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He was quiet for a moment, and I was afraid that I had overstepped and read the situation completely wrong. I cleared my throat. I had really fallen into some sort of spell over this guy. I knew barely anything about him, I didn’t even have a picture. I probably could Google that and find it, but still. I rattled off my number before I could think better of it, and within a few minutes, he sent me a text, simply saying, “Hi.”

I said hi back.

“I’ll let you get back to work,” he said. “I hope you’re serious about wanting to talk. Because I really like talking to you.”

Oh shit. He sounded sincere.

“I am,” I said. “Truly. Anytime. Even if it’s the middle of the night and something is keeping you awake, you can reach out.”

“Thanks, Connor.”

I bit back a groan. Why oh why did my name sound so sexy on his lips?

With my luck, he probably looked like a troll.

And with how far gone I was for him after just three conversations, I probably wouldn’t care. I’d take him, warts and all.

Chapter 5

Jack

It happened. I finally snapped. Although I didn’t know if “finally” was the right word. I’d always been an even-tempered guy. Never the type to let anything rile me up too much. It was why I had been so good at my job, good at coaching my daughter’s soccer teams, good at co-parenting. I kept the peace throughout the chaos and made sure my team made it to the other side of whatever catastrophe we were dealing with. Whether that team was my co-workers, my family, or whoever was around me. Turned out, left to my own devices, the catastrophe was made up in my own mind, and I lost it pretty quickly.

One year into retirement and I’d lost my marbles.

I hoisted myself up off the couch, despite the aches in my joints and the pop that sounded from my knee, and picked up the remains of my tattered t-shirt. The bright light of the morning shone through the tattered remains of the white fabric. It wasn’t just torn. It was shredded, as if someone had taken dull scissors to it and then just ripped. There were swatches of mud and dirt on what remained of my jeans and on the floor around me. I had no idea what was happening to me. My muscles ached as if I had run a marathon, not that I had any experience with that.

Even in my wildest of days in my youth, I’d never gotten so blackout intoxicated that I’d gone off gallivanting through the woods. Yet here I was in my mid-fifties and there was no other explanation as to what had happened yesterday and the day before.

Never mind the fact that I didn’t have a drop of alcohol or other type of drug in this house that could cause that type of reaction.

The back door was wide open, and there was mud on the floor that laid out a perfect line of prints from the door to the couch. There was fur on the floor too, little tufts of dark gray.

This had happened the other night as well. I’d played it off then as a weird reaction to bad lettuce or something. But now… I didn’t know what to think.

For the second morning in a row, I was waking up with no concrete memories of what had occurred the night before.

What in the hell was going on? Was I hallucinating now, or had I been hallucinating before? It all felt so real, and now, with the evidence in front of me… I shook that away. That was insane. I was insane. It wasn’t like I had transformed into a werewolf. This wasn’t a horror movie or one of those cheesy romances that were so popular now. There was a rational explanation for this. Maybe my medication had been swapped out for something. I took cholesterol meds. No amount of diet was fixing the genes I had, and at my age… I had taken blood pressure medication once upon a time, but now I managed that with regular exercise, though I had to monitor it quite often.

My phone buzzed, and I grabbed it from the counter. For a moment I really wanted it to be Connor, but why would he be calling me? Unless I had done something in my crazed state. This was the second time now that I had had one of these episodes. The first time I had called him after. This time I probably shouldn’t.

“Hello?” I said. Once I saw that it was my daughter Maya calling me, I relaxed.

“Hey, Dad, I was just seeing how you’re doing.”

“Great,” I said. Not sure why I felt the need to lie. I was as far from fine as I could possibly be, but I wasn’t letting her know that. I was the parent, she didn’t need to worry about me. Not any more than she already did.

“I’m all right, but my work out here got extended for a few more days, so unfortunately, I won’t be home today. I’ll be home in a couple of days, I think. This training session is taking forever.” She went on about her work. She traveled, training different branches. It was a great job, and I was proud of her, but I did miss her when she was gone. Since she traveled so much, she didn’t need her own home, so she lived in my guest house, or she stayed with her mother in Florida.

Then again, given the current state I was in — naked, staring at the tattered remains of my clothes and suspicious muddy paw prints on my carpet — perhaps it would be a good thing if she wasn’t home for whatever midlife crisis I was going through.

“So what have you been up to? Retirement life treating you good?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve done some hiking.” I looked at the mud on the floor. Clearly I had gone somewhere in my crazy state. “I’ve been outside a lot.” These were not lies.

“That’s fun. You’re being safe, though, right? Not taking on any trails that you’re not familiar with? And you keep your cell phone with you and charged.”

I let out a laugh. “Which one of us is the parent here?”