I freeze mid-stride and tip my head toward the vaulted center of the home. When no other sound comes, I wonder if I just imagined it.
“Yeah?” I try just in case.
“I lost an earring,” Brinley says. “I think it could be in the studio. Would you mind checking for me?”
My inner hero puffs his chest. “Of course.” I hurry down the stairs and head toward the cat den. “What does it look like?” I can’t exactly see her from out here, so I glance over my shoulder to survey the kitchen.
“It’s a small gold hoop,” she says, her muffled voice coming from the cat den after all.Ah,there she is. Hunched beside the beanbag looking for the earring there.
“Okay, holler at me if you find it. I’ll go check the studio.” I get smacked with a phantom whiff of the litter box and shiver as I bolt toward the garage door. I keep my gaze pasted on the floor as I take the stairs and head straight to the cleanup door to retrace Brinley’s steps.
It’s an eerie feeling here; like I’m a victim of a heinous crime and I’m revisiting the crime scene for the first time. Luckily, the cleanup crew already came by and…crap!They came by and cleaned up, meaning they vacuumed the fallen litter grains. If that’s the case, they would have vacuumed up the earring as well.
My heart sinks. I can buy her new ones, of course, but what if these are special to her? Probably some gift from her deceased grandma, something the woman handed over on her deathbed while—
A nearby scooting sound from the other side of the door pulls me from my thoughts. I’ve got to be hearing things; there’s no way a cat could be making that kind of noise. But then it comes again. The hush of something substantial moving within. A small grunt follows.
It’s Brinley, and she’s moving things around inside the cat’s potty den? Does she think the earring wound up there somehow?
I give the doorknob a wary look a second before my curiosity gets the best of me.
Quietly, ever so carefully, I twist the knob and pull the door open. I half-expect Brinley to be waiting there, hoping to scare me the way I failed to scare her.
But that’s not what happens. I see Brinley, all right, but she’s on the opposite side of the litter box, scooting, or rather, attempting to yank, the beanbag closer to the cat’s place of business.
Huh. She’s facing the opposite direction, so I hurry to quietly shut the door before she can spot me. I take a moment to assess what I saw. There was something weird, wasn’t there, with the seat of her pants? Yes—there was something on them. A big, gross smear.
My eyes go wide as I realize what that must be. She sat in cat crap, didn’t she? I nod and give in to a silent laugh. This is classic. She sat in her own cats’ crap. She’s actually trying to save face after whatIwent through?
I’m about to fling the door open again and tell her she’s busted, but I think better of it. Brinley might be good at laying her flaws out there, but she’s careful to guard her dignity.
The quote she had framed in her home is still etched into my brain. “Humility is the ability to give up your pride and still retain your dignity.” Vanna Bonta once said that.
If the incident is something Brinley’s willing to hide from me, I can guarantee it threatens her dignity. She’s probably already running for the stairs to change. May as well make myself comfortable in here.
I sit on the floor and run a hand over the carpet like I’m actually looking for something. Brinley will come tell me she found it soon enough.
For now, I allow my thoughts to drift back to the kiss we shared in Brinley’s closet. Dang, that was hot. I’ve kissed a handful of America’s top-paid actresses, a fact that makes me the object of immeasurable envy. And while a good number of Hollywood couples strike real-life magic while working opposite one another, I have yet to experience such a thing. It’s a job to me, pure and simple.
It’s been a long time since I kissed a woman outside of work, but even then, the feelings weren’t there like they are with Brinley. She does something to me, something I fear no other woman will.
The truth is, I don’t want to date someone that does what I do. I love the things that set me and Brinley apart, even if some of those things make me crazy.
It’s not long before Brinley comes in, out of breath, announcing that she found the earring and thanking me for looking. A quick glance at her outfit says she has, in fact, changed out of the khaki shorts she wore earlier. It’s all the confirmation I need.
We’re instructed to head to the side of the house where lunch awaits us in a treehouse. I assume they don’t mean an actual treehouse that sits in branches, but I’m wrong. We sit down to a picnic lunch as I try not to think about the fact that this little place is probably—like the other childlike features in the home—designed for cats, not children.
The one-floor resembles a kid’s room with single beds along two walls and a rug in the center, which is where we spread the blanket to eat. A bookshelf that looks like a birdhouse stands between the beds, centered by windows on either side. It holds books, board games, and a laptop too; all of which will remain untouched since we need to work on the script.
Once we’re done eating, I shake the blanket out over the edge while Brinley makes herself comfortable on one of the beds. I wad up the picnic blanket and plop it on the basket, wondering if I should opt for the adjacent bed or climb onto the one Brinley’s on. It’s not like she’s lying on the thing. She’s just sitting on it with her legs crossed.
I join her there, sliding onto the foot of the bed sideways and leaning my back against the wall.
“Hey,” Brinley says as I glance about the place from this angle, wondering if I could build something similar for my kids one day.
I shoot a look at her, sensing she’s ready for more than small talk. “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for being difficult about playing Libby,” she says. “I don’thaveto relate to a character to play them.”
