“Everything okay?” she asks.
“Yep,” I reply.
My heart feels trapped somewhere between guilt and excitement. I love the idea of getting to spend the day with the two people I really want to be with. And yet beneath that pleasure is this layer of shame that I’m avoiding my family. I’ve turned down my dad. I don’t respond much to my mom.
I am the black cat in the Kade household. And I can’t help but wish I were a little different.
When Archer knocks on my door about twenty minutes later, he’s freshly cleaned in a pair of forest-green slacks, a cream-colored collared shirt, and his usual black wool coat.
He’s still wearing my ring on his left pinkie finger. The thought instantly excites me. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but my ring on his finger just feels right.
The wounds on his face have healed slightly since the night he got them. The thought of him fighting again tonight only makes me wince with worry.
I’ve never been in a fight in my life. I don’t know what it feels like to take a punch or to throw one. But either way, I imagine they hurt a lot. And yet he does this all the time.
For what? For fun? For power?
To convince himself that he’s, I don’t know, stronger or better than someone else?
It baffles me, but I try not to insert my opinion too much. It’s his life. His choices.
We have no real plan for our day other than to just spend it together. Honestly, at this point, I couldn’t even tell you what day of the week it is, and I don’t really care. We’re going to take Freya out to lunch to celebrate her new job, her new venture, I guess in some ways her new life.
An hour later, we’re sitting inside at a diner in the middle of the city, and it’s a beautiful winter day. The sun is out, and the snow has melted.
“So what now?” Freya asks, clutching a cup of espresso between her fingers.
“Now we wait for Delia to call us back and give us news about the property,” I say.
“Then the fun part begins,” Archer adds. “We get to go shopping.”
“Are you guys really sure about this? I mean, this is going to be a lot of money.”
Archer and I make eye contact without looking at Freya. “We’re just going to ignore her, right?” he says.
And I laugh. “Since we’ve told her nearly a hundred times already, yeah, I think we can ignore her now.”
“Both of you stop it,” she says, slapping our arms at the same time.
From behind me, I hear the squeal of a child and turn in time to see a young boy racing toward me, shouting, “Juju! Juju!”
My cheeks turn fiery red as I recognize Étienne galloping toward me with excitement.
“A friend of yours?” Archer asks with a laugh.
Just then, Étienne reaches my chair, practically leaping into my lap. I’d be a monster if I didn’t at least smile at him and give him the hug he so desperately wants.
After wrapping his tiny arms around my neck, he pulls away and begins mumbling semi-incoherently in French, telling me about how his mother and he just had lunch.
Just then, I hear Élodie’s voice as she scurries toward us.
“Étienne!” she says, scolding her son. “Je suis désolée, Julian.”
“It’s okay,” I laugh as I let the boy sit on my lap.
“I didn’t mean to disturb your lunch.”
“Really, it’s fine.”
