Unfortunately, as soon as I hear Audrey unlock the door, I know I’m going to hurl. She barely has time to smile at me, after opening the door, before I rasp, “Where’s your bathroom?”
She doesn’t speak, just points. I bolt inside her home, shoving the takeout bag of Chinese into her hands, and barely make it into the tiny bathroom before slamming the door shut. I don’t have time to turn on the water or overhead exhaust fan to cover up the sounds I’m going to make, because I’m already making them. I’m a violent puker. It’s appalling. There’s no covering up what I’m doing right now. Pretty sure I barf up a pizza I had three or four years ago.
Once done, the wave of humiliation comes over me. I’m an MVP-winning NFL quarterback, and I puke when my anxiety gets too high. I don’t know what I’ll have to promise this girl not to leak it to the press, because it honestly could be career suicide if the team finds out. I’m supposed to be a leader. A take-charge man who carries the team on his back. But the thought of a pretty girl, and what her hair might smell like, and suddenly I fall apart.
“Jamie? Do you need anything?” Audrey asks softly, her voice noticeably even-toned and pleasant.
“A spare toothbrush or some mouthwash would be great,” I admit, taking a long look at myself in the mirror. The only advantage to the anxious barf is I now feel incredibly regulated.
“There are both under the sink,” she replies. Opening the cabinet door, I find perfectly organized packages of a variety of items, most travel-sized. Soaps, lotions, toothpaste, even floss and hairspray. The items are organized by size, smallest in thefront, and I feel such a sense of peace come over me at how meticulous it all is.
I grab a new toothbrush and travel mouthwash, doing the best I can to clean myself up. When I step out of the bathroom, I find Audrey nervously wringing her hands. “Uh, thanks for the toothbrush. I’ll get you a replacement.”
“It’s okay,” she says, shaking her head and waving a hand in dismissal. “You probably can tell that I have a lot. I like to be prepared.”
“It’s quite the setup you have in there,” I comment.
“I like things tidy. And organized. Well, at least in here. My closet is a disaster,” she jokes. I honestly find that hard to believe. Taking a quick glance around the space, I find everything in perfect order. It seems Audrey has a favorite color, as the only splashes of color in her house are shades of purple. I appreciate the subtle tones, as everything in my house falls in the beige and gray scheme. I’ll fully admit I hired a professional interior designer to set up the entire thing, literally approving and vetoing mockups before she was allowed to step foot in the place.
“Are you sure you’re okay? We can reschedule,” Audrey says hesitantly. She chews on her bottom lip when she’s nervous, just like I do.
“I’m fine. Just swallowed wrong, I guess,” I lie. Fuck, I hate lying. Not only am I awful at it, I find that I really don’t want to lie to Audrey. But I can’t fathom admitting that my anxiety was through the roof either. “I’ll wait to eat, though. Just to be sure. But you can go ahead.”
“Oh, I’m good with waiting too. Please, sit wherever you’d like. I’m going to grab my dog and bring her out here so I can watch her.” She turns to head into a hallway, and I hear an immediate squeak.
“Can I see the guinea pigs?” I blurt out. “I’ve been to Jax’s enough to recognize the sound.”
“Oh, sure. Come back here. I put them in a small room because Flash wouldn’t stop barking at them.” I follow Audrey deeper into her townhouse. Usually when I’m at someone’s home for the first time, I’m acutely aware of how different our spaces are. But Audrey’s home is very similar to mine. As we pass through the kitchen, I note hardly any clutter on the counters, except for a small air fryer, and a bowl where she keeps her keys. A container of wooden spatulas sits beside the stove, and a picture of a puppy, overlaid with script that says, ‘the best therapist has fur and four legs.’ I tend to agree, but my actual therapist probably feels otherwise.
Audrey pauses to pull a container from her fridge before we continue into another room. “This is my guest bedroom. Well, I haven’t had any actual guests stay here. But the guinea pigs are technically guests, so it still counts. Right?”
“Sounds good to me,” I say with a chuckle. As we enter, I’m greeted by a massive enclosure that has to be six feet tall. “Woah. That’s intense.”
“It took me an entire day to put it together. The delivery guy said he would put it together, but I like that sort of thing. I had to get creative with it, though, since it’s taller than me. I haven’t quite figured out which of them is going all the way to the top to kick poop across the room.”
I cough as I swallow. Not what I expected her to say. “What now?”
She looks up at me with a nod. “I keep finding poop by the door. Unless one of them has a sphincter powered by fuel, I have to assume it’s kicking the poop out.”
“That’s really … not something you hear every day,” I finally say.
“There has to be some element of gravity at play here. Maybe I should ask Becca if she has any memories of physics equations. Speed plus distance or something. I don’t find any poop on the floor beside the hutch. Just across the room.”
I hum noncommittally. What the fuck was Jax thinking sending her this? I told him to get her a medium-sized cage, and that I’d pay for it. “I think Jax misunderstood the assignment here.”
Audrey snorts. “If he thinks I’m taking this apart if the pigs get adopted, he’s out of his mind. Someone is going to need to remove an exterior wall to get this thing out of here.”
I chuckle, then still as her words marinate. “Ifthey get adopted?”
An adorable pink hue creeps up her neck and onto her ears. “I mean, I haven’t exactly advertised them yet. And Becca told me how Jax will watch on a camera when he’s on away trips because he finds them comforting. I completely understand it now. I’ve found myself in here most nights, watching them eat dinner as I eat mine.”
“You don’t have to give them up for adoption if you don’t want to,” I say quietly. One look at Audrey’s profile tells me she’s struggling with the decision. “When I adopted my cats, I only intended to adopt one. The shelter said the pair were bonded, and they only figured that out because they were initially separated when they came in, and both cats became depressed. So I adopted two cats instead of one.”
“You adopted two cats because they were sad without each other.”
“Yes.” Jeez, when she says it like that, it makes me sound like a pansy.
“That’s incredibly sweet, Jamie. If you hadn’t stepped in, the cats may not have been adopted. Most people don’t want to take on two animals, especially rescues, because they think it’ll be toomuch work. Plus, the sadness could have made them stop eating. It’s hard to believe that animals can suffer from depression, but they can. Most animals do better with a playmate anyway.”
