Everett
Si insistedon carrying the cat carrier. It was a measure of how tired and messed up my brain was that I didn’t even argue beyond a perfunctory eye-roll. I’d had a terrible night’s sleep, filled with weird dreams I couldn’t quite recall, except I knew Silas Sloane had been in every single one of them. And when I’d tried to quiet my mind the way I sometimes did, imagining a bubble of protection around myself, I couldn’t seem to get Silas outside of thebubble.
Instead, he was in there with me, hot and kind andeasy,in a way that nothing had been easy since Adrian’s death. Easy to talk to, easy to trust (more or less), and easy to find really, really attractive, which made me feel prettyshitty.
I mean, Adrian had been gone for fifteen months and thirteen days. I wasn’t cheating on him for finding someone attractive. And honestly, if he was still alive, we’d have been checking Si outtogether. But since Adrian’s death, that part of my brain had shut down completely and, I’d assumed, permanently. I hadn’t considered what I'd do if I was ever attracted to someone else, because there’d been nothing to consider. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact that I apparently wasn’t as dead to the outside world as I’d assumed Iwas.
It felt wrong that Adrian’s death was a thing I mighthealfrom.
But when Si ushered me down the stairs ahead of him, all I could think about was how good he looked in the faded jeans that clung to him in all the right places, and how his tan skin made his blue eyes seem electric in the light ofday.
“Which way?” I asked him as we reached the sidewalk. It was warm outside, and even more humid than it had been back inBoston.
“Just there,” he said, pointing to one of the many storefronts across from O’Leary Hardware, their windows gleaming in the morningsun.
In the light of day, I could see the subtle signs that Weaver Street actuallyhadchanged from the place I remembered as a kid. Back then, I’d spent as little time in town as possible. My grandfather’s store had been the most uncomfortable place I could imagine — an endless variety of pointy tools and dangerous machinery I wasn’t allowed to touch, coupled with the assessing stares and too-firm handshakes of Grandpa Hen’s customers, who’d seemed disappointed to learn that hardware knowledge hadn’t been passed down to me genetically. “Ev’s an artist,” Grandpa would tell them apologetically, and they’d nod and shuffle their feet, glancing away like this was somehowembarrassing.
But now, the street seemed more human. The air smelled delicious — vanilla and cinnamon, probably from the bakery, bacon from the diner, and flowers from the huge display that an older man was setting up outside the shop directly across the street - a shop with an actualrainbow flaghanging outside, just below theawning.
Well,damn.
“Ev?” Silas called. “Jaywalking’s not okay, even inO’Leary.”
“What?”
“Ev, honey,” he said again, and the endearment made me stop my inspection of the storefronts to glance at him. “You’re in the middle of the road. This isn’t Boston, but if you stand there long enough, at some point a car is goingcome.”
And I was.Jesus. Standing in the middle of the street staring, like some person who’d been raised on a deserted island and had never seen civilizationbefore.
If O’Leary could be calledcivilization.
“Sorry,” I said, catching up to him on the sidewalk. “It just looks different than it did before. I haven’t been here since I was in middle school, other than the day of Grandma Anna’sfuneral.”
Si’s forehead wrinkled, and he looked at me skeptically. “You think it’s changed a lot?” He looked up and down the street, like he was trying to see what I saw, then shook his head. “All I see are the same things I’ve everseen.”
“Makes sense.” I shrugged. “You look in the mirror all the time, but you don’t really see yourself change day today."
“Or even year to year,” he agreed. “But I guess that doesn’t mean it’s nothappening.”
I frowned, filing this away to think aboutlater.
Silas stopped outside of a small glass door set between a bridal store and the bakery. He pushed it open and ushered me in front of him.Again. I wanted to call him out on this, to remind him that I was capable of opening doors for myself like a grown-up, but I figured that would be rude. Plus, it mostly made me uncomfortable because I liked it too damnmuch.
“Well, hey, Si!” A heavily-pregnant brunette in purple scrubs stood by a filing cabinet behind a high counter, and flashed Si a wide smile as he came in. She gave me a curious glance. “You must be Hen Lattimer’s grandson. Everett,right?”
“Uh… Yes?” I looked at Si, who didn’t seem to notice anything odd in someone I’d never met before knowing my name, but it made me feel as exposed as if I'd left the housenaked.
“I’m Kathy Chang,” she said, slamming the file drawer closed and coming forward to offer me her hand over the counter. “Welcome toO’Leary.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, shaking herhand.
“Hey, Kathy, is Julian here?” Siasked.
She chuckled. “Where else would you find him? He’s here day and night! But he’s busy looking after a fox kit Daniel Michaelson brought in.” She rolled her eyes. “Because he doesn’t have enough paying clients, so he needs to tend to the entire woods, obviously. Why? What’sup?”
Si lifted the cat carrier and placed it on the counter. “Ev has a new patient for him. MeetDaphne.”
“Oh!” she said, bending down to peer at Daphne. “Aren’t you the most beautiful?” shecrooned.
