The lion opens one eye. Gold, entirely gold. Not the brown-with-gold-edges of Ezra's human eyes. Pure, uncut amber. The eye focuses on me with the lazy, satisfied attention of an animal that has no concerns and no plans and is perfectly content to exist in this exact configuration for the foreseeable future.
The eye closes.
The purring continues.
I laugh. I can't help it — it comes out quiet, half-muffled by the pillow, but it's real. I'm laughing in bed with a lion because the lion just gave me the animal equivalent offive more minutesand went back to sleep.
* * *
He doesn't shift back.
By eight o'clock, I've accepted that this is the morning. Not a brief lion appearance, not a transitional moment. Ezra has apparently decided to be a lion today and is communicating this decision through the medium of absolute refusal to move.
I extract myself from the curl of his body — carefully, respectfully, with the awareness that I'm disentangling from something that could swallow my hand whole if it chose to. He makes a disgruntled sound when I leave the bed. His tail twitches. One eye opens, tracks me to the door, and closes again.
I use the bathroom. Brush my teeth. Come back. He hasn't moved. He has, however, repositioned slightly to occupy the warm spot I vacated, which means the center of the bed now belongs to a lion and the margins belong to theoretical humans who might want to lie back down.
I lie back down. He rearranges himself around me immediately — the paw back on my hip, the mane against my neck, the tail finding my ankle. The purring resumes.
Through the wall, I can hear Knox's footsteps downstairs. Coffee being made. The building waking up. And this lion, who runs the bar's books and feeds stray cats and told me he loved me last night with his eyes turning gold, has decided that the only thing worth doing today is being warm and close and here.
I reach for his mane again. This time I explore properly, threading my fingers through it, finding the different textures. Thicker at the crown, where the mane rises around his face. Softer along the sides of his neck, where the hair transitions from mane to body fur. Warm everywhere, the heat pouring off him like a space heater with a heartbeat.
His ears. Rounded, larger than I expected, turning slightly to track sounds I can't hear. When I scratch the base of his right ear, the purring develops a secondary frequency, ahigher note underneath the bass rumble, like finding a harmony in a chord.
"You're ridiculous," I tell him.
The purring gets louder.
His paws. Enormous, each one the size of my spread hand, padded, the toes tipped with claws that are retracted to blunt curves. I touch one. He flexes it. Not defensively, not a warning. Just showing me. The claws extend slightly, ivory-white, curved, and then retract again.See? I have these. They're not for you.
His tail. Heavy, muscular, tipped with a tuft of darker hair. It has a mind of its own — twitching when a sound comes from downstairs, wrapping around my leg when I shift position, flicking lazily when I scratch a spot he particularly likes. The tuft brushes my shin every few seconds. It tickles.
"Does this thing have an off switch?" I ask, touching the tail.
The tail wraps more firmly around my calf. Apparently not.
* * *
At nine, I hear Knox's footsteps in the hallway. They pause outside the door. I hold my breath — not from fear, but from the acute awareness that my current situation, if observed, looks exactly like what it is: a human man in his boxers cuddling a full-sized lion on a mattress that was not designed for this purpose.
Knox doesn't knock. His footsteps continue down the hall. A minute later, the smell of coffee drifts under the door — he made the pot. I'll get some later. Right now, moving wouldrequire negotiating with four hundred pounds of cat who has strong opinions about my continued proximity.
At ten, I give up on productivity entirely.
I reach for my laptop. Not for work. For Netflix. Because I'm lying in a bed with a lion who isn't going anywhere, and my options are either lie here in silence or put on a show.
I balance the laptop on a pillow. Open it. Navigate to the streaming service.
"What are you in the mood for?" I ask.
One gold eye opens.
"I'm going to interpret that aswhatever you want," I say. I scroll through options. Nature documentaries feel tone-deaf. Action movies feel absurd. I settle on a cooking competition — the kind where stressed people make elaborate dishes under time pressure. Familiar territory. Structure and deadlines and measurable outcomes. My comfort zone in television form.
The lion watches the screen with what I can only describe as mild professional interest. His ear twitches when a contestant drops a pan. His tail flicks during elimination. At one point, when a judge criticizes someone's risotto, he makes a low huffing sound that might be the lion equivalent ofJason would never.
We watch three episodes. I scratch his mane through all of them. My hand finds a rhythm — long strokes from the crown down the side of his neck, shorter scratches behind the ears when something good happens, gentle tugs on the thicker strands when I'm thinking. He leans into every touch, the purring shifting in response, louder for the ear scratches, deeper for the neck strokes.
