Page 8 of True North
Misha swallowed and picked up another slice of pizza.
“Either that or you’re fucking with me,” JT said. “Who taught you how to say ‘pizza’? How did you end up here if you don’t speak any English?”
“Pizza,” Misha said, through his mouthful.
JT clearly wasn’t going to get anything useful out of him. Okay. He finished his own slices and took his empty plate inside to put it in the dishwasher. Through the window, he could see Misha still eating like he was on a deadline. The gears in JT’s brain started turning, rusty though they were. What else could he do to help Misha?
He still hadn’t texted Lenny. If he was being honest with himself, it was stupid to let anything distract him from his preparations for the critical upcoming season, his final chance to prove himself before his contract came up. He was expensive, and he knew the front office was starting to wonder if he was worth it. The last thing he needed was to keep pouring his time and energy into dealing with this random bear. Maybe his parents were right: this was out of his wheelhouse, and he should get people involved who knew what they were doing and had experience with this sort of thing.
He wasn’t convinced that was the local shifters, though. Lenny had said Misha wouldn’t let anyone get near him, but that wasn’t true; Misha had no problems coming near JT. Maybe he’d had bad experiences with other shifters, in which case JT didn’t want to spook him by inviting some random bear to come over. He didn’t think Misha posed any danger to him, and they were making good progress, so why risk it? He’d drop by and talk to Lenny in person, maybe; trying to communicate via text message left too much room for error.
He wasn’t getting too invested. He was just helping out a little. Some food, some clothes. Maybe he’d see if Misha wanted a shower. The guy didn’t smell great, and plus he’d probably feel better after getting some of that caked-in dirt out of his hair. Misha demonstrably understood what a hot tub was, so the odds were good that he’d understand a shower. He hadn’t hatched from an egg in the middle of the woods, after all. At some point, presumably, he’d lived a human life with all the ordinary human trappings of clothes and bathing.
He went back outside, where Misha was cramming the last of the pizza in his mouth. Misha eyed him as he chewed, clearly a little wary, and JT tried to look nonthreatening as he said, “You feel like taking a shower?”
He didn’t expect Misha would understand. His words caught Misha’s attention, at least. Misha cocked his head and watched alertly as JT gestured toward the house, his body held tense and motionless, with the sense that he would burst into action if JT moved too quickly or came too close.
“There’s a shower downstairs, in the guest suite,” JT said. He made the universal bathing gesture of pretending to scrub beneath his armpits. “Don’t even have to go upstairs. What do you say?”
Slowly, he walked backward toward the kitchen, and beckoned Misha to follow. Misha kept staring at him without moving, so maybe this wasn’t going to work—but then Misha stood up and took a cautious step forward, and then another.
JT grinned. Lift-off.
Four
Misha warily followed JT into the house. What was the worst that could happen? If all of JT’s patient offering of meals and clothes turned out to be a cover for his secret hobby of murder, Misha would turn into a three hundred kilogram bear and fight his way out. He didn’t have much to fear from anyone, at least not physically.
The house was really nice—certainly nicer than anywhere Misha had ever lived, spacious and clean, with high sloped ceilings and windows positioned to let in the morning light. JT led him through the kitchen and past a cozy den, comfortably but expensively furnished with an overstuffed leather sofa, and then down a hallway lined with framed pictures Misha didn’t have time to examine.
JT was rich, Misha realized. He lived alone in this big house right on the water: he was obviously rich. Misha just hadn’t thought about it before. Some things were hard to notice or care about as a bear.
At the end of the hallway, an open door passed into a bedroom. Misha slowed, confused, but JT kept going toward another door at the far end of the room and disappeared inside. A light turned on. Misha drew close enough to peer into the room. At first, he couldn’t figure out what he was looking at. Then his memories from his old life surfaced: this was a bathroom. The strange white chair in one corner was a toilet. JT had opened the glass door of the shower enclosure and turned on the water. For what purpose? He was going to bathe with Misha in the room?
No, of course not, and Misha understood as JT turned toward him, even before JT motioned to him and pointed into the shower.
His first reaction was to feel ashamed. He could smell himself; he knew he didn’t smell great. JT could probably smell him, too, and thought he was disgusting, and wanted him clean.
JT smiled at him. He didn’t look disgusted. He said something; Misha managed to pick out the word “shower.”
Itwouldbe nice—Misha had to admit—to feel clean. The hot water would feel good. JT had been kind to him so far; he probably wasn’t about to start mocking Misha for his matted hair.
What was the worst that could happen? Nothing worse than what had already happened to him.
He pushed down his sweatpants and stepped out of them. JT beckoned encouragingly. Slowly, keeping one eye on JT for any signs of sudden movements, Misha shuffled into the shower.
He gasped as the water hit his skin. The drops were sharp and almost painful, like a hard rainfall, and hotter than he had expected. But this was what a shower felt like when the water pressure was any good. He remembered now. It was supposed to be like this. He closed his eyes and turned his face into the spray, relishing the hot water now that the initial shock had faded.
JT said something. Misha turned his head to squint at JT through the water running over his face. His English had never been great, but he had been able to get by, but all the months he’d spent as a bear seemed to have erased most of what he’d known. Now he was naked in this guy’s shower and had no idea what he was saying.
JT said something else and made that same gesture again, lifting each arm in turn and moving the opposite hand in a circle beneath his armpit. Then he pointed at something in the shower. Misha tracked the direction of his finger: a few bottles clustered together on a ledge.
He remembered soap and shampoo as relics from a different life. He remembered bathing himself, and the basic mechanics of doing it, and rubbing a towel over his hair when he was finished. But the three bottles all looked the same, even when he squinted at them and silently willed them to differentiate themselves in some way. They were all blue with writing on them that he couldn’t read, and no helpful clues to indicate the contents. Scrubbing himself with shampoo probably wouldn’t hurt him, but he would be embarrassed to pick the wrong thing with JT standing there watching him.
What was the word? It came to him, surfacing from some distant recess of his brain. “Help,” he said, and pointed at the bottles.
“Oh,” JT said. He reached past Misha and picked up one of the bottles, pointed to his hair, and put it in Misha’s hand.
“Okay,” Misha said. He opened the bottle.