“I don’t know, Harry,” Micah sighed, scraping his fingers furiously through his curls. “How do you convince somebody who thinks he’s shit, who’s been told and shown his whole life that he’s shit, that he’s the most important person in the world to you?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said apologetically, peering with his big, pale blue eyes through the wire-rimmed glasses on his moon-round face. “I sort of relate more to him in this scenario. I mean, I know it’s possible for somebody to fall for me, but I don’t really think it’s likely, and when people hit on me I always really suspect that they’re just screwing with me. Stuff you learn as a kid really sticks with you, you know?”

“I guess,” Micah sighed. “I just wish he’d give me a chance to prove it.”

“There’s no way to prove that that’ll satisfy the core knowledge that you’re shit,” Harry said miserably, picking at the blueberry muffin on the glass-topped wrought-iron table. The green umbrella flapped in the late summer breeze above them as traffic shuffled by in the congested downtown street beside them. Micah sighed and took a long pull off his caramel coffee.

“What brought this on, anyway?” Harry asked. “Did something happen when you went hiking?”

Micah took another long, slow drink while watching Harry’s face. Harry was innocent and naive, eager to please and had the self-esteem of a skinny pig at the state fair. He might believe Micah, but he might not think to keep his mouth shut about it, and might forget if Micah told him to keep it a secret. Micah couldn’t extend the drink any longer without calling attention to what he was doing, so he set the cup down and laced his fingers around it.

“It got a little dangerous,” Micah said honestly. “We had a brush with our own mortality. No scars, just bruises and some deep body aches, but it had a lasting effect. On our way out of there, after the danger had passed and we knew we were safe...I guess we were still on an endorphin or adrenalin rush. I kissed him. Or he kissed me. It was pretty much mutual, honestly. And it was hot, Harry. Really, really fucking hot. But then the next morning he tells me that it was a mistake, that our friendship was good enough for him and he didn’t want to press his luck. And I agreed, at first...we have been friends forever, and moving on to more from there is sort of a gamble, but I don’t think it’s too much of a gamble. It’s not like we’ve never faced rough shit as friends. We’ve had our fights, our falling outs, our miscommunications. We always bounced back from it. I don’t think adding sex would change that part of things. It would alter the content of the fights, but not the quality of the pattern. We fight, we cool off, we think, we talk, we box or hike or run, we move on. That’s like the perfect mechanism for long-term relation-shipping, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Harry shrugged. “I’ve never really seen a long-term relationship up close. Not in that way, anyway. I get them at the high and low points, like babies being born and pregnancy announcements and cancer diagnoses. It’s hard to get a clear picture that way, everybody seems solid in those moments. Well, most people anyway. The guys who text their mistresses while their wives are in labor obviously aren’t in it to win it, but they’re really the exceptions.”

“Ew,” Micah said, wrinkling his nose. “See, if either one of us had the capacity to be that much of an asshole, I’d understand his hesitation. But as far as I know neither of us is...what?”

Harry had risen his eyebrows and looked away at the ground, studying it carefully. “Oh, nothing, nothing,” he said quickly.

“Bullshit. What was that look for?”

Harry sighed heavily. “Well...okay. So. I’ve known you both since high school, right? You more, obviously, but I knew him too. And...he’s an adult now, and he had a rough childhood, so I don’t really want to hold it against him, but you didn’t say if either of you were an asshole, you said if either of you had the capacity to be an asshole, and really the only criteria for that is whether or not that person has been an asshole like that at any point in the past, but there were extenuating circumstances, and....”

“Harry,” Micah sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Can you please skip to the verb?”

“Okay okay okay,” Harry said in a breath. “I saw Zeke do some bad stuff in high school. He didn’t mess with me because I was your friend, but people like me...a little too excited about dissection day and chess club, you know, weird in a brainy way...I saw him trip people and stuff them in lockers and mix up their beakers in chemistry and throw people in trash cans...and like I said, extenuating circumstances being what they were, and he didn’t really have a solid support system outside of you and your family, so there was no one to guide him or nurture him at all. But he does have the capacity to be an asshole. And I don’t know if you ever saw that side of him, so I think it’s important that you’re aware of it before you pursue this any farther, if the capacity part is the part that concerns you. Personally, I would just be concerned if he actually acted like an asshole to you, but I’m not the one thinking about dating him.”

Micah sipped his coffee. He had witnessed some of what Harry mentioned...not all of it, by any means, but he had seen Zeke introduce a few kids to the inside of a trash can...and he had excused it away with the same reasons that Harry gave. Zeke had mellowed out as puberty tapered off, and when he got a job that he was good at, it had tapered off even more. He seemed to have found a solid center to orbit around, and had stopped bullying people. As far as Micah knew, anyway. But Harry was absolutely right. The capacity, the potential, was there even if Zeke didn’t act on it. Which made him wonder for the zillionth time what was going to happen next month when they were pitted against each other in a small room. Would Zeke’s beast form revert back to his high school days, or would it find that same center to circle around? He chewed on his straw absent-mindedly, then noticed Harry glance at his watch.

“Appointment?” He asked.

“Yeah,” Harry said apologetically. “C-section. She wanted to do it in the middle of the day so her great-grandmother could be there. Poor old lady has just about had it with this lifetime, but she wants to meet the baby before she goes. I’m cutting it a little close on the due date, but the baby’s healthy enough to thrive, so it’s not malpractice, just a little bit of artistic license.”

“I didn’t know M.D. was an art degree,” Micah said, his lips twitching in amusement.

“Everything is art, and all the world’s a stage,” Harry said with a childish grin. “I’ll see you later, Micah. Try to relax, okay? Everything will work out. It always does, doesn’t it?”

“I guess,” Micah said absently. “Thanks, Harry. Have a good birth.”

“Yes,” Harry said, almost skipping away. He was whistling an old show tune all the way to his car, and Micah smiled and shook his head. Harry made some good points, no matter how badly he fumbled around them. Zeke did have a large capacity for cruelty, and it was impossible to argue someone into a decent sense of self-esteem. It was also entirely possible that neither of those were the reason that Zeke didn’t want to pursue something; but Micah couldn’t know that unless he could get Zeke to talk about it again.

“But if he does talk about it, he’d probably just say the same thing he said last time,” Micah muttered to himself. He tossed his empty cup in the trash and started walking toward the river which cut through the center of town. “Doesn’t want to risk the friendship, doesn’t think he’s the one for me, thinks he’ll screw it up. Those are terrible reasons to ignore the best relationship you could have.”

That last bit sounded a lot like narcissism, and Micah bit his lip as his face heated. He walked down to the marble-printed walking path beside the river, past the steel, cutout animal heads which framed the burbling fountains. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my, he thought. The fourth head in the pattern caught his eye with a shock of fear through his heart. He stepped closer to the wolf head. Whoever designed it had managed to capture the exact essence of a wolf in mid-attack, his lips curled back, teeth exposed, that laser-focus look in his cold steel eyes. Micah shuddered involuntarily, then turned away toward the rushing rapids below. Leaning on the red railing, he let thoughts rush through his head and bubble out of his mouth, like the wild water in the river he gazed upon.

“That’ll be you, in a few weeks,” he muttered. “Savage, instinctual, brutal. Nothing but an animal, rattling your cage. Rattling your bones. Rattling the very foundation of your most important friendship, unless we can find a way to fix that.”

With a heavy sigh, he chucked a loose bit of concrete into the water. It splashed, then bobbed to the surface and floated away downstream. He followed it with his eyes until it fell away out of sight far down the river. This was his last day of freedom before school started, and he had wanted to enjoy it. Instead, it seemed, he would be spending it obsessing about Zeke. Defiant against his own mind, Micah shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking. These paths along the river extended ten miles out in either direction from where he started, and he suddenly, impulsively, decided to walk it all. He might be exhausted the next day, but at least his mind would be drained of this nervous energy.

The bustling city fell away behind him after an hour, giving way to the industrial block. Environmental protections gave a one-mile buffer all along the river on either side, so he quickly found himself walking between towering walls of native vegetation, growing wild along the river, crowding greedily against its banks. It reminded Micah in a flash of the bottomless pool at the top of the empty mountain. He was suddenly desperate to go back there, for no discernible reason.

“The last time I saw Zeke’s honest, inner self? His honest desires, his real feelings?” Micah wondered out loud.

“You smell like one!” Someone screeched from the thicket beside him, making him jump nearly out of his skin. A squat, weathered woman dressed in brightly-colored terry cloth and denim rags toddled out of the thicket, glaring at him accusingly. “You! You smell like one!”

“Smell like what?” Micah asked. And how could you possibly tell? He nearly gagged on her stench as she came within inches of his nose.

“You know what! They come in the night! They eat your children! They turn your husbands! You smell like one, and I’ll kill you! I’ll burn you alive!”

Micah started to back away, but she followed.

“I don’t want to eat any children,” he said, trying to sound soothing, but only succeeding in sounding just as crazy as she did. “And I don’t want to turn anybody.”

“Flamer! Cur! I’ll burn you in your own flames!” She shrieked and ran at him, pulling off a flip-flop and wielding it like a weapon. Micah turned and ran. He wasn’t much of a sprinter, but he could pick up some good speed when he needed to. Her screams quickly faded in the distance, and after a few minutes, he felt safe enough to slow down. When he turned around, she was nothing but a bright pink splotch on the horizon.

“So, the question is,” he said, catching his breath. “Am I a baby-eater because I’m a werewolf, or am I a husband-turner because I’m gay? Which ‘one’ does crazy lady think I smell like?”

The better question was, did it matter? In his haste to get away, he had run out of walking path, and was now wading through waist-deep desert grass. From where he stood, he couldn’t see a street. The river was too wide and fast to cross here, and he refused to walk back down that path toward her. Sighing, Micah walked away from the river. He had wanted one last adventure, hadn’t he? Getting lost in the desert with no food or water certainly fit that description. Scolding himself for being overly dramatic, Micah chose his direction carefully. There were only a few ways you could go in this town without running into a street; you practically had to be planning it. It wasn’t long before Micah found pavement, and then a convenience store, where he stopped for water. The crazy lady had disrupted his brooding. In a rueful sort of way, he appreciated it. He probably shouldn’t have been dwelling on things he couldn’t change anyway. It only served to irritate him needlessly.