Page 9

CHAPTER NINE

TAWNY WOKE UP early and sent a group text to Eiren and Rora, asking if they wanted to meet up for breakfast. There was a buffet set up in the courtyard, included in the price of admission to the weekend. Breakfast was provided each day, but lunch and dinner were not.

She wasn’t sure if either of them would respond. They’d both probably been up late at the midnight run, so she thought she might be on her own, but she thought that it would be worth it to get some idea from the two of them of how it had worked.

But Rora responded immediately, and Eiren only five minutes afterward.

Within half an hour, they were seated inside the Center’s dining room, near one of the large windows that overlooked the courtyard and the field where the run had taken place the night before.

“It’s like summer camp,” said Rora cheerfully. “Only instead of crafts, we have sex.”

Everyone laughed.

“It’s like college,” said Eiren, stretching. She rubbed her neck, then recoiled as if she had hurt herself. She took a drink of coffee out of her mug. “I miss that, actually, that sense of community, everyone showing up in the dining hall together in the mornings to share what crazy shenanigans they got into the night before. It’s funny, because you spend all of your youth rushing to get to adulthood, and then it’s a big yawn. All the good stuff is over.”

“I’m still in college,” said Rora. “But I don’t live on campus.”

“Right, that’s a whole different experience,” said Eiren.

“I didn’t go last night,” said Tawny, like she was confessing her sins to the two of them. “I chickened out. I went to bed instead. What was it like? I think I should have forced myself. It feels twice as hard to psyche myself up for the mid-morning thing.”

“I didn’t either,” said Rora. “Um, actually, I have to… I wonder if I could just go back to his room. Or maybe I could call the phone in his room or—”

“Wait, spill,” said Eiren. “What happened?”

Rora ducked down her head, grinning widely. “Well, um, I found the stag. Or he found me. Or… anyway, it happened.”

Tawny and Eiren exchanged a look, both grinning.

“Tell us everything,” said Tawny.

Rora gazed off into the distance, lost in a reverie. “You were both right, you know. There was never anything wrong with me. I think it was about confidence, maybe? I think, maybe one person needs to be sure of themselves or something, and the problem with being young is that everyone’s insecure. And men my age, I keep waiting for them to take charge or something, but they never do, and then I don’t, and then…”

“I don’t know, that confidence stuff sounds like those awful dating coaches on social media, with the negging and everything,” said Eiren, wrinkling up her nose.

Rora considered. “I’m thinking I’m going to go home early.”

“Really?” said Tawny.

“I don’t want to go out and do that in the woods,” said Rora, giggling. “You were right about not doing it that way my first time, so right.”

“You don’t want to see the stag again?” said Tawny. “You seem to have liked it. Was there something not good about it, though?”

“Did he end up being low-key, old-guy creepy?”

“No, no,” she said. “He made me feel… it was like he worshiped me.”

Tawny smiled, nodding. “Good.”

“But I ran off in the middle of the night while he was asleep, and I couldn’t find a pen to leave a note, and I know I need to find him, and tell him I’m sorry for running off. I mean, I know I should. It’s just that I realized that I could leave and never see him again and that seems so much easier,” said Rora.

“Why’d you leave?” said Eiren. “I mean, something bad must have happened.”

“I couldn’t sleep in the bed and he was taking up all the room, and I tossed and turned in this teensy sliver of bed for two hours, but then I just had to leave,” said Rora.

Eiren considered. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Why didn’t you just shove him over onto the other side of the bed?” said Tawny.

Rora shrugged, looking miserable. “I know, I know, I just couldn’t.”

“I get that. I don’t like to inconvenience people,” said Eiren.

“Whatever, you two are both insane,” said Tawny. “First of all, he’s been way more inconvenienced by waking up alone with no idea where you are than he ever would have been if you just shook him awake and told him to move his huge ass, and second of all, no one likes inconveniencing other people, and he was inconveniencing you , and if you would have told him that, he would have stopped.”

Eiren nodded. “You bring up very good points.”

“I know I was being irrational,” said Rora. “But I just couldn’t do it.”

Tawny pointed at her. “Were you brought up in a home in which your needs were not considered important? Did people teach you to shove down all your feelings and accept whatever it was that everyone else wanted?”

“I mean, isn’t everyone brought up in a home like that?” said Eiren with a shrug. “To keep the peace in any group, it’s the needs of the many over the needs of the individual. I hear all this stuff about setting boundaries and communication and all that pseudo-therapy speak, but I think it’s really like this: there are two kinds of people, people who give and people who take, and you put them together and there’s peace. And you put together the opposite kinds of people and it’s bad. If you’re a giver, you need to find a taker, and if you’re a taker—”

“I am not a taker ,” said Tawny.

“Yeah, but the fact that you will even say that, proves you are,” said Eiren. “And it’s not a bad thing to be, a person who advocates for themselves. It’s good. I’m envious. I’m just not that way.”

Tawny scoffed. She should be offended, really, but Eiren seemed to have a knack for saying offensive-seeming things in ways that didn’t actually seem offensive. Maybe Tawny was envious of that about the other doe.

“Anyway, you’re right, though. I could stand to take up more space. And Rora, you needed to literally take up some space.”

Rora laughed. “Okay, yeah, true.” She drank some coffee. “But what will I even say if I talk to him?”

“Just like what you told us,” said Tawny. “And unless he’s a big jerk, in which case you now know to steer clear of him and it’s a good thing to know, he’ll probably apologize.”

“But then I’ll feel even worse,” said Rora. “I don’t want him to apologize.”

“It was his fault,” said Tawny, shrugging. “He should apologize. Of course, you should apologize for leaving and not just waking him up.”

“I just don’t like…”

“Inconveniencing people,” said Eiren in a resigned voice.

“Both of you need to grow a spine,” Tawny decided.

“Probably,” acknowledged Eiren.

“Maybe I won’t leave,” said Rora, thinking it over. “But I don’t want to do any of the runs.” She nodded in the direction of the field.

“Right, the run,” said Tawny. “Did you go, Eiren?”

Eiren froze, reaching back to touch the back of her neck. “Um, I went out there, but I didn’t end up hooking up with any of the bucks. I guess I chickened out, too.”

“No one approached you?”

“I didn’t… I probably didn’t give off an air of receptiveness,” said Eiren. “But people seemed to be having fun. I mean, I didn’t watch… things. I kept my head down. Some of the breeding lairs look really nice. You’re trying to be bred, Tawny, you should find someone who has one.”

Tawny eyed her. She was getting the distinct impression that Eiren was not telling them everything. Maybe she felt embarrassed, since neither of the other two women had actually had rough-and-tumble sex in the rite. She could push, but she got the impression that Eiren would only get more closed off if she did. She sighed. “I don’t even know if I’m going to do it. Maybe I’m going to leave.”

“No, you can’t,” said Eiren. “No one’s leaving. I can’t go home, and neither can the two of you.”

“Why can’t you go home?” said Rora.

Eiren gestured with both hands, very animated. “I just can’t be there right now, all alone, with nothing going on, doing the same things over and over again. It’s driving insane. I told myself I’d stay here all weekend, and I will. I will find something to divert myself, something fun and adventurous and not… not dangerous and crazy.”

Tawny furrowed her brow. So, something happened last night with Eiren. She wasn’t getting a good feeling about it. “I think the reports you fill out can be anonymous, can’t they?” she said. “Didn’t they say that at the orientation?”

Eiren turned to her sharply.

Tawny shrugged. “Well, if something dangerous did happen, we can fill out a report.”

Eiren nodded curtly, once. “Yeah.”

“We wouldn’t judge you, you know,” said Tawny quietly.

Eiren looked away. “I mean, we all judge each other. Maybe we don’t mean anything by it, but I don’t think we can help it.”

Tawny didn’t like the implication of that. How was it, exactly, that Eiren was judging her?

THE GOOD THING about having thrown up everything in his stomach, Athos realized when he woke up in the bathroom at four in the morning, was that he wasn’t hungover, because he’d purged the poison.

He drank more water, slowly this time, climbed into his bed, and slept for four more hours.

When he got downstairs to get breakfast the next morning, he saw Stockton sitting at a table with an older stag, and he figured that must be his uncle. He approached and asked if he could join them, and they agreed.

When he sat down with his coffee and pastries, Stockton was agitated. “I need you to know something and it’s so fucking stupid, but I can’t keep hiding it. Bruin is not my uncle. He’s my father.”

Athos was surprised. “Really?”

“I don’t know why I lied about it,” said Stockton. To the older stag, “I don’t hide it or anything, Bruin, not usually. But it just somehow came out of my mouth.”

“It’s all right.” Bruin had his mouth full of pastry. He chewed and swallowed, washing it down with coffee. “It’s an abnormal arrangement. I’m well aware.”

“Yeah, but I’m not ashamed or anything,” said Stockton. He turned back to Athos. “It’s just that you said that thing about your mother and your gran, and I just felt like I wanted to… I don’t even know.” He slumped in his chair.

“Stockton is having a crisis of confidence this morning,” Bruin told Athos.

Stockton sat up straight. “Sun and moon, don’t tell him that.”

Bruin winced. “Well, we’re in the same boat. I think I might have done something despicable last night. I’m not feeling particularly confident either.”

“Wait, what?” said Stockton, turning to his father.

“This is what we were in the middle of discussing before you arrived,” said Bruin to Athos.

“Well.” Athos squirmed on the chair next to them. He had to admit, this kind of male-male socializing, like this, it wasn’t common. But there was something appealing about the call of it, admitting his weakness out loud, something foreign and yet comforting, so he just said it. “Last night? Not my finest hour either.”

“I went out into the run,” said Stockton, “but I didn’t even approach anyone. I didn’t chase anyone. And I was too embarrassed to watch anything.”

“I got so drunk that I actually vomited,” said Athos.

“I took some doe’s virginity and she ran from me in the middle of the night,” said Bruin.

Both Athos and Stockton turned to take the older buck in.

Bruin cast his gaze heavenward. “It was wrong, and I knew it. She was young. She was far too young for me, but there was a sort of spark between us, and then she said this phenomenally ridiculously forward sexy-as-hell thing to me, and I lost my head.”

“What did she say?” said Athos.

“She said, something like, ‘If you’re not busy right now, do you want to fuck me?’”

Athos’s eyes widened.

Stockton snorted.

All three of them dissolved into guffaws that slid into deep-bellied laughs. It lasted for a while. When they were done, Athos was wiping tears from his eyes.

“I don’t think that was wrong,” Athos said. “If that’s wrong, I don’t want to be right.”

Bruin ran a hand through the top of his long black hair, between his antlers. “Well, she seemed willing, let’s say that. And I thought… I am positive I pleased her, but… then I woke up and she wasn’t there, and she did tell me that it was her first time. And here’s the thing. If that were my niece or something, that is not the way I would want her to be, erm, deflowered. It’s not a nice thing for a girl that young. I think I took advantage, and I know better.”

Athos shrugged. “Well, but isn’t that kind of patronizing? It’s her own body, it’s her own life. If that’s what she wants to choose for herself, who are you to say you know better than her.”

“Because she didn’t know what she was asking for or what she was choosing, and I, in fact, did know better,” said Bruin, rueful.

Everyone was silent.

Athos looked back and forth between the other two bucks. Would this be what it was like to have a dad? Sharing sexual conquest stories over coffee? It seemed… odd.

“Anyway,” Bruin said with a shrug. “I’ve lost my taste for the entire event, I think. I’m checking out and going home.”

“What?” said Stockton. “You’re leaving me here? If you go, I’m going.”

“You can’t go,” said Bruin, shaking his head at him. “You have to try again, in the morning. It’ll be easier in the light. It all seems more civilized in the morning.”

“I don’t think it does,” said Stockton, shaking his head.

“You watch out for him,” said Bruin to Athos. “Make sure he gets out of his head and takes a risk.”

“I can do that,” said Athos, nodding. “Definitely.”

“I do not need a sex coach to help me,” said Stockton tightly. “This is mortifying.”

“No, you don’t need that, and that’s not what I would do,” said Athos. “I didn’t even make it out there last night. You’re doing better than me. And, you know, it goes without saying that we never talk about this at the firm. No one needs to know we ever did this.”

Stockton regarded him solemnly. “All right, sure. No one needs to know.”

“Is that how you two know each other?” said Bruin.

“Yeah, he interns at my job,” said Athos.

Bruin pointed between the two of them. “There is nothing to be ashamed about in participating in the rite. It’s an ancient and respected tradition that ties us to—”

“Stop it, Bruin,” said Stockton, groaning. “I really don’t need the orientation preached at me right now.”

Athos checked his phone. “Well, the morning run gets started at 10:30, right? So, that gives us an hour and a half or so to kill? Then we’ll go out together. And if it sucks again, we both go.”

Stockton considered. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Athos.

“You can’t leave,” said Bruin.

“ You’re leaving,” said Stockton, glaring at him.

“Yes, but I’ve done these things before,” said Bruin. “You never have.”

Stockton groaned.