Sothea left long enough to grab the treats. That caught her attention, and she was off to better things. Before I could grab the sandwich, Sothea settled it on my belly, just where I always kept it.
“Do you not see the humor now?” His eyes went from my plate to my belly and back again
“Fine. It is a shelf, but it is a food shelf, not a cat shelf.”
“Works for me.” And back into the kitchen he went.
The past couple of weeks had been pretty rough on my sciatic nerve, and I’d been sitting far more than I should. Sothea took that as a sign that I needed to be spoiled and had been doing an amazing job. From the day we met, he treated me like I was the most precious thing in this world. Lately, he’d amped it up, evident from the scent of snickerdoodles in the oven, another craving of mine.
I munched on the sandwich, thinking about all the plans we had for the day. We were going to get some nursery furniture from a local store one of his regular clients had told him about. Iwas excited, but not excited enough to get out of my chair. Took a lot these days.
Sothea came out with a tray, making me pay the “milk tax” before I could eat the warm cookies. The doctor had reminded me that calcium intake was extremely important during pregnancy, and my mate took that as his personal mission to make me a milk lover. I’d never liked the stuff, but when he started bribing me with homemade cookies, I was suddenly up to the number of glasses per day my doctor suggested. But only because if I didn’t pay the milk tax first, there were no cookies.
“Ready?” He held both hands out for me, and I grabbed onto them as he helped me up.
“Is today any better?”
“Actually, it kind of is.” Our little one, who I had a feeling was the size of a freight train, had done some acrobatics early that morning, and something shifted. And while it wasn’t 100 percent, the sciatic shooting pain had subsided, and I was calling that a win.
“Now, stay here and be a good kitty because we’re going to get some new furniture, and, if you’re lucky, there’ll be a box for you.” Cats loved boxes. She was living her best life when the apartment was filled with empty boxes for a couple of days when I moved in. Sothea teased that I overspent on our cat condo because all I really needed was duct tape and some boxes. He wasn’t wrong.
We decided to walk to the store and, if need be, call a car to get back. It was only six blocks away, but in a direction I hadn’t really explored yet. As we meandered through the side streets, we stopped at all the fun places.
There was an art store, and they were sure to call it a “store,” even though it very much resembled a gallery. All of the pieces were hand done and there were some really cool items there.
We wandered through an antique store that contained more vintage and random stuff than anything else. I bought a couple of old tattoo ads for his work station. Framed, they were going to be a nice addition to the spot that the people getting tattooed tended to be staring at.
My favorite discovery? A bakery that specialized little tarts of all varieties. I left with a whole box of them, for science, of course. I had to see which ones were best. This pregnancy had given me a real sweet tooth, and I was enjoying the ride.
“This is it.” Sothea pointed to a brown door.
We had stopped in front of a store that was only identifiable by the sign above it. There were no windows, just bricks and a door.
“Is it me, or is this kind of sketchy?” I asked him.
“Oh, it’s not you. It’s very sketchy. But Ron swore this is the place to go.” He reached for the handle, only to find it locked. “Huh. That’s weird.”
“Maybe press the bell.” Which only added to the vibe.
He did, and I had half expected that we would have to ask for directions from there, that we had misunderstood the location and were a block over or something.
“Hello?” An older gentleman led us inside to what I quickly discovered was his actual workshop. “Are you the ones Ron sent?”
“We are.” Sothea then introduced us.
“He’s always talking up my business. He’s a good boy.”
I’d met Ron. He was six foot three, built like a truck, and could scare the bravest of people with a glare, but his smile could light up a room, so “good boy” probably did fit?
“Do you know if you’re having one or two?”
“Just one.” My hands went to my belly. From the size of me, it was a legitimate question. There could be a whole litter inthere. Did bears have litters? I wasn’t going to ask, afraid of the answer.
The man showed us some of the pieces he’d been working on, and before we left, we had ordered a crib, a rocking chair, a bookshelf, and a dresser. It was far more than I had planned for us to pick out, but stunning, and he was so sweet. How could we not splurge?
“The pieces you picked are available but are in the finishing stages, so you can probably have them delivered in a week.”
“Sounds perfect.”
