Page 27 of The Time It Takes

Chapter twelve

"Hey, Cole." When hesaw me, Arlie gave me a tentative smile and a careful hug."Did it go okay? You holding up?"

"Yeah, it was good. He seemed good. I'm glad I went."

He looked at me carefully. "You think you'll go back?"

I nodded. "It was good to talk through some stuff. I probably should've done it years ago. It just didn't seem worth the bother, you know? But I'm glad I finally went." I shrugged.

"Sure." He looked like he had questions, but he knew very well he couldn't voice any of them.

He was right about that.

"You going to treat yourself? Do something fun now?"he asked, still trying to gauge my mood.

"I think I'll just do some gaming." That was relaxing for me, and let me turn off—or at least turn down—my ruminating thoughts.

Not that there was really anything much to stew over now. I really did feel better for actually saying some things out loud, and being heard. I'd still have to figure out how to tell Arlie about what the alpha had said, but it didn't seem quite as much like a mountain as it had yesterday.

Not quite a molehill yet, but not insurmountable, either.

"Okay," said Arlie, giving me a pat on the shoulder. "Let me know if you want to do something later."

It took another week and another therapy session before I was ready to tell Arlie about my talk with the alpha. I needed to be truthful, but I wasn't ready to tell him the whole truth. He didn't need to hear all of it. Either it was bullshit, and he could be annoyed about it, or there was some small nugget of truth in the alpha's thoughts about the two of us, at least on Arlie's part, and he'd be embarrassed about it, maybe even ashamed.

I didn't want him to be ashamed. He hadn't done anything shame worthy. He was a good guy, and he didn't need embarrassing assumptions lobbed at him, even accidentally.

I picked my time. I waited till I was in a good mood. And I kept my voice casual. I was playing with my phone, and looked up, as if suddenly remembering. He was scrolling through Netflix trying to find something we could both stand to watch that hopefully wouldn't put us to sleep. I was sprawled in the chair by his bed. My plan was to not end up falling asleep on his shoulder today. That was the goal—that, and telling him this news.

"I finally talked with the alpha. It was a little weird. He seemed sort of somewhere between accepting and not. You know? Like the standards were going to be higher for any guy you dated, rather than any girl."

I hoped I wouldn't blush. I wasn't bragging; it was the way he'd said it would depend on the person, after I said the person wasn't going to be me. Like any man Arlie dared bring home was going to have to meet a far higher bar than the mild automatic acceptance his halfhearted attempts to introduce his female dates received.

"Oh," said Arlie in a small voice. "That's...good, I guess?"

"It could be worse," I agreed. "It sounds like he's going to be more open than you thought, but maybe not all the way accepting. I bet if you give them time, and find someone you really like, it'll all work out."

He stared at me. "You think so?"

"That was my impression, yeah."

He thought about that some more. "You don't think they'll decide I'm not a good fit for the pack? I'm not saying they'd vote me out right away, but it could get messy even if they don't."

It was true people accepted his casual girlfriends without any apparent judgment, because it was still a lot more socially acceptable here to date pretty blond girls than literally any man alive.

Unless it was me.

"It could happen like that, but not if Gary's chill about it. They won't go against Gary. They'll adjust. Sure, maybe they're not as accepting as they could be, but they're not as homophobic as you feared. So there's room for growth, right?"

"Right," he said quietly.