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“What?” I squealed.
“Thought you might like that,” she said, smiling. “Especially because we’ve always said we’d go to a masquerade ball together, and this will be just like the ones we read in stories! We have to go, Jill. I’m not going to let you wallow in your apartment by yourself when there’s life to be lived outside these four walls.”
“But I’m not that same person anymore, Becca.”
“Then attend the party for me! Come on, you can’t say no; Brandon already got us tickets.”
“It’s just the three of us, then?”
“Well, no. Luc is also coming.” Becca held up a hand when she saw my startled look. “Brandon will be asking him today, so we’ll see.”
“Becca!”
“But you just admitted you had fun last night when you went for ice cream with Luc.”
“Yeah, but the ball is different. This would be like going on a date. Last night was just a friend helping out a friend.”
“Oh, pish posh! I think it was the same thing, and you know it. Albeit, it was a very short date, but it was still a date.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I said under my breath, and I crossed my arms over my chest. How was I going to get out of this?
* * *
The next two weeks flew by. I worked at the florist during the day and saw Robin for therapy sessions at night. Unfortunately for me, Robin was excited about Luc. She said it might be a safe way to meet a new guy friend and that I shouldn’t discount the possibility of it becoming more. He wasn’t Rich, she said. But Rich wasn’t someone I could just get over. He had been a gentleman at the beginning, just like Luc was.
Thankfully, Becca didn’t bring up going to the masquerade ball again. She knew I didn’t own another costume, and she made no mention of going out to get one, so I relaxed into my day-to-day routine and enjoyed the freedom of living my life the way I wanted.
I had started taking a walk through the woods on my lunch break. There was a calming stream about five hundred yards in. A log that looked as though it had fallen down years ago made the perfect seat for me to rest on and take in the scene. The birds chirping and twittering added a nice ambient sound to the background, and I let myself forget about my past while I sat there. The therapist had told me to listen to the stream and let it calm me. She said I should allow thoughts of Rich and my previous life to filter through my mind and just let them go.
I had been practicing this exercise on the same log every day for two weeks, and I had calmed down so much that, at first, I didn’t notice the wolf approach. I immediately jumped up and started backing away, hoping I could escape before he thought I was his next meal, but he didn’t move.
The white wolf lay about ten feet away and was looking at me with dark, familiar eyes. His paws were crossed on top of each other, and his head rested on them in a calm repose. A closer look showed that he had dark markings around his ears. The markings looked familiar; I was sure I had glimpsed him between the trees during my previous visits. Was it the same wolf who had passed by on the other side of the stream yesterday? The same one who had looked at me for a few seconds before going about his business? If I didn’t know any better, it was like he had come here today with a purpose, and that purpose was me—not to eat, but for company.
“You want to hear something crazy?” I asked the wolf.
Did his eyebrows just lift? I shook my head to clear the thought.
“I thought you had come to see me,” I confessed. “Is that not the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard?” I sighed. “I should be trembling in front of you, but you look harmless. You’re a lot bigger than I imagined a wolf to be, but you should have seen my ex. He was also a bigger than average person; he towered over people at six feet nine.” I laughed and shook my head. “I can’t believe I stayed with him for so long.”
This time I could have sworn I saw one of his ears twitch. Sitting back down on the log, I told myself that at least the wolf was a living creature that I could talk to. When Rich would lock me up, I’d found myself talking to the plush animals I’d accumulated each time Rich came to say sorry. For some reason, he thought the plushies would alleviate my anger toward him. I couldn’t have cared less about the gifts, because I was too scared to be angry, although they did provide me with some company when I was locked up. Of course, the conversation was one-way, but I could still get my worries off my chest.
“You know, when I first met my ex, I was so impressed by his talent,” I continued to the wolf. “He’s a plastic surgeon at the hospital in the city. A good one too. He was always being invited to parties by clients that praised his work. He took me to those parties, and I had a blast at the beginning.” I turned to look at the stream as I felt a tear flow down my cheek. “It was all fun and games then, I know that now. I was so naïve.”
A whine came from the wolf’s direction, and I turned to see his sad eyes looking back at me.
“You understand, don’t you? Did someone hurt you too? Relationships are so difficult. How do you know you’re getting into the right one?”
His head was raised, and both his ears were up, as if he were trying to hear me better. I smiled at the thought that I had a captive audience.
“I’m seeing a therapist now. She said for me to think of something about my ex that I didn’t hate. But it’s so hard to do that, as all I can think of are the bad things these days. But there was a time when things were okay. It’s taken me the whole of this week to come up with something, but I just remembered that he used to let me help him with a side project.”
An ear definitely twitched toward me at this news.
“He had this makeshift lab in a back room where these wonderful and sometimes not so pleasant smells would waft out. Sometimes the house would smell like gardenias, and even when he wasn’t there.” I shook my head. “I’m jumping all over the place, sorry. The thing is, he always smelled like gardenias, and it was one of the things I found attractive about him.” I laughed. “Now I find it repulsive. The odd thing was that sometimes the place would smell of gardenias when he wasn’t home. I questioned him about it, and he showed me the lab then. He told me he had always liked science, and it was a hobby of his to experiment. I assumed he was creating perfumes, but who really knew?” I shrugged. “He never brought me into that lab again, nor did I smell that pungent, gardenia smell anymore. There was only a pleasant waft whenever he was around.”
The wolf had put his head back down again and was looking at me like a child waiting for the next part of the story.
“Rich continued doing whatever he was doing in his lab. He was making this liquid that he used to bottle up. He would let me package them up for him, and the labels said how much you could drink at a certain time. I never found out who he was sending them to or what they were for, but I often wonder if his experiments had anything to do with the men who started coming by randomly.”
