Unattainable Fruit

Chapter 5: Visits & Nostalgia

Cody's POV

I wave to Taylor and Enza as they go to walk across the street to Taylor's car, the two smiling back at me before linking hands and crossing the road. I admire how well they look together, my teeth working my bottom lip even as it pulls at the cut on the corner of my mouth.

I turn away, towards the Autumn Falls Pack Territory, and let myself fall into the world. The noises, the smells, the little snippets of conversations that tell me both everything and nothing all at once. It's all a constant flow of noise and information that passes through my mind effortlessly, but there's one thought that drowns out the rest.

My birthday is in a month and I'll finally be able to find my Mate.

I've spent countless of hours believing that I would never make it to this point. And now that I have I honestly don't even know what I would want out of a Mate.

While girls are pretty and kind, I have a secret wish that maybe my Mate will be a Man. Someone nice and kind and let's me read. Someone that doesn't look at me like I'm broken. That doesn't look at me like I've lost everything. Someone who doesn't remind me of the pain I've known for far too long. Someone strong and warm and open. Someone real.

My chest squeezes at the thoughts as I trample over the dead leaves, a layer of frost laying on the ground. The wind blows through the trees and it gives me a shiver, though thanks to my half genes, I'm a lot better than the poor couple I see huddled together on a park bench to stay warm. I see a lone girl a couple yards away at a picnic table, a camera on the table, bundled up to protect it from the wind.

I decide to take the long way home, turning deeper into the park, walking along a nice bridge that overlooks a river. I lean against the side of the bridge and imagine the thousands of books I've read. The ones where after so long the two main characters come to the park and one proclaims his love, and sweeps the other off his feet. I sigh at the fantasies that I was spoon fed as a child, charming story brooke stories seducing me to believe that one day I would have mine. A part of me wants to believe that the Moon Goddess knows what she's doing and I will finally find someone to love me. Finally have someone to be my family since my own is gone.

But the hole that aches in my heart and grabs at the ideas of fairy tales to fill it momentarily was forged by the Moon Goddess. She, Herself destroyed me, handpicked my family from my life and my chest and kept them all to herself when I needed them most.

How can I have Faith when all it's ever done was waste breath over prayers that were never even heard? Or even worse, tossed away like nothing.

Suddenly, I feel as if I've just been snatched out of my body and slammed back into a reset, everything seeming to attack me at once. My hat is too tight on my head, the wind is blowing too strong, the light is bothering my eyes, the smell of the lake so thick I almost choke on it.

I close my eyes against the onslaught of the icy wind and blinding white clouds, the hiding sun almost more obnoxious behind the foggy mask. But even with closing my eyes, all I can hear are crunchy footsteps, animals calling and the couple laughing as they try to keep the blanket that covers them from flying away. And while the sounds are just of life, I find myself angry at the noise, angry and annoyed with the way the leaves tickle the ground and skate against the wind. Before I realize it, I'm scrambling in my pocket, pulling out my headphones quickly with one hand while I pull up music in the other. I connect my headphones and press play, my breath hostage in my chest, but as soon as the first note flows from the noise reducing headphones, I relax and my chest no longer feels like it's going to explode.

There's no words just a soothing melody that reminds me of the ganaste books I read, the whimsical music you can hear in your bones as you stumble across a Fae forest.