Page 78 of True North

“These shifters can nitpick anything. Which brand of hot dog buns we should buy. How many coolers we need to take. My god.” Lenny rolled his eyes. “Then as soon as we get up to the park they remember they’re going to spend the whole time in animal form anyway, so who cares about hot dog buns? Every year.”

Despite Lenny’s dire predictions, Misha didn’t think the meeting was all that different from the two previous meetings he’d attended. He sat next to Hannah, who liked to provide him with a steady stream of whispered commentary, identifying other shifters and giving him details about their rivalries and alliances. Any group of people would have drama—Misha had worked in enough kitchens to know that was an inviolable fact of human nature—but he liked that the drama here seemed almost entirely good-natured, the unserious bickering of people who saw each other as family. Everyone had a dumb nickname; everyone had some petty grudge from a past year’s camping trip, when so-and-so had used all the good toilet paper. What, Misha wondered, constituted bad toilet paper?

“We’ve reserved twenty-five camping sites,” said the gray-haired woman who had hosted the cookout. Her name was Carole, and she seemed to be in charge of most social arrangements for the group, either via formal agreement or simply because she was the most organized. “I’ve only got nineteen definite yeses, so some of you fence-sitters can still come if you’d like.”

Hannah nudged Misha. “You want to come?”

Misha didn’t have a tent or know anything about camping. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

“It’s so much fun,” Hannah said. “We just roam around in the woods for four days. Everyone shifts back in the evenings so we can make s’mores. Do you know what those are? They’re amazing.”

“I think about,” Misha said. He could see if JT had any camping equipment.

It did sound fun. He liked these people, although he didn’t know them well. He liked the idea of becoming part of this boisterous community, with their inside jokes and their pool parties and their bone-deep loyalty to one another. Lenny had dropped everything to help Misha, had put his own reputation on the line, and he had only met Misha a handful of times. The shifter community in Khabarovsk had been the same way, warm and close and nosy, and Misha hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that sense of belonging until he had a taste of it again.

He would be back in Sault Ste. Marie next summer. Maybe these shifters would welcome him again then.

“I need a final headcount by next Friday night so we can plan our grocery run,” Carole said. “It’s first come first serve for the remaining sites, so let me know as soon as possible, please.”

“Who’s buying the beer?” called someone from farther down the table.

“That’s out of my wheelhouse,” Carole said, shaking her head, and a general commotion ensued until Lenny used his big voice to cut through the ruckus and say that he would handle the beer.

The meeting eventually broke up into small clusters of conversation as people drifted away from the table toward the bar or gathered their things and headed out. Misha approached Carole’s seat near the head of the table, and when she glanced up at him with a smile, he said, “I like to go camping, if there’s room, but I don’t have stuff, like—sleeping bag…”

“Absolutely not a problem,” she said. “Someone will have extra.” She flipped her folder back open and scribbled a note on the top sheet of paper. “I’ll take care of it. We’d love to have you.”

“Thank you,” Misha said, and excused himself before she could change her mind.

JT was waiting for him outside, sitting in his truck with the back seat full of grocery bags. He glanced up from his phone when Misha opened the passenger door and said, “How’d it go?”

“Good. They have a camping trip soon. End of the month. I think maybe I go.”

“Hey, that’s great.” JT beamed at him, pleased as he always was when Misha made some effort at socializing. “I can borrow all the stuff you’ll need from my brother. He goes camping basically every weekend, so he’s got everything.” He turned on the engine. “You like these shifters, eh? They’re good people.”

“Yeah,” Misha said.

* * *

The thoughts kept swimming. Sveta conveyed an invitation to dinner at her friend’s house; Lenny texted Misha with news of a possible job for him, this time as a line cook at an upscale restaurant downtown. He could see the shape of the life he might have here slowly coming into focus. He couldn’t see the shape of his life in Toronto at all. JT had shown him some pictures of his condo, but pictures didn’t tell him anything about what the condo would smell like or what Misha would be able to hear from their bedroom, neighbors or garbage trucks, distant church bells. Misha didn’t know if he would get in touch with the people he had known before, Alyosha and his wife and three kids, the few coworkers he had thought of as actual friends. Would he work? Would he take up long-distance running? He didn’t know who he would be.

He was so happy with JT. He loved the peaceful rhythm of their daily life, their quiet days at home beside the lake. He loved waking up beside JT every morning and going to bed beside him every night. He didn’t want to give up the small joy of eating breakfast across the table from JT, a simple pleasure that was also so rich and rewarding he didn’t know how he’d gotten through life before he knew exactly how JT seasoned his eggs.

And yet.

The thoughts wouldn’t leave him. He started having trouble sleeping and once got up in the middle of the night and went out to walk in the woods for an hour before he felt sleepy enough to go back to bed. JT stirred when Misha slid between the sheets, still damp from the dew he’d picked up in his bear skin, and said, “Y’okay?”

“Fine,” Misha whispered to him, and pressed a kiss to his forehead, then another, because he could.

By the end of the week, it was clear that he needed to talk to JT about what was on his mind. He tried to choose his moment well: Saturday morning after JT got back from a workout in town, when he was usually worn out but in a good mood from the endorphins and spending time with his friends. Misha decided to butter him up by making lunch, and not just any old lunch but spaghetti aglio e olio along with a green salad. He was just mixing the pasta into the hot oil when he heard the mudroom door open.

“Who broke into my house to cook in my kitchen?” he heard JT call from the mudroom, and grinned to himself as he ladled in some pasta water.

The sharp scent of JT’s sweat preceded him into the kitchen. Misha looked over when JT appeared on the threshold and took him in: his tousled curls, his damp T-shirt, the hand’s breadth of muscular thigh bared by his shorts. His eyebrows slid upward as he saw Misha standing at the stove. “You’re making lunch? Did you crash my truck or something?”

“Why can’t I just be nice,” Misha protested, although most of the time he wouldn’t even scramble eggs, so he couldn’t say JT was wrong to be suspicious.

“Uh-huh,” JT said. He peered over Misha’s shoulder, one hand settling on Misha’s hip. “Spaghetti?”