Chosen By The Dragon (3 page)

It had been a couple of days since she’d heard from Jacob. Not since they’d had sex. Wendy walked along the bar, cleaning up empty glasses and dumping them into the small sink behind the bar. The crowd that night was quiet, which was annoying. She could’ve used some loud distractions from her thoughts.

She wanted to believe something else was going on, and not the depressing possibility that now that he got what he wanted, he didn’t need her anymore. They’d talked every day since he got into town; he had pursued her so hard. Was it just to have sex in the woods? Could that really have been his whole goal?

She’d called him a few times, even left a voicemail, but nothing so much as a courtesy text. She wanted to believe he was different. He’d seemed different than the others. Still, in the back of her head, she hurt. She felt betrayed. It seemed like an awful lot of work for a quickie.

A young man came into the bar.  He was good looking in a way, though maybe a little soft. He came around to the bar and sat at the stool nearest Wendy. “Can I get a beer?” he asked her.

“Sure,” she said, “what would you like?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “What’ve you got on tap?”

“You must be part of that conference in town, huh?” she said and grabbed a frosted mug.

The young man gave a small laugh. “What gave it away?”

“Other than your hand-sewn, tailored suit? The fact that you guys, with all of your money, take whatever’s on tap.”

He laughed again and plucked at the lapel of his jacket. “It’s that obvious, huh?”

“Look around you, pal.”

“Well I could say the same thing about you,” he said, leaning in smoothly.

“Me? How so?”

“A precious stone amongst a river of coal. Look at you,” he said, holding both of his hands as though she were a piece of art on display.

She was still so hurt by Jacob’s rebuffing that she allowed herself to indulge a bit in this man’s flirtations. It felt good to be wanted, and what was the harm? If Jacob didn’t want her showing attention to anyone else, he should’ve returned her calls. This was his fault. Wendy smiled.

“Thank you. It’s kind of you to say.” Then with the mug she pointed to the line of taps. “Your beer?”

“You have an amber ale?”

“That we do,” she said, and tipped the mug under the tap as she pulled the lever.

“You’ve got great hands,” he said. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

She laughed. It was a cheesy line, but cute in its own way.

“Come on,” he goaded, “be honest. This isn’t your first time.”

“No,” she said, smiling. “I’ve done this once before.”

“Ah, so you’ve had a chance to work out all of the kinds in your technique.”

“Kinks?” she asked and set the mug in front of him. “There are no kinks. Flawless since day one.”

“I’m going to put that on my license plate boarder.” They laughed together and he took a sip of his beer. “Not bad,” he said, and she could see the lifelessness in his eyes that said he was lying. “So are you seeing anyone?”

“Sort of,” she said. “You still haven’t paid me for the beer.”

“Sort of?” he said. “What’s that mean?”

“It means sort of. Pay for that or I’ll make you pay for it.”

“This special guy of yours, he got a name? What’s he like?” He tipped back the mug and drained off half of it.

“All right pal,” Wendy said, all sense of flirtatiousness gone, “get the hell out of here. Raul!”

A few other bartenders picked up the call for Raul, the call traveling out the back to the patio outside.

“How’s your mom?” the man suddenly asked.

A cold shock went through Wendy’s system. She couldn’t formulate an answer. Her mind was completely stuck. All she could do was stand there and stare at this man that just brought up something few people know about.

“She having a good day today? Maybe she’d like some company, since her piece of shit daughter is out gallivanting all night with untrustworthy types. Do you know where your sort of boyfriend is right now? Or, more to the point,
who
he’s with?”

“Get out,” Wendy said, her voice shaking with each word. There was nothing she could do to control the quivering of her lower lip.

The man drained off his mug, and then slapped a 20-dollar bill on the bar. “You tell Jacob I stopped by, huh?”

“I don’t even know who you are, you asshole,” Wendy said. By now all attention in the bar was centered on the two of them.

“Don’t worry,” the man said, smiling as he squinted his eyes. “He does.”

Standing from his chair just as Raul came in from the back, the man winked at Wendy.

“See you around.”

Raul came up and stood between them. “All right, you’re out of here. Move it or I’m moving you.”

The man chuckled to himself as Raul escorted him out, but Wendy felt sick.

Jacob sighed as his phone vibrated again in his pants pocket. He didn’t need to check to see who was calling. He knew who it was. Still it was a strange compulsion that made him fish it out and look. Wendy had been calling almost nonstop for the last half hour. He’d been trying to keep his distance, but this was getting ridiculous. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Timothy was right, he was getting distracted. He almost lost a major point in the negotiations and all just because he couldn’t stop thinking about Wendy.

She was all he wanted to think about! That was a problem. Maybe any other time of the year, hell, the next twenty-five years, it would be fine. Right now, at that exact moment, he couldn’t do with the distractions she was causing him. Ever since their time together, his mind was locked in that place, in that time. The feel of her skin, the smell of her hair…He wanted nothing more than to be back to that place of intimacy with her. He could not scratch that itch. He needed her and he needed to have her all the time.

Either he stopped this now and let himself enjoy her for the rest of his life or he gave in to his poor willpower, let himself get swept up in the passion of it all, lose negotiations for his clan and potentially lose everything he’d spent centuries building. It was unfair to her, and he obviously had no way of explaining it, but he had to make this choice. Really, it was in everyone’s best interest.

As he mulled these thoughts over, the phone rang again. This was what he was talking about! She was a distraction! Still, this didn’t look like it was going to end any time soon. He put the phone to his ear. Before he could get out “Hello?” her voice was screamed at him.

“Your little friend came to see me today, Jacob. He came to my bar, pushing my buttons, threatening my mother!”

“Whoa,” Jacob said. The loud noise of hotel bar was too much. He quickly moved outside. “What? Who came to see you?”

“He said you’d know. He threatened me! My mother! How did he know about my mother, huh? You over there talking shit about me? Bragging to all of your little douchebag friends about bagging some local chick and now they think I’m just open season?”

“Wendy, stop, please. I haven’t said anything—“

“You’re a liar!”

“I’m not lying! Are you at the bar? I’ll come over right now. Wait there.”

“Oh no you don’t,” she said. That more than anything made Jacob freeze. “You’re gone for days and all of a sudden you’re just on your way? Where were you earlier? Where were you yesterday or the day before? I had to call you seventeen times before you picked up, you son of a bitch.
Now
all of a sudden I’m supposed to believe you give a shit?”

“Wendy, please, it’s not like that.”

“I don’t give a shit what it’s like!”

“I had to focus on work. I was becoming too distracted—“

“So I’m a distraction, am I? That’s what I am to you.
Now
I’m a distraction. Not before. Not before I took you up to some place special to me and let you fuck me. No, no, then I was your little magic snowflake. And you know what really disgusts me? I was actually buying it. I actually wanted to believe that you were this sweet, handsome guy that you presented yourself as. But no, now I distract you. Well don’t let me be a distraction any more. You and your little friend leave me the hell alone.”

Before he could say anything, the call ended. Jacob pulled the phone back and looked at the words blinking on his phone. “Call Ended” It felt so final.

Just like that. Had he lost her for good?

Wendy walked home from work, arms hugging her middle, but only half because of the cold. The wind blew around her, chilling her ears. She kept her head down against it, hair flapping behind her. A few stray strands found their way across her face, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Why hadn’t he called? It’d been another day since they’d talked on the phone. She knew she’d told him off. She’d been angry and scared. She meant every word she said, but still… Nothing? He wasn’t even going to try to make it up to her? It was hypocritical, she knew, but it felt like he was just letting it go. Letting
her
go. Was it that easy?

She’d said it in anger over the phone, but as she walked home, she really began to feel that everything they had shared together was a lie. All of his dodging her questions and giving her cryptic answers fell into place. It wasn’t that he was reserved; he was not letting himself get close to her. He didn’t want to be close to her, just inside of her.

Wendy sniffed against the wind, her nose running. It was the cold that made her nose run, she told herself. It was also the wind making her eyes tear.

It was 3 o’clock in the morning; her shift had ended half an hour ago, and she’d never felt more alone in her life. Walking up to her front door, she put her key into the lock and turned it only to find it unlocked already. Wendy tilted her head slightly and tried the doorknob. Somehow, she expected it to not work, but the door squeaked as it opened, just as it always did. She couldn’t say what it was that set her on edge.

Wendy stepped slowly, cautiously into the house. The lights were dim--only the ones in the living room were on and they were low-wattage. She didn’t expect the house to be a beacon of hope, but somehow it felt off. Wrong. Wendy closed the door behind her, the latch locking with a click.

“Sophie,” she called out.

The nurse was nocturnal, which made her perfect for watching Wendy’s mom while she was at work. In all the years they’d worked with one another, she’d never come home and caught Sophie sleeping. Not that it would matter. Her mom was hooked up to enough machines that if something were to go wrong, the beeping and blaring would wake the dead. Still, it was a matter of professional courtesy.

As she came closer to the living room, she heard the TV on low. Was Sophie just watching TV and hadn’t heard her? Mom’s machines were beeping. Why hadn’t Sophie wheeled her into her bedroom? Just as Wendy stepped to the corner to look inside, she heard a man laugh. It was a soft, throaty laugh. Genuine. It was also familiar.

The sound of that laugh made Wendy cold all over. She wanted to scream, to run, but mom was in that room with him. No matter how scared she was, she couldn’t leave her mother. Wendy rounded the corner and looked at the man sitting on the couch. There he was, holding the TV remote, one leg crossed over the other in his finely tailored suit. The creepy man from the bar.

“Where’s Sophie?” she asked him.

“Shhh,” he said putting a finger to his lips. He never took his eyes off of the TV.

“Where’s Sophie?” Wendy repeated louder and stepped into the room. She was so terrified that in order to act or speak at all, she had to get angry.

When he looked at her and sharply repeated the gesture, though, she was reminded of how terrified she was. “This is a good part,” he added and pointed to the TV.

Morbidly curious, Wendy looked over to see him watching some late night sitcom. It was a rerun, but she’d never seen the show. The father was arguing with his predictably tenacious tween daughter. It was an entirely run out concept at this point, but back in the 90s, they ate this crap up with a spoon. The dad put on a show of being upset, hands on his hips, but the daughter just let off some inane quip. The man laughed again, right along with the laugh track.

“Get out of my house,” Wendy said. “And tell me where Sophie is.”

“You’re being very rude,” he said, and turned off the TV. The loss of the TV’s gentle glow and small sounds brought her to the present. She hadn’t realized how much of her mind was distracted by the simple fact that the TV was on, but now that it was off, she felt terror seize every part of her. She just had to stay angry.

“You’re damn right I’m being rude,” she said in a loud whisper. It was late, and her sick mother was still sleeping just a few feet away. She hated the situation but she wouldn’t wake her mother if she didn’t have to. She didn’t trust that the poor woman’s heart could take it.

“I gave Sophie the night off,” he said casually and looked down at his fingernails.

“Is that a metaphor for something, or is she going to come back tomorrow refreshed and well-rested from her day off?”

The man laughed, and then forced himself to do it more quietly. “Oh, you are funny. I can see why he likes you so much.”

“Get the fuck out of my house, you asshole!”

The man looked at her as though considering it, then tilted his head slightly and said, “No.” He stood from the couch, and in a single step was by her mother’s bedside. “I’m having trouble with your Jacob.”

“Yeah, well he’s not
my
Jacob, so it’s not my problem.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and came around to stand near her mom’s head. Putting his face beside hers, he looked at her and whispered, “Say it’s not your problem one more time. Say it loud enough for her to hear.”

Wendy’s lip quivered as it curled and she clenched her fingers into fists so tight that her fingernails dug into the flesh of her palm. “Get away from my mother.”

“Tell Jacob to back off. He’s becoming… difficult.”

“If you don’t get away from her right now—“ Wendy stepped forward with the full intent of ripping his throat out or something equally as heinous, but when he brought his hand up and rested it on her mother’s collar, his fingers just inches from her throat, everything inside Wendy froze.

“If you can’t make him back off, well…” His hand moved closer to her mother’s throat, “I’d hate to have to give you motivation.”

Wendy breathed so hard that her nostrils flared, her breath fast and broken. The man stood with a bright smile on his face. He tossed the remote on the couch and walked past Wendy.

As he did, he said softly, “Have a good night.”

Wendy stood unable to move until she heard the front door close. She rushed over and locked both of the locks.

She heard him laugh again on the other side.