lot stranger, and there were a lot of things I had never seen before, and never thought I would. It was… amazing. But the biggest change was me.”
“It was the tail, wasn’t it?” McKenzie quipped with a grin. Toby shook his head.
“No,” he said, “it wasn’t the tail.”
“Oh.”
“The biggest change was when I turned back and I finally figured out what and who I was, who I am.” McKenzie nodded, trying to understand what he was vaguely hinting at. Toby looked at her, but it was clear to both of them that he was going to have to do a little bit more explaining before she fully knew what he was steering at. “Let’s just say that…” he said, rubbing his face in a display of anxiety that McKenzie simply hadn’t expected from him. He started over. “What would you say if…” he started, making thorough eye contact, “if I said I used to look a lot more like you.”
Oh. Oh. “Oh,” McKenzie said. That was a bit unexpected. “Well,” she said, “I’d say that you look pretty happy the way you look right now, so I reckon it’s an improvement for you.” She gave an encouraging smile, hoping she’d said the right thing. His grin confirmed that, yes, she had.
“I agree,” he said. “I don’t really tell people that. Being a werewolf already makes some people uncomfortable, I don’t want to add to that, you know?”
McKenzie shrugged. “If people are uncomfortable because of who you are, that’s their problem, you know?” She let her eyes wander around the lake. “But I get not wanting to stir more things up, especially after… like… you know… the werewolf thing.”
“Yeah, the werewolf thing is what a lot of people latched on to.” Toby smiled. “I prefer it that way. It’s interesting and I enjoy talking about it. I could go on for some time if you want me to.” McKenzie smiled softly at him, and then realized that she’d given him a dreamy look that was entirely too flirtatious, but it was too late now.
“I’d love to hear more,” she said, adding insult to injury. “I like… listening to… you.”
Toby winked. “I can tell.” He stood up and held out a hand, and she took it, blushing as he pulled her upright. “Thank you for being cool about this kind of stuff.”
“Yeah,” she said, trying to sound cool, and then, for the first time in her life, coming to an impasse. McKenzie didn’t worry about her decisions, about what the right thing to do was. She knew. Except right now. Right now, she was worried about what to say. Instead of being flustered and being tongue tied -- which she still didn’t forgive Toby for -- she was in a much, much worse position. If she was too cool about this, she might look like she was just being outwardly supportive but internally having issues with him coming out to her. But the alternative… it was worth the risk. “I think it’s… awesome, that you came out to me,” she said. He looked up, a little excited, a little confused, and the puppy was easy to read on his face. “I don’t want to say, like, ‘I don’t care’ because like…” She paused, biting her lip. “...this is important stuff. But it doesn’t change anything for me. I still think you’re…” Her brain was on red alert. Quick, say something cool! “Radical.” Not that cool! “Does that make sense?”
“It does,” he said with his trademark grin. “And thanks. I think you’re totally tubular.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” she said, trying to regain her composure after it had just smashed against the rocks of her own utterly pointless speech center. What was it even for if ‘radical’ was the best it could come up with.
“Any more werewolf-y questions? To scramble back up to more… familiar territory?” He winked. What a monster. “Less touchy-feely. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“Sure,” McKenzie said, resisting the urge to say something untoward, and then changed her mind again. She’d felt like an utter idiot this entire time, she might as well lean into it a little bit and see if that put him on the back foot. “I’d love for you to make me comfortable,” she added with a smile, making sure not to look at him directly as the two of them began to walk back in the direction of the campus buildings.
The effect was immediate, obvious, and unexpected. Toby laughed, loudly and happily. “You are something else, McKenzie,” he said, in between little barks. “It’s so hard to get a read on you, I was worried you didn’t like me for a bit there.”
“What? That’s ridiculous, I actually do… uh… appreciate… your presence…” she trailed off, when the indignation gave way to self-awareness.
“See, and then there’s that kind of thing, and I’m back to square one on trying to figure you out,” Toby said. “You bounce back and forth, and it’s… confusing, but once I came to the conclusion you’re just as much of a confused teenager as the rest of us, and that you don’t hate me being around you… yeah, I can appreciate it.” He grinned devilishly as McKenzie jutted her jaw forward. How dare he insinuate she was a confused teenager?! She had herself and her life perfectly under control and she knew perfectly well what she wanted and she hadn’t been confused about anything in years except for this one… well… but… look… it’s not…
“You monster,” she said, squinting up at him, realizing the kind of game he was playing with her, and then double realizing that she didn’t mind.
“Awoo,” he said with a wink, and McKenzie couldn’t take it any longer. She gently put a hand on Toby’s arm to call them both to a stop, and then turned to him, trying to find the exact right way to make the words fit her brain and then export them to her mouth, like trying to connect to a fifteen-year-old printer with Bluetooth. Eventually, she managed.
“Toby,” McKenzie said.
“McKenzie,” Toby said.
“I want you to kiss me,” she said.
“Radical,” Toby said with that stupid grin, and McKenzie wiped it off his face by wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him. She had intended to pull him down to her, but a single hand on her back lifted her up to him and suddenly she was pressed against his chest. Goodness, he’s a lot taller up close, she thought for just a moment before her lips touched his and she got lost in his scent and his taste, as she could feel him practically inhale her. She let her hands run through his hair and down his back -- for goodness sake, was there any part of him not perfectly toned -- as she hungrily pulled him in for kiss after kiss. She wondered if he could keep her lifted up like this forever, and then let her brain sort of explode out of the back of her head as she could feel his tongue against her lips.
A few decades passed before he gently lowered her back to the ground. She was out of breath. He wasn’t. How dare he.
“I uh…” he said, finally a little awkwardly, “I was about to head back to my dorm.” There was a quiet moment between them, a moment punctuated only by her own light panting and her heart hammering in her chest. The trees took a breath, the wind softly played with the hem of her dress. One moment stretched infinitely, it felt like, until, finally… “Do you want to come up?” Toby asked.
McKenzie nodded. She was just going to have to be extra cool later.
