An employee sauntered over and snatched up the kid by the back of his shirt. “I told you before you can’t be here without your mom. Who let you in?”
The kid was crying and appeared to be bleeding, and Devon watched the other man soften before his eyes.
“Are you okay?” Chloe asked. She pulled her legs away from his so he could stand.
“Yeah, but I’ll feel like I need a body cast by morning. Are you okay?”
She flexed her arm. “I hit my elbow, but it wasn’t on the floor, it was on you.”
“Well, I’m good and soft, so you’ll be okay.”
She snorted. “No, Devon, I promise you’re hard in all the right places.”
He was pretty sure all the blood had drained from his head. “Um, well.” He cleared his throat. “I think I’m ready to go if you are.”
She gave him that megawatt smile again. “I am.”
They gathered their belongings from the locker after changing their skates for shoes. Devon held her hand on the way out, the brisk chill of early March smacking them in the face.
“Would you like to come to my house?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered a little too quickly.
She laughed at his eagerness. “I have the perfect recipe for hot chocolate if you're interested.”
“I’m interested.”
He followed her down Pine St. to a cottage-style house set back from the road. It was the sort of place he would have pictured her in if he’d tried to picture her in anything.
“It’s an old carriage house. I rent from Mrs. George; she works at the elementary school.”
He nodded. “I know her.”
“It’s been in her family for generations. It’s only one room, unless you count the bathroom. There used to be a main house in front of it, but it was condemned years ago and torn down.”
As she spoke, she unlocked the door and let them in. It was quaint, he decided, and it smelled of her. There was a couch and a coffee table, and the bed was on the other side of a decorative dividing screen. A black and orange calico cat wound its way around his legs as he walked in.
“That’s Rum Tum Tugger,” Chloe informed him.
“From Cats?”
“Yep.”
“I like it.”
Pleased, she smiled at him. The kitchen was along one wall and could only be classified as such due to the dollhouse-size stove. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have known what to call it. The cat followed her, meowing as she opened a cabinet and took out a bag of cat food.
“You can sit and I’ll make the hot chocolate.”
“Okay.”
Spotting the tiny bathroom through the open door, he went in there first to wash his hands and face. He was sore from the fall, but nothing he couldn't handle. Her entire place was tidy, almost to a fault; there was nothing out of place. He supposed it would be hard to be messy in such a tiny place before it became cluttered.
He went back out and sat on the couch. The cat jumped up onto the cushion next to him and leaned forward to sniff his arm.
“He’s very friendly. I call him Tugger for short.”
“No Mister Mistoffelees for you?”
