Willow sits next to her with her chin resting on Snow’s thumbs, gazing up at her with wide eyes.
“I think she likes you,” I say, glancing up from the stir-fry sizzling in front of me.
“Will, uhm…” Snow hesitates while gazing down at Willow. “Is it okay for me to pet her?”
“If she lets you, of course.” My brow tightens faintly. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I read once that you weren’t supposed to pet animals in another home too much because they’ll get attached and miss you when you’re not around.”
“I don’t think that’s quite accurate.” I chuckle softly. “But if she gets attached to you and you’re worried, then feel free to visit as often as you'd like.”
“Would that be weird if I came back here just for your cat?”
“And not me?” I arch one brow. “Maybe I’d be a little hurt.”
“Really?” She glances up. “How could I make that better?”
“Show equal attention to me and the cat.”
“So you’d want pets too.” Snow nods slowly and a soft smile briefly flashes across her lips while the tip of her exposed ear turns red.
I want to joke back and lean into it, but knowing her ex died so recently holds me back.
I’m not a crass man and the last thing I want to do is cross a boundary while trying to provide her a place of comfort. Returning to my cooking, I focus on seasonings while I talk.
“Have you, uhm… have you had a funeral for Caleb?”
“No,” Snow replies immediately. “He has no family and no friends, so there was no point.”
“Not even for yourself?”
She flashes me a flat smile. “Honestly, I felt like I should give him one out of decency, but that fucker cleaned out our joint account with a fake ID the day before he died. He took all of my backup savings, so I had to dip into my actual savings to pay rent.”
“Oh, wow.” The stir-fry loses my focus. “I’m so sorry.”
She shrugs one shoulder, focused on patting Willow. “My own fault. Had I enough sense, I would have moved out the day after we broke up, but I clung to this hope that the man I fell in love with was still under the toxic prick he'd turned into. I kept thinking I had to change and it would bring him back, and sometimes, he would be there. But then he would turn back into a dick and I realized that his whole hot and cold schtick was just to keep me on site long enough that he could weasel enough money out of me.”
“You two weren’t together recently?” There’s no other way for me to ask, but I’d been given the impression that she and Caleb had been together until recently, yet she speaks with more than enough disgust in her voice.
“God, no,” she groans. “Does it sound callous? We broke up maybe five-ish months ago, but I kept being lured back into this hope that the sweet man I got an apartment with was just going through a rough patch. Took me until a couple of months ago to realize that thesweetpart of him was the act. So his death… sure, it made me sad, but I’m sadder about the situation he left me in than the fact that he’s dead. Is that horrible?”
She looks up at me with wide eyes as if my answer will determine how she moves forward with her grief.
Unfortunately for her, all the guilt I was clinging to about admiring her smile and focusing on her in the hallways despite her relationship has just melted away.
There was no relationship, and thus, this gentle crush that’s built over the past few weeks is no longer a shameful stamp on my chest.
“I don’t think it’s horrible. He left you in a horrible situation,” I reply with a very brief smile. “Even though he sounds like a piece of work, he was still part of your life. Being upset by his passing doesn’t erase the bad things he did to you or the fact that he stole from you. I’m sorry about that. I can’t imagine what a shock that was.”
“That’s why I left abruptly last week. The bank called because my rent declined, and my account was overdrawn, which made no sense because I had six months’ worth of rent in that account. I like to be safe, y’know?”
“Understandable.”
“And he drained it the day before he died. Left me high and dry. Literally. So that on top of his wrecking my car in the crash that killed him and some other stuff he left behind, this is just the cherry on top of a fantastic month.” She indicates to the floral Band-Aids covering where I took her blood and where the needle stuck her.
Every word from her amplifies my desire to help her.
There’s not much I can do about her financial situation or her health until we know more, but she sounds lacking in support and that’s something I can do outside of my growing selfish desire to spend time with her.
