Eyes of the Wolf

3
Though loathe to step out of the air-conditioned Toyota, it took one look at the interior of the store in front of us to make me open my door. I glowered briefly at the sun—couldn’t do much more than that without blinding myself—before striding in the doors. However, striding in doors was never as easy as it was made to seem, especially when I was born with an innate ability to never obey the “Push” or “Pull” instructions on a door the first time I attempted them. Ignoring Chris’s chuckle, I regathered my worn dignity and pulled the door open.

Apparently Chris wasn’t the only one who had found my door problem amusing. There was a boy sitting at a four person table by himself, snickering into blue ice cream with Oreo smashed liberally in it. His black hair fell to his shoulders, and it didn’t look like it had been cared for recently—it frizzed to the point that hair curled up over itself an inch above his actual scalp. Chris seemed to know him; she gave a little wave as she walked up to the counter.

“Hmm…Love it or Gotta Have it?” she muttered to herself, eyeing, not the cups displayed on the glass, but the tub of chocolate cake batter ice cream. She was so strange about ice cream—normally she hated eating sugar, and even ate chocolate only sparingly, but she loved the rich flavor more than any other. Luckily for her, she wasn’t one of those girls who gained weight off of respiration alone—her metabolism could get her through Thanksgiving thrice a week with weight lost.

I was reveling in the air conditioning while she debated to herself. I already knew what I wanted, so I looked around the shop. Besides grizzly bear hair boy, there was a family of four girls—seemed like two sisters, a mother, and a grandmother—at a table, and a college-age couple at one of the two-seaters. I was just turning my attention to Chris again when the person behind the counter, a short brunette, said with a chipper smile, “And what would you like?”

“Umm, a Love it vanilla with Twix and gummy bears,” I told her, then looked to Chris. “Where’re we gonna sit?”

Without even turning away from her watching of the making of my ice cream, she replied, “Niko’ll let us sit with him.”

Glancing back at the tables, I realized I already knew whom she meant. The black-haired guy gave me the spoon-tilt wave before returning to his Oreoed ice cream.

“Go ahead and sit, Maya. I’ll get your ice cream.”

I turned around again, apprehensive about sitting with a stranger, but the guy—Niko—was now paying me no attention. Gingerly I sat at the table, crossing my right leg over my left and folding my hands in my lap. The position I took when I was uncomfortable. Lacking anything better to do, especially after a couple of glances around the room again, I let my gaze settle on my companion.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around him, now that I was really looking at him. He wore nice clothes (or he seemed to, since I couldn’t see what he was wearing beneath his ribcage): his short-sleeved black shirt was clean, snapped up from collar to, well, beneath the table, and looked to be one of those kinda shiny fabrics. And there was a collar.

From there, however, was the confusion. Not only was there a collar on his shirt, there was a collar around his neck. Like a dog collar. It was dark brown leather, with holes punched in it, and a blue tag with a name—presumably a surname—and a phone number on it in white letters. His hands were so callused he could have walked on them, and they were very scarred. The arms attached were muscled, but not bulky, and also seemed to be a little careworn. His left ear had a tear in it, and I would have said it was from one of those cartilage piercings getting ripped out, except no one I knew in their right mind would pierce their ear that far in. Just behind his right ear there was a scar that stretched from somewhere behind his ear to under the lobe and down toward his jugular vein. As my eyes rested on his neck, I could see tons of other, more minute scars along the sides of his neck, but all thick, as if done with a pen. Some even showed up on his jawline. His face didn’t seem too scarred, though, and his eyes were a bright, clear blue.

As his mouth turned up in an amused smile I came back to myself, realizing I had been blatantly staring for way too long, and he had obviously noticed. Instinctively my eyes went to Chris, who was talking animatedly to the brunette behind the counter, annoying the woman and her toddler waiting in line. My eyes snapped back to Niko as he turned his torso in his chair and called lightly, “Hey Chris, let people get their ice cream.” He glanced back at me out of the corner of his eye and added with a smirk, “Maya looks a little warm.”

Only in my face, and it was now getting worse. I was saved from responding by the belated arrival of Chris, who set down my ice cream in front of me and promptly skewered it with a spoon. I gave her a mumbled thank you and scooped the contents of my cardboard bowl into my mouth, sucking the ice cream and Twix off the gummy bear and letting the candy melt into a softer substance before attacking it with my molars. As I ate my ice cream, I stared out the window into the parking lot as I listened to Chris talk to Niko about school. The family of four stood up and walked out, their chairs taken up a couple minutes later by the mother and child. When silence pervaded the table, I glanced back briefly at them, and my eyes snagged again on the dog collar around his neck.

“It’s a joke I have with my parents,” Niko explained simply. Startled, my eyes flew up to his face. It was perfectly straight, so I had no idea if he was joking or not as he continued, “They’re always convinced I’m going to get lost when I go into town, so I got this and told them to stop worrying, they’ll know where to send me.”

When I frowned at him, his mouth twitched. “I have an overprotective family. I’m not even allowed to school, and they’d rather I stayed away from town altogether, whether I’m with people or not.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say but a muffled, “Oh.” Then I glanced at Chris. She had been quiet for awhile. Her eyes were going back and forth between me and Niko, until Niko turned to her and they fastened abruptly back on him. I bit my lip, looking down at the table and noticing that I was the only one who hadn’t finished yet, so I resumed the consumption of my ice cream. The only sounds around us were the voices of the other people in the shop. When the door opened again, I looked up for lack of any better targets, and watched two more boys come in. One had short, auburn hair that seemed tousled and looked like it would be very curly if grown out, and he appeared to be anywhere from five-ten to six foot. Behind him, the other boy was blonde, his hair lying much flatter than his companion’s, and seemed to be about five-seven, maybe five-eight. They both had shirts similar to Niko's, but one wore brown and the other tan, and their shorts would have blended in with any PE uniform, though I doubted the flip flops would have been welcome. The darker-haired one’s eyes—also brilliant blue—lighted on Niko, then flickered over Chris and me and darkened as he strode over to our table. As he leaned on it with his hand, he glanced at Chris and me again before turning away from us and saying, as if through gritted teeth, to Niko, “You were expected home hours ago. They won’t be happy.”

“They’ll get over it,” Niko replied lightly, playing with the dregs of his ice cream with his spoon. The hand the new guy had on the table turned white. I was feeling uncomfortable, pinned by the window by Chris.

“He’s been with us,” my friend butted in defensively. The boy’s attention snapped to her, seeming to pin her to her chair. Chris swallowed but continued to gaze steadily at him as she said, with a firm voice, “He’s not been up to any no-good, he’s been safe here with us, eating ice cream—” His eyes narrowed at her, and she swallowed again but finished strong “—with us.”

His upper lip twitched before he turned back to Niko as if Chris hadn’t spoken. “We’re here to take you home, Paint.” A chill of fear slid up my spine before it belly-flopped into my stomach. His voice had deepened as if it came from deep in his chest, and the tone touched on instinct to run.

It seemed Niko hadn’t been unaffected by the tone either, for he seemed to stiffen, and he finally looked the guy full in the face, gaze locked on his as he said, with each word clipped, “I was going to go home later, Roger, so you can take Adam back home and I’ll be there in a bit.”

I spooned the last of my ice cream into my mouth, swallowed even the cold gummy bear, and pushed back my chair to stand, which seemed to remind Chris that she could do the same. She moved out of my way as I threw away my spoon and bowl, though she seemed to give—Roger?—a wide berth. Niko and Roger were still glaring at each other, their faces maybe six inches apart. The blonde was looking uncomfortable, and when we looked at him he was quick to drop his dark hazel eyes to a level somewhere around our jean-clad knees. Several of the other customers looked equally disconcerted, their eyes riveted to the pair that seemed to dominate the room. The young mother quietly took her little boy by the hand from his chair and picked him up before walking hastily from the room. I wasn’t exactly sure why I was still there myself, but I was getting more and more irritated with this behavior now that it seemed mainly directed at Niko, but was affecting everybody else. When the couple got up and left, too, my patience snapped.

“Look,” I said, walking until I was somewhat between the pair of glowering boys, “that’s enough.” They both turned to me, shocked, but I went on, making eye contact with both of them. “This is your problem, so take it outside. You’re making a scene…” My word bank seemed to dry up as I glared into the instigator’s face, which loomed more than a foot over my own. Somehow, though, that looming seemed to lend me new anger, and I plowed on, never breaking eye contact. “You’re making a scene in a public place and making people uncomfortable. That’s rude.”

I moved so that Niko could get up. “Out. Both of you.”

They stared. I glowered. “Go. You’re disturbing the peace.”

A pair of blue eyes dropped to the tiled floor, glancing quickly up at me before turning and stalking out. Niko stood and followed, and I noticed dimly that he, too, wore shorts and flip flops. I turned to the blonde, whose gaze dropped the moment my attention was focused on him, giving me the impression that he had been looking at me. Feeling incredibly awkward, I looked to Chris before just taking a breath and walking out the door with a brief wave at the pale-faced brunette behind the counter.