“Thanks. I think she does see that, or I wouldn’t still have a job. But once she gives me a budget, it’s hard to get her to part with more money sometimes. This whole place was a gamble in a way her other businesses aren’t. It seems like such a flash-in-the-pan idea, you know? But I think we can make it something that becomes a neighborhood institution, or, like Paige thinks, the hub for pet lovers in the area. That gives us all longevity and job security.”
“Yeah, definitely. Keep killing it, girl.”
Evan held up his hand, so Lauren gave him a high five. “Thanks for your help.”
“Now if we could just sort out your love life…”
“Oh, please. That will never happen.”
***
At five minutes before six o’clock, Lauren burst into the veterinary clinic and said, “I’m checking on my kittens,” without so much as greeting or acknowledging Caleb, who was manning the front desk.
He stayed at the desk, finishing up the chart for his last patient that day, an Angora rabbit who really had no business living in an apartment, despite the owner’s protestations that she had set up a huge rabbit habitat. He listened carefully, but the back room, where the kitten kennel was located, was too far away for Caleb to really hear anything. At any rate, all five kittens were close to the age at which they’d be adopted. All five were thriving and, fine, pretty dang cute. Giant still occasionally had trouble holding food down, but for the most part, he was doing just fine. He was smaller than his siblings, but he was scrappy and playful.
Caleb signed the chart, filed it away, and checked his email. Olivia came in, ready for her overnight shift. She and Caleb chatted until Lauren emerged.
“The kittens look good,” said Lauren.
“They’re all doing well,” said Olivia. “We’ve gotten some potential interest for them. And I think Diane has fallen for Giant.”
“Oh, good! It’ll be good to have someone we trust taking him home.”
“Well, I’m just going to pack up for the day,” Caleb said, a little awkward in his delivery. Both women basically ignored him, so he got up and went to the back to get his bag without further ado.
When he emerged, Lauren was making a show of smiling and laughing with Olivia, but there wasn’t much joy in Lauren’s eyes. Which Caleb could tell now, because they’d gotten to know each other quite well.
“Well,” he said. “Good night, ladies.”
“I should get going, too,” said Lauren. “Have a good night, Olivia.”
Lauren followed Caleb out of the clinic. Once they were outside, she said, “Let’s go to my place.”
“Okay.”
Without saying much, Caleb followed Lauren through the building’s residential entrance and up the three flights of stairs to Lauren’s apartment. She didn’t really speak until they were both through the door and it was shut. Then she threw her handbag at the sofa and swung around to face him.
“Let’s have it out,” she said.
“All right.” Caleb took a deep breath, steeling himself. They weren’t even going to sit, he supposed. She’d picked her apartment because it was private enough for them to yell at each other, not because she wanted anything sexual to happen. Caleb suspected the days of them fighting and fucking were over.
The first thing Lauren said was, “Are you so determined for us tonotbe in a relationship that you can’t even extend some courtesies to me when we work together? Are you really that paranoid?”
“So was ignoring me just now your revenge?”
“No, I… Well, maybe a little. But you were rude to me earlier.”
Caleb rubbed his forehead. He hadn’t made any conscious thought, in fact, paranoid or otherwise. “I brought you some cat food. It wasn’t a social visit.”
“I can’t exist in this limbo. I hate it. I like you, I want to spend time with you, but I want to do it in the light of day. I don’t want to feel like I have to be careful when I run into you in public. I want to greet you with a hug or something, like a girlfriend would, and not like we barely know each other. It feels like a betrayal of everything we’ve done together, and honestly, I don’t understand why we’re being secretive.”
Because acting like they were in a relationship in public made it a real relationship, and Caleb wasn’t ready for any such thing. “Public means commitment, doesn’t it?”
“It can. I’m not saying love me forever. I don’t know why you keep going to this weird place where us acting like we actually like each other means we have to get married. I know the ink on your divorce papers is still drying. I’m not trying to push you into anything. I just want to, like, have a drink with you at the bar I like down the street and not worry that if we laugh at something together and Evan sees it, you aren’t going to freak out because he knows about us.”
“Going public implies commitment. I don’t like commitment. Commitments end. They crash and burn.”
“Sure. Or you’re throwing roadblocks in our way to sabotage us without giving us a chance.”
