Livy gave herself a moment to get control. She had to or she was going to rip her aunt’s fucking face off and eat it like the skin off a freshly roasted turkey.
When she knew she had control, she quietly replied, “I’ll talk to Max.”
Her aunt smiled. “Thank you, niece. You’re the best.”
* * *
“It smells in here,” Nelle complained as they sat on the bench next to each other, Nelle’s fist under her nose.
“Would you stop? You act like we took you to a pile of clothes we found in the subway. It’s an army surplus store.”
“I don’t understand why we couldn’t just stop by—”
“If you mention Ándre—accent over the A—one more time, I’m going to beat you to death. And there’s ample shit I could take off the walls to do it with.”
“Rude.”
“Snob.”
Max couldn’t believe the bitching she was getting from Nelle simply because she’d been forced to spend a few minutes in an army surplus store.
Vargas returned from the dressing room in a pair of blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and thick work boots.
“Seriously?” Nelle asked, lip curling in disappointment . . . possibly disgust.
“What’s wrong with it?”
Max had the same question as Vargas. She didn’t understand what Nelle was complaining about. It was a basic outfit. Typical of any of the former military guys she’d dealt with over the years, but she couldn’t remember any of them looking this . . . tasty.
The Levis cupped his exquisitely formed ass perfectly. The T-shirt had a worn look so that the sleeves were a little tight on his massive biceps and the bottom hung just at his hips. When he put his hands in his front pockets and lifted his shoulders, the T-shirt rose up, giving just a tease of the magnificent abs and narrow hips it was hiding.
“Are you sure you don’t want to see Ándre?” Nelle practically begged.
“Shut up about Ándre!” Max bellowed, startling everyone in the store. Startling even herself.
She cleared her throat. “I mean . . . we don’t have time for that.” She focused on Vargas. “Let’s just get a few more of those exact same jeans. And a bunch of those T-shirts in, um, red, dark green, and blue. A nice, deep . . . blue.”
Vargas frowned at Max. “Uhhhh . . . okay.” He looked at Nelle. “And I promise I’ll pay you back once I get a new debit card and have access to my bank account. Or I can write you a check . . . once I get my checkbook.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Max told him, leaning her arm on Nelle’s legs so that Vargas was looking at her again with those green eyes. “She’s rich. Like, disgustingly, horrifyingly, amazingly rich. You don’t ever have to pay her back.”
“Oooohhhh . . . kay.” He blinked several times before saying, “I’ll pay you back, Nelle.”
“Sure,” Nelle replied. She waited until Vargas had gone back to the denim section before she brutally shoved Max off her lap. “What is wrong with you?” she demanded.
“Well—”
A man who had been lingering near them while they spoke to Vargas suddenly sidled up to Nelle. She turned only her head to nail him with one of her ball-shriveling glares, and said, “Get the hell away from me or I will kill you.” He smirked and again started to say something, but she added, “You can look in my eyes and tell that I will kill you. You can feel it in your soul. Like a dove when a hawk is nearby. So what you’re going to do at this moment is walk away from me. Because if you don’t, we both know I’ll kill you and that it’ll be messy, but that I’ll definitely get away with it. Because I’m pretty and I’m rich. And rich people get away with everything.”
Frowning, the man looked at Max next and she replied with a fangless but spit-filled hiss that had him quickly scurrying off. When they were again alone, Nelle asked in a whisper, “Are you into him?”
Max knew that Nelle was talking about Vargas but a different full-human male approached, apparently sensing an opening. Nelle dismissed that belief by snapping, “I’m not talking to you, idiot.”
With that man gone, Nelle again focused on Max. “Well?”
Max sat back down on the bench. “I wasn’t, but then . . . he came out in those jeans and T-shirt . . . goddamn!”
“You know what it was? He didn’t smell like Dutch anymore. I told you he smelled like Dutch!”
“I don’t mind Dutch’s funk. Unless he’s gone to a wolf party. All that tequila does not come through his pores well.”
“No. But Dutch might as well be your brother. He’s not someone you’ve ever had a thing for. And Zé was covered in that brotherly funk. But now he’s in clothes that only reek of this horrible place, which allows you to drill down to his natural musk.” She grinned, crinkling up her nose and nodding her head. “Musk.”
“Did you have to say that twice?”
“I totally did.”
* * *
They took a ferry over to Staten Island, stopping at a diner that was apparently within walking distance of what both Max and Nelle kept calling “the old sports center.” Zé had no idea what that meant but he didn’t care enough to bother asking any more questions. Especially when the answers he got were . . . off-putting.
For instance, the diner they stopped at seemed to be manned by very large women with a less-than-friendly attitude toward Nelle and Max, even though they were both being very nice. When Zé asked about it, he was told, “Well . . . they’re bears. What did you expect?”
He expected people in a service business to know how to treat their customers! Growing up in New York as a Puerto Rican from the South Bronx, he was used to being treated in a less-than-friendly manner by some. But if service people wanted a good tip or his return business, they hid the bullshit. Not these people, though. They let their bigotry hang out there for the world to see. It wasn’t color or religion they reacted to, though. It was species and breed.
According to Max, wolves didn’t like dogs; dogs and wolves didn’t like cats; bears didn’t like dogs, wolves, or cats; and absolutely nobody liked honey badgers.
“And none of that covers the internal bigotry.”
“Internal bigotry?”
“Tigers think very little of lions, lions think very little of jaguars and leopards, grizzlies tend to slap around black bears, jackals find African wild dogs really annoying . . . the list goes on and on.” Max took another bite of a burger that was nearly the size of her head before muttering, “It’s endless. Just do what we do . . .” “Which is?”
“Which is?”
“Ignore it,” the two women said together.
After finishing a meal so large it would kill most people, they made their way down the street to the “old sports center.”
“You can wait in there. We’ve gotta hit the locker room.” Max gazed up at him. “Need anything else?”
Wondering why she was looking at him like that, Zé replied, “No. You can go away now.”
She chuckled and headed off.
Okay, there was one thing that Zé did really like about being around his “own kind,” as Max called them. Their reaction to him. Specifically, their reaction to his attitude.