There’s no water in the bathroom I use upstairs. Piles of renovation shit everywhere. Have to go up the damn stairs just to get to my bed.
So I lay down to sleep on my couch.
Not that I can sleep.
Feels like noon at six in the morning.
Fucking jet lag.
But I was wrong and I know it.
She’ll probably never want to see me again.
And that’s for the best.
After hours of tossing and turning and hitting my foot wrong and cussing to myself, I hoist myself off the couch,take a piss in the downstairs powder room—don’t want to use Caden’s bathroom either—and head to the kitchen.
Early morning sunlight streams through the side windows, but it’s not enough light, so I switch on the overheads. Then I fumble around trying to figure out what to make for myself when I can’t carry anything since it takes both hands on my crutches to keep weight off my foot.
There’s Ziggy’s air fryer on my countertop. The one I’m not supposed to touch.
Bananas on a banana hook that wasn’t here before.
A ten-pound bag of potatoes front and center in the pantry. Six bags of tater tots in the freezer. Two leftover containers in the fridge—one with cubed potatoes, one with—I sniff it—mashed potatoes.
The vegetable drawer is full of peppers and green onions and carrots. There’s a carton of eggs. A stick of butter. No milk. No cheese.
No chicken, I can hear Caden say.
Can see him smirking about it too.
I mentally flip him off.
I want a bowl of cinnamon cereal.
Which I also don’t have in the cabinets.
Can’t drive myself, which fucking sucks. No phone, so I don’t have my app to order grocery delivery. Got a business card from the taxi driver who brought me home, but see again, I don’t have my phone to call anyone for a ride to the store to get a new goddamn phone either.
I’m snarling as I tear open a banana like I have a personal vendetta against it.
And that’s how Ziggy finds me.
Fuming over how all of the food in my house is easilyeaten by toddlers or old people who have lost all of their teeth and eating the banana in enormous bites out of spite.
I brace myself for more yelling, but when I slide a look at her, all I see is wariness. Wariness in her bloodshot blue eyes. Wariness in the way she’s holding her shoulders. Wariness in the way her body is leaning away from me.
Fuuuuck.
I scared her last night, and I’m scaring her again this morning.
Look who’s about to choose Naked Tuesdays over you.
Jessica growls.
“This way, pup,” Ziggy says quietly.
Jessica takes the opportunity to full-on snarl at me before they both escape onto the porch.
