"Don't hurry," Layla said sweetly. "Oh my God, I meant we'll see you soon," she stuttered as she hustled away in embarrassment.
"Those Weasels are a bit odd," Dwayne said, buttoning his pants as we walked across the street to the diner for lunch.
"Oh, they're nice girls," Granny said as she dropkicked her phone into the fountain in the middle of the town square. "They're just not used to peckers touching the inside of their dresses before they've been sold."
"Oh dear lord," Dwayne gasped, completely mortified. "I'll wear panties next time."
"There will be no next time," I muttered as I retrieved my Granny's phone from the water.
"Well, aren't you a party pooper," Dwayne huffed.
"Yep," I told him. "And you…" I dangled Granny’s now useless cell phone in her face. "I am not getting you a new phone. This is the third one this week you've destroyed."
"No problem," she said with an evil little grin on her face. "I'll play Scrabble on your laptop."
"That's just awesome," I said in defeat.
No getting felt up, no dress and soon no laptop. This day rocked.
Chapter 2
"I've got the pictures back from Jamaica." Dwayne squealed as he pulled a large envelope out of his man-purse and slapped it down on the table of our booth. "Granny, you are gonna flip!"
Hank, Granny, Dwayne and I had just spent an awesome week in Jamaica. I'd gotten engaged, sunburned and had more fantabulous sex with Hank than I'd ever had in my life. Jamaica was now my favorite place in the world. Of course Hank and I were already mated, which in the Werewolf world was as good as married, but since we inhabited the human world too we decided to tie the knot.
"Please tell me you didn't snap one of Granny in her thong bikini," I pleaded. I took a huge sip of my Coke and said a quick prayer to all the angels and saints.
"Oh for heaven's sake, no. But I did get some gritty yet artistic nudes of her," Dwayne said with glee.
"Left side or right?" Granny inquired as she carefully folded her straw wrapper into a small football.
"Right," he answered as he examined a few shots.
"Good, because my right boob is slightly bigger than the left one. Wanna show my best assets."
"Okay, let's start today over." I positioned my fingers in a goal post so that Granny could flick her paper football. "We have three days left in Hung before we have to report to Chicago. I need to pick out a wedding dress."
"And invitations," Dwayne interrupted.
"Yes, invitations. And we have to brief Junior so he can take over the Pack," I continued.
"And pick out your flowers and a cake," Dwayne added.
"Yep—cake and flowers. And we have to make sure Granny can still shoot a gun straight," I said, trying to steer the conversation back on track of what was actually important.
"I resent that, sugar lips," Granny said as she downloaded Scrabble onto Dwayne's phone.
"And we have to get a caterer and a band and a photographer and a…" Dwayne reeled off his list like an auctioneer on crack.
"I'm gonna elope," I hissed as a large and ugly headache exploded between my eyebrows.
There was silence.
Blessed silence.
And then there were tears.
"Do you hate me?" Dwayne blubbered.
"Um… no?" I answered wondering if this was a trick question.
"Well, I am feeling hate. I have only been in one wedding in my three hundred years. The bride was an absolute cow and the groom had three teeth."
I winced at the image he'd just planted in my brain and hoped this was going to be one of his shorter diatribes.
"There were a total of three blind people and four others that no one knew at the wedding and I had to wear a robe."
"Why in tarnation were you wearing a bathrobe?" Granny asked.
I kicked her under the table. We did not need to encourage these nightmare-inducing stories.
"It wasn't a bathrobe," Dwayne huffed indignantly. "I have far better taste than that. It was a clerical robe."
"I'm about to ask a question that I'm sure I don't want the answer to, but… why were you wearing a clerical robe?" Because as much as I didn't want to hear the rest of the story, my morbid curiosity always got the better of me.
"It was when I was a Catholic priest," he said as if that were even a little bit logical.
"I got nothing," I mumbled as I held up my hand and tried to get Donna Jean's attention so we could order, eat and leave.
"I wasn't an actual priest," Dwayne explained. "It was because I was bald. The monastery was full of hair-impaired fellas and I fit right in. It was winter and they were an unending blood supply. It was totally awesome. Plus those holy men had a wonderful glee club and they let me sing tenor."
"You ate monks?" I asked as the headache moved to my temples.
"Noooooooooo, I just sipped. They were a bit bland, but what would you expect?"
I decided to ignore him and move on. Sometimes that was the easiest thing to do with Dwayne. The waitress, Donna Jean, was clearly on her break as she was sitting at the counter and had taken off her shoes. She was a Were Fox and had bunions. That was a mystery to me since all the Weres I knew were exempt from most human ailments. Granny said she was just lazy and I tended to agree.