“Okay. Right back.”
The warmth from just being near him dissipates, and I peek my eyes open as I hear the front door shut.
Mom’s watching me with her fingers to her lips.
“Please don’t,” I whisper while I stroke Widget, who turned three times in my lap and is now splayed across my thigh, purring like the world depends on the strength of his purr.
She blinks quickly. “I—I didn’t know you were serious about wanting cats.”
“There’s so much about me thatIdon’t even know right now.”
The door opens again. Theo’s back in the blink of an eye with a big box of litter and three pans. I point down the hall. “Powder room, please.”
He nods and disappears.
Mom watches his retreating backside.
I close my eyes and lean back on the couch, six kittens all over me, and belatedly realize I have a kitten on my head, but there aren’t any pinpricks.
Theo trimmed their claws.
He’s a good kitten dad.
I pet Widget. I stroke Jellybean while she licks my chin, and then pull Snaggleclaw off my shoulder when she licks my neck and tickles me. Blinky and Panini attack each other on the blanket, spilling over my lap. Cream Puff’s giving me a scalp massage, but he abandons me right before Theo walks back into the room.
“Nice form,” he says to something over my head, “but wrong rocks. We’ll work on that.”
I look up as he pulls Cream Puff off of my curtains and sets him back on my lap.
Our eyes meet again, and if I didn’t have to grab my crutches to get off this couch, I’d be tackling him in a hug.
The last time I saw that much grief and regret shining in a person’s face was his mom’s funeral.
I’ve lost grandparents. An uncle. A friend or two over the years in tragedies.
But the look of complete hopelessness and helplessness on Theo’s face at his mom’s funeral was something that quietly haunted me for years until I managed to make myself forget in high school because he was such a complete dick.
The memory’s roaring back today though.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, dropping his gaze to the cast sticking out from under my blanket.
I shake my head. “Not much. Good drugs.”
“Theyou’ll forget all of this by morningkind of drugs?”
I shake my head again.
He nods once, and then he’s gone again.
Tucking his hands into his pockets while he strolls back outside.
“He likes you,” my mom says.
She sounds surprised. Like she didn’t think he was capable of liking someone.
Or maybe like she didn’t think he could like someone like me.
“He’s a really good guy,” I say quietly, “and I’m very,verymad at him.”
