I clasped the bracelet on the same wrist that held my gift from Addie, then turned over the envelope to look for a return address. There was the address for Malone’s apartment, written in the same exacting handwriting I recognized from his walls.
San José.
He must’ve finished the Denver job, and he was back in the apartment I’d found the day I searched his name on Tracers while looking for his phone number.
Ladybugs might not have been a declaration of love, but going to an actual post office to mail something certainly was.
The next thing I knew, I was searching for plane tickets. One look at the price and I snapped the laptop shut. “I can’t swing it, BB.”
My kitten, who was looking more and more like a cat, sat beside me, tail wrapped around her front feet. She meowed.
“No. It’s too expensive.”
She blinked at me and adjusted her feet, rewound her tail, and then stared at me intently, her two eyes now even more distinctly different, one blue and the other yellow green. She said nothing.
She didn’t have to. Not when her eyes reminded me of Malone.
“You can’t use my own tricks against me.”
Still, she stared.
“I don’t like to fly.”
Too bad,her eyes seemed to say.
“What if he has another girlfriend already?”
Then he wouldn’t be sending you a bracelet, now would he?
“Unless he’s like all the other guys I’ve met.”
She tilted her head to one side as if to say,You know better than that.
“Fine. You’re right. That’s what credit cards are for, but I can’t resurrect my pettiness career to pay them off, soyouneed to think of a new side hustle. Think you could get internet famous?”
She yawned.
I started the process of picking out a flight but grimaced at the last-minute price. “How do I know if he’s even there, BB?”
She lightly bit me, her not-so-subtle request for pets. Absently, I petted her while trying to navigate my laptop with one hand. When I paused in my petting, she meowed.
“I am absolutely not texting him. I need to see his expression when I tell him. I need toseeif he’s happy to see me or not.”
She looked over her shoulder, which I decided was her version of a shrug.
“Fine. You’re right. If he’s not home for some reason, then I’ll wait. Or maybe say screw it and go to wine country. I’ve always wanted to visit, and I’m sure as heck not getting to the South of France anytime soon.”
I booked the flight and a rental car for the next day and considered googling “Am I mentally unstable if I’m having entire conversations with my cat?” but decided I didn’t want to know the answer to that particular question.
Almost twenty-four hours later, I wearily sat in my rental car, secure in the knowledge that I still didn’t like flying. Even worse, I did not feel sexy at all. I felt gross in the late-August heat. I was tired from my early wakeup call and from spending so much time in either an airport or a plane. I still had almost forty-five minutes to go.
You should’ve texted him.
Maybe. It was ridiculous. Who shows up on someone’s doorstep? Uninvited, at that?
In the outskirts of San José—yes, I did know the way, courtesy of GPS and the return address label—I had an idea. It was either a wonderful idea or a terrible one. Honestly, “wonderful or terrible” could’ve described the entire trip.
All I knew was that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t at least ask him the question, and that’s how I ended up at his front door on a Wednesday evening holding a pizza box.
