They were so damn cute though. It was impossible to be annoyed at them for longer than two seconds.
I dealt with the kitten damage and drank my tea and started my vocal warm-ups, hoping my voice would behave today. After making sure the kittens had everything they needed, I headed upstairs to my second bedroom where my recording booth was. I’d had it custom built in the corner of the second bedroom. It was both cozy and much better than the portable booths I’d had to use before. I listened at the window to make sure none of my neighbors were using heavy machinery that would ruin the recording and did my warm-ups before pulling up my notes and the book on my large monitor.
I got lost in work until it was time for me to deal with the kittens and my growling stomach. I blinked when I came out of the booth. It was a bit like emerging from a cave. I should probably go outside for a little while so I didn’t turn into a vampire.
I made lunch for myself and put the harnesses on the kittens, clipping them in the little stroller I’d gotten. If you’d told me a year ago I would be the kind of person who had a cat stroller, I would have said you had the wrong woman. Yet here I was, with my two little meow meows, pushing them down the sidewalk and nodding hello at neighbors as I passed. How middle class, my mother would have said. She had a long list of things she disapproved of, and having pets was near the top. As was taking a stroll in the neighborhood. If she did any exercising, it would be in her home gym with a personal trainer she paid a lot of money for.
A few people stopped and exclaimed how cute the kittens were, and they purred and jumped around and got very excited whenever a bird would fly by. I wanted to let them out to walk, but they were still so small, and I worried that it might not be safe.
My brother sent me a message while I was walking, which was unusual. He generally didn’t contact me more than once a month. Just a check in to make sure I knew he was still alive, and he could confirm the same with me.
Going to the wedding?
The sooner this wedding was over, the better. Except it wouldn’t be over. In a few years she’d have another one. You’d think that these men would stop getting involved with her after she’d left so many husbands before, but she knew how to target them and get that ring on her finger. I’d thought that maybe her age might have impacted her ability to attract the kind of men she went after, but that hadn’t impeded her either. She knew what she was doing.
Yes. You?My response was brief. He was so much older than me, and he was the son my mother had had from her first marriage. His dad was significantly older and also had much older kids from his previous relationships. I’d barely even met them.
Dallas had been married once, briefly, but he’d been divorced now for a few years and I didn’t know if he was dating anyone.
The wedding would be the first time I’d seen him in at least two years.
I think I am. Maybe we could have lunch that week? Catch up.
Huh. That was new. He hadn’t asked me to do anything with him before. Most of the time I forgot I even had a brother.
Yeah, sure.I responded. Hopefully he didn’t want to ask me for a favor or money. Being raised by my mother made me suspicious of everyone and everything. There was always a motive, an angle, something they wanted from you.
It was not lost on me that that was exactly what I was doing with Lea, but I did see it as payback. There were other things I’d done for her that she still didn’t know about. Ways I’d drawn my mother’s attention away from her and toward me. Lea had never known how to handle her, and if I hadn’t intervened, my mother would have absolutely crushed her.
Coming to the wedding with me seemed like a fair trade. We could be even and then we’d never have to see each other again. A debt paid and forgotten about.
Dallas and I agreed to have lunch on Thursday before the wedding at a restaurant. I wondered if he was bringing someone with him, but I wasn’t going to ask.
I returned back home from my walk with two passed out kitties that I tried not to wake as I lifted them out of the stroller. They blinked their big eyes at me and meowed before I set them down on the floor. Time to get back to work.
* * *
I gota good amount done on the book I was currently narrating, a gorgeous sapphic romance from a new author that I knew was going to blow up. The prose was absolutely luscious and a vocal challenge for me, so I had to go slow, and I did a lot of re-records, but it was absolutely worth it. I wanted to do this book justice. That was true of every book I worked on, but some were extra special.
My body was stiff in my chair, so I rose and stretched, wincing. I needed to exercise more often. That made me think about the Pilates class I’d done with Lea. Would she be upset if I signed up for another one of her classes? I’d keep to myself. Wouldn’t bother her. She might not even notice I was there.
Probably not.
The truth was that I wanted to see her again. Fine, I was admitting it. She was gorgeous and she was adorable, and I wanted to be around her. Sue me. I was only human. If I’d never met her before and I’d seen her at a bar, I would have gone up and immediately bought her a drink.
Not that I knew if she was even into girls. That was something we’d never encountered in our years living together. I hadn’t been dating anyone at the time for many reasons, but she didn’t have the same personal rules as I did.
Not that it mattered now. Completely irrelevant.
Would you mind if I went to Pilates again? I won’t bother you for any other favors, I swear.The message was a bad idea, but oh well.
She didn’t answer for a while and I tried not to stare at my phone while I waited.
I was acting like a silly teenager waiting for a message back from a pretty girl. I’d roll my eyes at myself if I could for my own foolishness.
Getting all twisted up about a gorgeous woman wasn’tme. Sure, I enjoyed a lovely face and a little flirtation, but I didn’t stare at my phone while chewing my thumbnail and willing a reply to come in.
“I think I have a problem,” I told the kittens. They blinked their eyes at me slowly and then begged to be picked up and carried around. I’d seen people online carrying their cats in baby slings and I was wondering if I could do something like that with Brit and Tana.
