Free Being(s) In Love 03 - A Beginner’s Guide to Wooing Your Mate by R. Cooper Page B

was a little flat, judging from how Mr. Elliot frowned at him. “Zeki Janowitz,” he said at last.
    “What?” Turning the rest of the way gave Zeki a good view of the rest of the coffee shop and the numerous customers regarding him with the same frozen expressions. “Why does everyone keep saying my name in that tone?” he demanded, not really expecting an answer.
    “I’ve never seen him react like that.” Mr. Elliot was stunned. “He was angry .”
    Angry didn’t begin to cover it. Theo had never flashed wolf’s eyes at anyone in school, even with puberty and hormones as the perfect excuse. Anger, Zeki had learned from studies of spells meant to affect feelings, was a secondary emotion. Zeki had hurt Theo by bringing up his suppressed feelings, then left him to panic. And his only outlet was cookies. Or, to Theo, it must feel that way.
    “Great.” Zeki sighed. Now everyone was going to hate him even more. Now Theo would hate him too, and he’d only been indifferent before. Zeki put his bag of cookies down. “Am I being cursed? Curses are usually not spoken of, I know, like so many things, but what?” With all the secret magic going on, it was fair to ask. “Why does everyone in town know my name now, first of all? And secondly, what ? Why do you all say it like that? Like you can’t believe me and the crap I’ve pulled, when as far as I know, I have not pulled any crap. Unless you count what happened a few minutes ago, which was an accident, a terrible, terrible accident.”
    “Did you mean it, about what Theo has been doing with his baked goods?” Mr. Elliot did not seem happy. He tapped his finger on the counter, over the cookies. “I knew they were good, but I didn’t think he was… doing that. Is it as bad as you said?”
    Zeki thinned his mouth as he considered how long Theo Greenleaf could have been channeling his feelings into his baked goods, and how long people had let him. He didn’t know what was worse, that Theo’s feelings were so desperately sad, or that he felt he had to hide them. Werewolves had those damn senses. They were supposed to notice things. This was like the entire town had been willfully blind to Theo’s pain.
    Which was probably exactly the case. They clearly didn’t like to think about Rejection with a capital R . They probably hadn’t known what to do with a “broken” werewolf among them. They’d wanted to assume that Theo was doing better, even if they knew he wasn’t.
    Zeki recalled the gossip yesterday with a bitter taste in his mouth.
    Guilt. Zeki finally recognized what had Mr. Elliot so upset. It turned his stomach too.
    “I didn’t realize.” Mr. Elliot looked to Zeki as if he owed Zeki an explanation.
    Zeki wasn’t owed anything, but he wasn’t feeling especially forgiving. He lifted an eyebrow, at Mr. Elliot, at everyone else in the coffee shop. “No one did, apparently.” Everyone had been sure to mention how Theo had no life, how he didn’t date, but they hadn’t thought in terms of magic.
    This really couldn’t have gone worse. Zeki had hurt the one person in town aside from his father he’d truly wanted to talk to, and he definitely wasn’t getting hired at the coffee shop. Maybe he could sell charms over the Internet and become one of those witches who sold love potions and other vile things. He could leave Wolf’s Paw and never come back and finally get over his stupid high school infatuation.
    He sighed. “Does he always do his own deliveries? I owe him another apology.” Not for saying it, but in how he’d said it. Zeki believed in using his magic to make things better, and he couldn’t let Theo waste away. He’d had to know what he was doing. But Zeki had outed him as a magic user in front of other werewolves while prodding at a bad wound.
    Theo hadn’t gotten over anything. He’d just learned to hide it. “Clearly, I have no hope there,” Zeki went on, trying to sound less dejected than he was. He’d never really