My specialty, dealing with businesspeople who behaved like children. The daddy in me thrived in this work. As did my firm and those we did business with.
Chapter Three
Ridge
My latest cat-sitting gig was in one of the nicest buildings in the city. The person who hired me wasn’t in the penthouse or anything extravagant like that, but after a week of arguing with my landlord over a running toilet and a broken window, it was nice to be in a place with a heated pool on the rooftop, an elevator, and enough hot water that I didn’t feel like I was racing against the clock to get my shampoo rinsed out before I froze to death.
I didn’t hate my apartment. I was just feeling kind of grumpy about it. It’s funny, from the time I was a toddler, my parents would tell me that the important thing to remember in real estate was “location, location, location.” The one time I used that advice was for my current lease. The apartment was objectively shitty, but it was near the main terminal for both the bus and the train, and I could get to any part of the city within half an hour. It made it ideal for my jobs.
I finished my food delivery earlier than normal, dropped my bike off at my apartment, and took the short bus ride to my home for the next short while. I doubted the owners would have cared if I brought my bike here. It was more convenient for work, and I had considered it, but I already got enough eyes when I walked in without my low-end, falling-apart bike. I’d like to say the attention was because they were focused on their surroundings and they didn’t recognize me, but the truth was, they were like my brother. They saw my current clothes and instantly recognized me as someone who didn’t belong. And in this instance, I didn’t belong. I was just here for the cats.
I got this job as a referral, and this was my second time working for them. The cats were adorable, a British shorthairand a Maine coon, and I loved them both. They, on the other hand, were quite content having me be their servant and nothing more. I much preferred that to the last cat I sat for who hated me and showed me by peeing on my shoes.
Once inside, I popped into the shower and changed my clothes, not wanting to sit on the furniture with my stinky clothes. I wasn’t exceptionally dirty, but when you were delivering food all day, you tended to smell like some of it.
What I really wanted to be doing was be home, putting on some of my little clothes and watching cartoons, drinking a bottle, and trying to fall into little space. I’d missed a really cool event at Chained the night before and that didn’t help, but it wasn’t the main reason I was longing to be little.
The conversation I had with my brother kept playing over and over again in my head. It wasn’t even that the talk didn’t go well. I’d been able to steer it pretty clear of where I wanted to avoid, but I hated this chasm between my family and me. Unfortunately I didn’t see a way to close it.
When I was twenty-one, I came out, but not because I felt like it was time to share with my family that I was gay. I had a feeling that closet door was both wide open and made of glass. It was more because I thought it might be a way to get out of their expectations for my future.
Obviously, I couldn’t have 2.5 kids and the perfect-pedigree wife if I was gay, right? Wrong. To my surprise, they immediately jumped in with talk of someone’s son they knew who would be perfect for me and how we could adopt. From what I could gather, the only things this guy and I had in common were being gay and having families in real estate, hardly what I’d call a perfect match. Try telling my parents that.
That was when I understood that their disappointment in me had nothing to do with who I loved but everything to do with who I wasn’t, and that wasn’t going to change, no matter howhard they pushed. It was such a mixed bag because I loved that they didn’t blink at the news of me liking men but hated that I was never going to be who they wanted me to be and that I didn’t want to pretend to try to be either.
“What I need is little time,” I grumbled to myself as I rinsed off the day.
If I was cat sitting or dog sitting for a friend, I’d probably have brought my little things, but I didn’t know this person well enough to know if they had cameras in their apartment. The last thing I needed was them checking on their fur babies and seeing me be little.
I got out of the shower and looked in the fridge where they had “plenty of food” for me. What they meant was there were plenty of ingredients, some of which were vegetables I didn’t know. They were delicious, but I was not ready for a learning curve. I swiped my phone and did a search to see what the closest restaurant was, sent in an order, and skipped down the hall to the elevator to pick it up.
It was Mediterranean and delicious. It was also very aromatic, something I didn’t realize until after I put on my dinosaur jams, the ones I’d brought as a compromise for not being little, and ran down the hall to the garbage chute to throw away the trash from dinner. I’d been careful to bring the keys with me so I didn’t get locked out. What I wasn’t careful about was holding on to those same keys as I dropped the garbage down the chute. Immediately, I heard my mistake, the clink of them hitting the sides seconds after they were out of my reach.
I was screwed. I had no phone—it was sitting in the apartment waiting for me—no ID, and no shoes on. I was wearing very little-coded pajamas, and I knew absolutely no one in the building. At least I’d already fed and watered the cats, taking one worry off my list. They were probably glad I was gone, if I were being honest.
I went back to the apartment, crossing my fingers the door hadn’t closed and latched all the way. It had. I was screwed. I stood there trying to figure out my next move when the door across the hall opened.
“Can I help you?”
I turned around to see the hottest man I’d ever laid eyes on. He looked me up and down, 100 percent noticing my clothes. Why couldn’t I have taken out the trash before I changed into my pajamas? At least then I would have been wearing my good-ass jeans.
“I’m cat watching…cat sitting. Yeah, I’m cat sitting.” Leave it to me to make the situation worse. At least without shoes, I didn’t look like a thief. That had to count for something.
“You don’t have your keys, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Did you leave them inside?”
I shook my head again.
“Where are they?”
“I dropped them down the trash chute.”
I waited him to laugh at me or scold me. He did neither.
“You aren’t the first to do that, and you won’t be the last. Why don’t you come inside? I’ll call building maintenance and see if we can get into the trash room and find them.”
