His Bacon Sundae Werewolf (2 page)

“Fine.”
The grouch began to walk towards the doors.

“I’ll see you
around, Pat.” Damn it. Pat was the first man he was mildly attracted to since
Cole’s death and he blew it all up. Jules let out a disappointed huff. His
heart strangely lurched with pleasant surprise when Pat paused by the door.

“Yeah.
See you around, Jules.”

Chapter Two

The grave was
silent. So was the cemetery. Only the sound of the plastic spoon scraping
against the sundae cup could be heard. Pat Bolton made no sound when he cried.
Silent tears slid down his rounded cheeks and beard, and down his nearly empty
cup of bacon sundae.

He wondered what
his mate, Desmond, would say if he saw him now. Would he still recognize Pat,
who now weighed three hundred pounds and who’d lost all the muscle he gained
from his army days? Would he laugh at Pat, in his oversized clothes and
supersized body? Would he be pissed by how Pat simply let neglect take its
course, let his life go down the drain?

“You’re a sad excuse of a man and an even sadder excuse of a
werewolf,”
Pat could imagine him saying
. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? That’s
enough. Pick yourself up, Pat. Man up.”

Then again,
Desmond had no right to make any judgements. He was dead and with his passing,
Pat closed his heart to the world and to love. What use was love, when it could
betray you in the end and leave you hurting?

Pat tossed the cup
aside and kneeled in front of the gravestone, even if the effort taxed him. His
knees screamed at the simple movement, unable to fully support his weight. He
wobbled like a whale out of water, and he had to grip Desmond’s gravestone to
balance himself. For a moment, he pushed aside all thoughts of self-loathing to
remember the man he loved. The man who’d left him lost and wandering.

Desmond was the
dominant wolf and the dominant man in their relationship. He’d given Pat much
needed direction in a time when he was lost. Given Pat a new home at the small,
but wonderful town of New Haven and even given convinced him to join his pack.
A pack that filled all the empty holes in his heart and ended the years he’d
spent as a lone wolf wandering from one town to the next.

“Asshole,” Pat
said weakly, punching a chubby fist into a stone. He’d hardly felt the pain.

“Fucking
asshole.
It’s been three years and you know
what? It never did get better like you said. It still hurts.”

With the words out
of his chest, Pat felt lighter, although no less miserable. His joints creaked
when he stood. He’d learned to ignore it. Ignore the fast beating of his heart.
Hell, he was supposed to be a supernatural creature—fast, sleek and dangerous.
Except he didn’t feel sleek or dangerous, he only felt like a freak. Before he
got bitten, no one ever told him that werewolves could get diabetes, get
overweight or even get cancer.

“I’m dying, Pat. Can you believe that?
A werewolf
dying of cancer?”
Desmond said jokingly in
the hospital. The man he’d loved and cherished looked so shrunken and small on
the hospital bed that it was painful looking at him during the last few months.

It wasn’t supposed
to be like this, Pat remembered thinking. Damn all the myths books and movies
tinkered with. The media brainwashed them into thinking the supernatural were
invulnerable and special. Werewolves shouldn’t be able to get cancer. Then
again, life wasn’t always what he wanted it to be.

In the present,
Pat shuffled over to his car. He grunted as he crammed his body into the tiny
sedan. One look at his watch made him grimace. He was late for his Weight Losers
meeting.
Again.
Damn it all.

Desmond’s dead.
The words came so suddenly
it was unexpectedly painful, like a sudden twist to his insides. Pat felt
faint. It became difficult to breathe, like his lungs were working double time
to pump air into his system. His heart fared no better. It thumped and rattled
against his chest.

Three years had
gone by, but the hurt never really went away. He managed to roll the windows
down. Pat gripped the steering wheel hard and let the first shakes hit. They
drove mercilessly into his body, leaving him hurting and gasping for breath.

Desmond’s dead. He’s been dead for three years.
Pat steadied himself for the next panic attack, but thankfully it
didn’t come. Recounting his meditation lessons, he began breathing in and out
until his pulse settled and he no longer had trouble breathing.
 

Desmond’s dying
request was for Pat to move on, but the only man Pat was attracted to
was
way out of his league. He had unsuccessfully traded a
few words with Jules Gutierrez, the good-looking stranger who’d bumped into him
in the Weight Losers’ building, but Pat had been out of the dating game for so
long he didn’t know what to do. Most of the conversations they had were awkward
ones, and besides, why would a guy like Jules even want a loser like him?

His stomach
rumbled. Damn. Like always, he craved something, needed something to shovel in
his mouth to forget the taste of anxiety and fear that still lingered. As Pat
drove out of the cemetery, he licked his lips and remembered the taste of the
bacon sundae.

He could still
taste the grease there, and the wonderful way
the it
melted into the rich salty taste of caramel and sweet vanilla. It was an
unexpectedly wonderful merging and fusion of flavors. It was something that
should’ve been wrong in so many ways, but was wonderfully right.

Pat would’ve liked
to kill whoever invented the bacon sundae. He knew it was bad for him, but he
kept coming back for more like a drug addict who couldn’t stop.
Didn’t want to stop.
It was the same for his other loves.
Hersheys and Lays.
Triple fudge brownies
and red velvet cupcakes.
Honey bacon fried with three eggs and a stack of
medium-done steaks.

Pat had never been
an overweight kid, but food was the only way he could feel again and keep
moving forward, so he kept eating. Feel and hear the world just enough to let
it pass by him with indifference. He’d gone over the edge of binge eating after
Desmond died and never found his way up the cliff again. He barely functioned
and he’d been doing this for over three years.

Pat checked his
watch again. What the hell, he was late already. There was a nearby
drive-through he could go by.
It’ll only
take an extra fifteen, maybe ten minutes if
there’s
 
no
queue.
Pat licked his lips again
in anticipation, tasting the grease and remembering the heavenly explosion of
flavor.

Damn it all. Today
was different.
Special.
Sad.
He needed that bacon sundae. On the highway back to New Haven, Pat took a quick
shortcut to his new favorite fast food joint.

****

Ten minutes became
twenty. Pat leaned against his beaten and peeling red sedan, finishing off a
large dollop of vanilla ice cream as if he had all the time in the world. It
went down his throat smoothly, leaving a sweet and cooling feeling. He set it
aside amongst the other cups on the hood of his car until they stood in a line.

Cups, not cup.
Four cups to be exact.

“How the hell did
one cup become four?” he muttered, staring dumbly at them.

“You were going at
it like there was no tomorrow,” commented a voice.

“What the hell do
you care?” Pat growled, looking defensive and pissed. Who the hell did this
stranger think he was? “Why don’t you
scram
pal,
before I beat you to a bloody pulp?”

“Whoa there, it’s
just a friendly observation, Pat. It’s Pat right?”

Surprised, Pat
finally looked up at the mention of his name. The man who made the comment was
tall, wide, slightly compact and wore a faded leather jacket. He wasn’t exactly
round in the middle like Pat, but had the shape of someone who used to have
quite a bit of muscle, but softened over the years.

It only took Pat a
moment to recognize the stranger. He had a tanned, ruggedly handsome face with
laughing blue eyes and messy dark wavy hair cut close to his scalp.

“Jules,” Pat
murmured, suddenly unhappy to be caught gorging on a couple of bacon sundaes.

“I’m glad you
remember me,” Jules grinned.

The grin sat well
on his face despite the stubble there. It also sat well with the small and sexy
scar near his left jawline. Pat had spent a good number of hours imagining how
he’d use his tongue to trace that little scar. Imagining what Jules’s skin
would taste like.

Sometimes, when he
was alone in his bed, he’d imagine it was Jules’s body pressed against him,
Jules’s stubble tickling against his skin as the other man teased and tormented
him with his talented mouth and tongue. It was Jules he thought about, not his
dead mate. Guilt would then worm its way into Pat’s heart and unexpected grief
would fill him. Then the uncontrollable sobbing would start. After that, the
miserable shakes. As if Desmond was punishing him for thinking about other men.

Desmond’s dead.
Pat hastily shoved the
grief that threatened to bury him back into the past. He cleared his throat.

“You’re not hard
to forget,” Pat said drily, and noticed with interest that Jules was also
holding a cup.
A bacon sundae.

Noticing where his
eyes went, Jules laughed. “Guilty as charged, man. These things are damnably
addictive aren’t they?”

“Yeah they are.
You missed the meeting, too?” Pat asked.

“Sometimes it’s
fine playing hooky once in a while, yeah?” Jules winked at him like they were
conspirators. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. They never fail to inspire, but
sometimes the same old thing gets stale. Although for you, you’ve only attended
like what, two meetings?”

“Three
actually.
I didn’t miss the meeting on purpose,”
Pat immediately said defensively. How did Jules know he only attended a few meetings?
“Today was…special. Besides, you can afford to skip a meeting or two. The way
your body’s shaping up, you can afford it, but it still doesn’t give you the
right to judge others.”

“Whoa. I have to
stop you there, Pat. I wasn’t making judgements. I’m sorry if you misunderstood
that.” At his silence, Jules continued. “You think I’m shaping up nicely,
then?”

Jules glanced down
at his body. He shrugged and Pat wasn’t surprised by his nonchalance. Jules
looked like the kind of man who never took anything too seriously.

“Certainly seems like
you want what you see.”

“Dream on.” Even
though Pat said those words, he still felt his cheeks turn pink.

He was in fact,
eyeing Jules’s body beneath his faded leather jacket. It wasn’t there yet, but
Pat could imagine what it would look like with firm and well-toned muscles.
What would it feel like to run his hands over his chest and the taut muscles of
his stomach and abdomen? Would Jules’s eyes darken with desire? Would his pulse
speed up at the mere contact of Pat’s touch?

Impossible.
Jules would never fantasize about Pat the way Pat fantasized about
him. For one, Jules was like a half-finished artwork on its way to completion,
while he was still an empty canvas.

At times, the
small voice inside of him told him to man up and ask Jules out, but the fear of
rejection always discouraged him.

He’s straight for one, he’s not a werewolf, and he wouldn’t be
interested in a bloated whale like me.

Pat would repeat
the words over and over in his head like a mantra until they seemed true.

Besides, Pat
didn’t think he could endure Jules’s rejection. He’d decided it was ultimately
better to watch Jules from afar. Jules could stay where he rightly belonged—in
his fantasies. That way, Pat didn’t have to betray Desmond. That way, he could
remain chained to the ghost of his dead mate.

They ate in
companionable silence for a moment, but Pat tensed and began to feel a little self-conscious
when Jules casually leaned beside him, their shoulders brushing against each
other.

“So what’s today?”

“Huh?” Pat
couldn’t focus on his words.

All he could think
of
was how this was the first time they were alone or
were this close. It was a pleasant feeling, to be standing this casually beside
Jules. It would have been comforting if he wasn’t so nervous.

“Why is today
special?” Jules prodded. “Or was it just an excuse? You know, I’ve been there,
man. Denying that there’s a problem in the first place is—”

“Are you actually
quoting from the WL website? And it wasn’t an excuse,” Pat snapped automatically.
“Today’s the death anniversary of my mate.”

Jules’s laughing
eyes turned a darker shade of blue and his easy smile faltered.

“Oh gods, I’m
sorry, Pat.” Jules touched his arm, a look of sympathy on his face.