The next day at school Lux came up to me in the parking lot. "We have to talk," she said.
"About what?" I asked.
"About what you saw, look don't act stupid because that kind of stuff you just don't forget about," she said menacingly. "Just don't tell anyone please. Can I trust you?"
"Brian is gay isn't he?" I asked.
She turned back around, "Embry, please word gets out and rumors will go off. He doesn't want that. He's just waiting for college to get the fuck out of here. Can you please just not tell anyone?"
"I promise," I said easily. I couldn't deny her that, not even if I wanted to.
"How do I know you're not lying?" she asked.
"I guess you'll just have to trust me," I said.
"I don't do that," she said.
"Do what?" I asked a bit confused.
"I don't do that trust thing. I either know something about you nobody else does, or I just don't trust you," she said looking at her phone.
"Like blackmail?"
"Embry, it is blackmail," she said with a grave tone to her voice. "Look I don't have time for this," she said turning around to walk to the building.
"Wait," I stopped her. "Go on a date with me."
"Excuse me?" She asked almost as if it was an insult that I wanted a date with her.
"You heard me, go on a date and you'll probably have something to blackmail with later on," I told her. Frankly, there was only one thing I hid from everyone and it was that I was a werewolf.
"Why do you want to go on a date with me?" She asked.
"Because," I didn't want to tell her the truth. I didn't want to tell her that she was my imprint and that I loved her blindly because of it. "Because, I like you." She quickly turned around and ran to class leaving me with doubt about our date.
Later in chemistry she asked, "Where do you plan on taking me?"
"I don't know, anywhere you want I guess," I said.
"You don't really want a date, you just want to talk, don't you," she said.
"I want to get to know you," I confessed. "That's all I want, why don't you let people do that?"
"I have my reasons, and besides you know plenty already. You know my name is Lux, that go to La Push High School, I am of native American descent, I have blond hair, gray eyes, I'm a Junior, what else do you need to know?" I noticed she didn't mention her dads.
It was a rhetorical question, I know that, but I answered it still. "How about what you like to do after school? What you like to read? What's your plan after high school? How is it that you're failing the class but you understand everything?"
That Saturday, Lux took me out to a 50's Diner in Port Angeles. Inside it there was a bar with red vinyl stools and red booths aligned against the wall. Along one wall there were pictures of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and so on. We sat at one of the booths looking out to the sidewalk drinking chocolate milkshakes.
"You said you wanted to know me?" she asked. "But don't think it's fair for you to know me if I don't get to know you."
"Okay, shoot me a question," I challenged.
"Okay, why were you at that theater in Seattle?"
I laughed before answering remembering why I was there. "I went with Jacob. He was taking his friend's kid to see it and he asked me to go so he wouldn't be so bored."
"And the kid wasn't bored?"
"The kid is intelligent beyond her years," I confided. "So why were you there?"
"My parents work there. One is an actor, and the other is the director of Romeo & Juliet, and I sometimes go to help with make-up and costumes," she confessed. "Okay, so, what is your favorite thing to do?"
"I like to hike and camp," I said sincerely, although I left out the part I turn into a gigantic wolf.
"So a wilderness man," she said snickering.
"What you don't like the woods?"
"I'm a city girl," she sighed and drank her milkshake.
"Yet you're living in the middle of La Push," I reminded her.
"I was living in Seattle before my parents kind of made move out here," she said. "Before Seattle it was New York for a while."
"New York?" she nodded without any further details. "Did you like it there?"
"It is a hell of a lot better than all this rain and clouds, over there you can actually see the change in seasons."
For the next two hours we sat there drinking our milkshakes and sharing life stories. I told her about my small family and she spoke about her complicated family between her two dads and a mom. I told her about my hiking (without the werewolf part), she told me about her theater, specifically dancing. I told her about living in Washington State, she talked about the Big Apple.
At the end of the date she said, "After hours of talking to you, I still don't have anything to blackmail you with."
"You will though," I said.
"Really what?" Then I kissed her, she didn't pull away but when we unlocked lips, she said, "Don't ever do that again." She jumped in her car and left leaving me completely confused, more than before.
