Real life love stories…MA Grant

From MA Grant

Love at First Bite

When I left for college, my mother gave me a very good piece of advice. She told me, “When you get up there, find two of the biggest, nicest men you can and cook something delicious for them. That way, you have two new friends, as well as people who can help you move things.”

After unpacking, I found my way down to the kitchen of my dorm. It was claustrophobic. The cupboards were off-kilter, the tiles were a flashback to the 1960s, and the stove looked like it was on its last legs. Worse, it wasn’t plugged in.

Luckily, the dorm was housing a number of male athletes that year. A short jaunt down the hall, I found Big D, a huge teddy-bear of a football player. He gave me a funny look when I asked for his help to move the stove—at least, he did until I mentioned he’d get a plate of fresh cookies. Within seconds he was in the kitchen, bear-hugging the stove into submission. We plugged it in—he lifted it and I crawled underneath to reach the plug—and half an hour later, D had chocolate chip cookies and I had a new friend.

A few days later, D introduced me to my first real alpha male. This guy’s name was Matthew and he also played football. Three years older than the other freshmen in the dorm, he’d lived in Mexico City for two years and spent a year at home before heading to college. He was a people-person; his smile and laugh filled a room and he made friends almost instantly with whomever he met. His command over the younger men was absolute, effortless, and seductive.

For the first time in my life, I understood why Judy fell for Jim Stark, why Sabrina Fairchild ended up with Linus Larrabee. Matthew was a leader and I was a loner. Still, he didn’t care. In his eyes, I was smart and sarcastic and I could cook.

That doesn’t mean he didn’t appreciate my understanding of the X-Men universe, the potential power of the Wing-T, or my ability to craft lewd innuendos. We’d sing along with country songs at the top of our lungs while we drove the back roads of our rural college town; he’d sometimes stop singing just to listen to me. What started as a simple friendship grew deeper as we shared our pasts, our hopes for the future, our mutual belief of living life in the present. We celebrated Halloween together and by the time Thanksgiving rolled around, we both had realized that pretending there wasn’t more between us could no longer be an option. Nine years later, I still remember the first thing I cooked for him: peanut butter cookies.

It was love at first bite.

Marion Audrey Grant is fortunate to live in the rugged beauty of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. She’s believed in happy endings and true love since she was very young, when she could only look at the pictures and pretend to understand the words. Later in life, the realisation that she had stories of her own to tell would lead her to graduate college with majors in Creative Writing and English. Thanks to her husband’s unending support, she now works as a scribe to the intelligent women and wounded heroes who need their stories told.

Red Moon, MA’s first novel is dark, moving and original, a story of family, survival, and getting on with life…and hot werewolves.