The Wolf Diaries, page 1
The Wolf Diaries
by Bridget Essex
Synopsis:
Who said anything about love?
Jadin Fields is a werewolf with a big heart. She loves her work as a dog trainer at a pet store, and she loves spending time with her kid sister. She has such a big heart, in fact, that when a complete (and gorgeous) stranger approaches her out of the blue at a pizza shop and begs her to act like her girlfriend—just for a minute...Jadin actually says yes.
Tess Loranger has long, honey blonde hair, a bewitching smile and is the most attractive woman Jadin has ever set eyes on. She was also just dumped by her fiancée, and is trying, desperately, to show her that Tess can rebound just as fast as she can.
But this is just a one-time thing, right? Just a few minutes in a pizza parlor. Just one, amazing kiss, right in front of Tess's ex-fiancée...
But then there's the party. And the wedding. And then Jadin realizes she just might be falling for the woman she's not supposed to be in love with...
What could possibly go wrong?
"The Wolf Diaries"
© Bridget Essex 2018
Rose and Star Press
Smashwords First Edition
All rights reserved
Please don’t pirate this book.
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Dedication:
For the love of my life, always.
I’ll run with you forever beneath the moon,
yours alone.
Entries:
March 23
March 23 – Continued
To-do List #1 (plus motivation)
March 25
Text Conversation #1
March 27
March 31
April 1
Text Conversation #2
April 1 – Continued
April 1 – Continued, continued
April 2
April 6
Text Conversation #3
April 7
April 8
Text Conversation #4
April 11
Text Conversation #5
Text Conversation #6
April 13
Text Conversation #7
April 20
April 22
April 23
April 23 – Continued
April 24
Text Conversation #8
April 25
April 29
April 30
May 1
Epilogue – May 3
March 23
I never thought of pizza as life changing. I mean, I’ve had a really good ‘za in my day, the kind that makes your eyes roll back into your head, makes your toes curl…I’ve had pizza that’s even better than some sex (some sex, mind you).
But life-changing? How could it be?
It’s just pizza, right? That’s what I thought, anyway. It's ordinary dough and tomato sauce and spices and cheese (glorious, glorious cheese), but that's all a pizza is. Something delicious that you eat and then you're done. It's not magical or out of this world or life-changing...
That is, I didn't think it could be...Until my sister’s desperate need for a pizza from Papa Chef’s made the day take a very strange turn.
And something happened that I will never be able to forget.
I met someone. And she kissed me.
She.
Kissed.
Me.
A perfect stranger kissed me, and…
Whew. I guess I'd better start back at the beginning or absolutely none of this is gonna make any sense. I’ve been staring at this page after that last “and” for the last five minutes, and I just didn’t know what to say or how to start this story because it's so damn weird. I...I guess I'm just really overwhelmed, and I needed to write it all down so I remember it, so I remember exactly how it happened today.
How I met her.
Because I need to remember it for the rest of my life. I have to.
So I guess I'm just going to start at the beginning.
My kid sister, Jada, gave me this journal as a Christmas present, which was really thoughtful of her. I used to write in diaries and journals pretty much constantly when I was a teenager. They were really helpful places for me sort out all of my many (many) angsty feelings (I was a pretty angsty teen), and I was able to confide in the journal entries, confide all sorts of deep, private things that I wouldn't normally tell anyone.
I loved writing in those journals, but when I left high school, life just sort of caught up with me, and I can’t remember when I stopped writing…but I did.
I’ve been meaning to pick up this journal that she gave me and start it since Christmas Day, but it’s just been sitting on my television stand, gathering dust because when I get home from work, I’m too tired to do much else besides veg in front of the TV. So the journal sits there, I have the best of intentions of starting it, and then I just...don't.
Rinse, repeat.
But today?
Like I said, something really weird happened today.
And I’ve got to write it down.
I can't forget.
Okay. So, I normally pick up my sister from school on Friday nights. My parents thought it would be “wholesome” for Jada's big sis to do something fun with her at least once a week, but Jada and I both just think it’s an excuse for our parents to get frisky with each other, knowing that Jada's gonna definitely be out of the house for an allotted period of time.
Insert a million groans and parental jokes here.
But, you know what? I love seeing my sister at least once a week, and she actually doesn’t mind losing that Friday night to going out with her friends since she enjoys spending time with me, too. I’m never gonna take that for granted, so it really works out. Win/win.
Jada and I are pretty far apart in age—I’m thirty-four, and she’s sixteen, because our parents had a weird mid-life crisis thing and realized they were really late in having that second kid that they always wanted, and then along came Jada. So, growing up, I mean I was already eighteen and out of the house when she came along, and we weren’t as close as I’d like to be.
Hence the Friday night thing.
Normally, every Friday, Jada and I have a ritual that's kind of set in stone: we get Chinese food and play video games. Jada tells me stuff about all the different boys she’s dating (this is apparently very stressful to be dating all these different boys, and I try to lend as much of a listening ear as I'm able, but my lesbian-ness makes it hard for me to be understanding in that area since she apparently has an actual ton of guys to choose from, and I had one chick I was into in high school, and she was super not into me...but, yeah, anyway, I try to listen and be an understanding big sister...it's just sometimes a little difficult). In turn, I tell Jada about all of the adorable animals I played with all day at my job that week (best. Job. In. The. World.), and we just generally have a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and a lot of Chinese food. I mean, a lot. We always end up walking out of the take out place with at least three huge paper bags between us.
But, today?
Today, Jada said she wanted pizza.
I am literally never going to say no to the idea of pizza, especially considering that she wanted it from Chef Papa’s. We all know Chef Papa’s makes the best pizza in the entire universe (disagree? Fight me). I’d been craving Chinese food all day, a little like Pavlov’s dogs, I guess since I’d been expecting it, but when Jada mentioned Chef Papa’s…well.
I placed our usual order pretty much the minute she brought it up.
We talked about all sorts of different stuff on the drive there—I don’t really remember what. What sticks out in my mind, though, is that I told her I’d just run into the pizza shop really quick and pick up the pizzas. I told her that she could just wait out in the car for me, because I’d only be a minute.
If Jada had come into the pizza place with me...well…
Everything would have gone differently.
It might never have happened.
But everything was set into motion by that simple, quick, split second decision, and Jada stayed in the car, and I walked inside, and then everything just...it just began.
Chef Papa’s is this tiny, hole in the wall pizza place on the very edge of Monroeville. It’s honestly nothing to write home about on the inside. Imagine your own tiny, favorite pizza parlor, and you'd also probably be imagining Chef Papa's. It has lots of booths lining its red and white checked walls. The booths are vintage, maybe about fifty years old and they weren't remotely taken care of in the interim, with packing tape holding the many, many cracks on the vinyl cushions together and keeping the seat filling that's left from spilling out. There are pictures of tomatoes lining the walls, and the floor is a dirt brown linoleum that keeps actual dirt from being noticed too much.
My parents took me here when I was a kid, and they continued the tradition with Jada, so there's a huge nostalgia factor going on. So, no, it's not gourmet or particularly memorable, but it's our family pizza place and the pizza is delicious, and I was really looking forward to it.
It was a Friday afternoon, so all of the booths were full, or thereabouts. The ancient arcade games in the low-lit back room, where kids run after powering down their slices, were all being played—the place was hopping.
I came in and stood in line to get the 'za. There were just a couple of people ahead of me.
I had my hands curled in the pockets of my jeans, but even curled tightly, I could still feel my fingers itching to pick up my phone and…I know that, clearly, this is going to sound hella pathetic, but it’s probably only going to be my future self reading this (or my future biographer. Ha!), so I’m gonna do my best and be really, really honest when I write entries in this journal, as much as it pains me to.
So, here goes.
I wanted to pick up my phone, open Facebook and check on Mary.
Well, when I say “check,” of course, I mean more like low level “stalk.”
Not that I’m going to forget this, but—for the record—Mary is my ex-girlfriend. She broke up with me, broke my heart, stomped it into all sorts of really sad, itty-bitty smithereens. I don’t want to rehash it all, because of all that aforementioned pain and suffering, and I've got to get to what happened today…
But, as I was standing in line for the pizza, I just really wanted to check up on her. Like, really badly. I was limiting myself to visiting Mary’s Facebook profile once a week, because it was just getting sadder and more pathetic every single time I did it. I knew I needed to let her go, let it go, and the sooner, the better
But…the cheating-on-me thing was just really hard to let go of.
Yeah, I promised I wouldn’t talk about it. Not today, not here. I’ll bring it up later.
Deep breath. Let it go, let it go…
Okay.
So, I guess the only really important part of this worth mentioning is that I wanted to check up on my ex.
I didn’t. I brought my phone out of my back jeans pocket, and I thumbed the screen open. I brought up Facebook, and I was about to type her name into the search bar when I found myself rolling my eyes at myself (something I do more than might be good for me).
I was so over myself.
“Come on, self!” I tried. “Just...just don't do it. Because you're going to see her gorgeous picture, and you're going to miss her like all hell, and this whole thing is just so super pathetic at this point, right? She cheated on you. She doesn't deserve you. You’re here with your sister, and you have an awesome, fun night ahead of you. Just don’t do it.”
So I didn’t. Through sheer willpower alone (don’t ask me how I found that much willpower—it was a damn near miracle), I checked my notifications, slid my phone back into my pocket and lifted my chin, staring straight ahead at the eventual counter, the eventual pizza and the eventual really nice night I was going to be having with my kid sister.
And that’s when I felt the hand on my shoulder.
It was such a light contact that, for a minute, I honestly wondered if there was even anything touching me, but I turned to look anyways.
And there she was.
The very first thing I noticed was…hm. I’m not sure about the first thing, because I noticed...everything. I noticed everything, because when I turned and looked at her, someone else was coming into the pizzeria, and when the door opened, it let in a shaft of light, and God, I know this is corny as all hell, but here it goes:
She was caught in that ray of light, and she looked actually angelic. Like I was someone drowning, and she’d just reached out, wings an all, and caught me before the water swallowed me up.
I can’t believe I just wrote that down, but there it is:
The truth.
She was so beautiful that I thought she was an angel.
I'd just like to also put down here, for posterity's sake, that I'm so glad no one else is ever gonna see these words. How damn embarrassing is all this? I don’t really think like that, you know? I mean, I don’t, I’m not just trying to save face right now. I look at women, and my thoughts range from, “she looks nice,” to “she looks sexy.” I don’t think about rays of light or...or angels. I don't think about things in metaphors, with all this meaning behind them. I mean, I just don't…
I realize I’m getting sidetracked here trying to save face, and that’s just stupid.
So, even though I never think like that, I wanted to write down here that, today...I did. It’s the truth. I saw her, she took my breath away, she looked like an angel, and I know how stupid that sounds.
But it’s the truth.
So the woman in front of me—angel lady—she had honey blonde hair that was down loose around her shoulders in perfect, pretty waves that the sunlight seemed to sparkle on. Her face had amazing makeup, like all that contour stuff that’s popular right now, and a pretty shade of red lipstick that almost seemed to have an iridescence to it.
Her lips were soft and thin and wide and expressive, and her mouth drew me in because it was beautiful.
She was wearing a really chic blue and black dress that seemed to have been made to follow the curves of her body—and she had some pretty impressive curves going. Her chest was large, and the dress plunged low, and her breasts looked like the kind you dream about laying your head on (and, you know, licking—maybe that's just me). She had a gorgeous, curving rear and thick thighs and calves that practically made my mouth water. She was holding a pocketbook and rocking a pair of really tall, shiny black heels. But even with the heels, she was a little shorter than me (not surprising, I’m a beanpole).
And she was staring up at me with a really worried expression.
She looked so worried and upset, actually, that I didn’t realize I’d started leaning toward her unconsciously. The distress on her face, that obvious worry, made me want to help her. I’d say there was just something about her, but if I see anyone in any trouble, I always try to help. I’ve always been like that—just wired that way, I guess.
But, the thing was?
There was something about her.
She was beautiful and seemingly in trouble, and that made me pull toward her, though I could never explain exactly why, I knew the gist of it:
Her hand was on my shoulder and I wanted to help her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her, voice pitched low. I don’t think anyone else in the crowded—and loud—pizzeria heard me.
She glanced up at me, surprised, then took a deep breath, searching my face. “Uh…you are, yes?”
The person who’d just entered the pizzeria—giving this stranger that pretty shaft of light that had made me think of angels—shut the door just then, and the bit of draft the door's closing made pushed the scent of this woman to me.
My eyes widened a little, but then I nodded.
“Yes,” I told her with a little smile. “I’m like you.”
She'd asked, of course, the eternal question for people “like me:” this woman wanted to know if I was a werewolf, too.
Um…I don’t really want to get into the whole “werewolves are totally real, and I'm one, hooray!” explanation today, because—honestly—I think the only person who’s ever going to read over this journal is Future Me, and, trust me...I know a thing or two about being a werewolf since, you know...that's what I am.
But on the complete off-chance that this diary falls into someone else’s hands down the road, I promise I'll talk about the whole wolf thing in one of my future entries. Probably.
Long story very short: yes, I’m a werewolf. Yes, werewolves exist.
Uh…surprise? I guess?
So, yes, I knew the woman standing in front of me was one of my kind. I could scent her easily with the breeze (beforehand, the aroma of pizza was pretty overpowering to my sensitive werewolf nose. I was perfectly okay with that fact, by the way, with it being the most delicious pizza in the world and all that).
But now I knew what she was, and instantly, I assumed that something was wrong and she needed help…in relation to being a werewolf. Why else would she ask me if I was like her?
But then she stepped forward, voice low.
“Okay, great.” Her worry melted from her face and the sunniest, happiest, prettiest smile replaced it. “Can you help me?” she asked, breathless.
I blinked. “Of course. Uh...what’s up?” I was about to ask her if I knew her, but I knew better than that.
