“It’s just really nice to feel like I have a friend who accepts me for who I am.”
“Ditto.” I smile.
“So, about that favor…” She trails off.
30
Kimiko readily agrees to watch the cats, but because she already has a vacation planned—a weeklong trip to Mexico City—and is leaving in just a few days, I’ll have to continue hiding the cats in my dorm for two weeks. When I drop the bomb about my breakup with Alex, she tries her damnedest to get me to join her on her trip—“It should literally beillegalto go through a breakup and not recklessly book a last-minute vacation in a futile attempt at taking your mind off it,” she declares—but I remind her that I have school and also two cats to feed.
When I finally get to thereasonfor our breakup, I feel like it breaks Kimiko’s brain. Which is fair—I feel like my own brain is only just starting to recover.
I try to value the two weeks I have with Penguin and Ruthie before she gets back. Hiding cats in a dorm room is surprisingly easy. I was worried at first, because adult Ruthie liked to meow at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night, but kitten Ruthie is silent and stealthy.
Too stealthy.
She refuses to come out from under my bed, and after a couple of days I start to wonder if I’ll be able to get her to Kimiko’s house when the time comes. I assume she sneaks out to eat and drink water and use the litter box when Madison and I are out of the room, but I’m worried she might not be eating enough.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and I find myselfcrawling under the bed and pushing a bowl of wet food to where she’s hunched backed into the corner. She hisses at me, a tiny sound that’s too cute to have the intimidating effect she’s going for.
I’m squeezed under my bed, my arms reaching out to get the food closer to her even though she hisses again with each move. The look on her face is pure judgmental contempt.
You’re embarrassing yourself, she seems to be telling me.
Penguin, interested in what’s going on down here, abandons his own bowl and crawls in next to me. The three of us are getting real cozy beneath this old dorm bed that I’ve just realized I never sweep underneath when three loud knocks on the door break through my quiet desperation and startle me. I jerk up and hit my head.
Ouch.
I pull myself out from under the bed and freeze.
Someone is at my door.
Someone isat my door, and I havetwo catsin here that I’m not allowed to have. I bend down to grab Penguin but find that he’s crawled back into the corner with Ruthie. Now both are completely out of reach.
Three more unashamedly impatient knocks.
I stand up, and with one last glance back at my bed, I make a decision. I’ll open the door and slide out, say something about the room being a mess, and close the door behind me; they’ll leave none the wiser. It’s practically foolproof.
I open the door and immediately forget the plan.
It’s my first time seeing Alex since last semester. The first time since he flipped everything around and led me to question every single moment we shared together.
He claimed he loves me.
I’m not sure I believe him.
I’m not sure I want to believe him.
Several moments pass. Too long. I want to be cool, calm, and collected, to make a snappy comment about his sudden presence in the doorway of my room, to act like nothing he’s done has affected me. I want to be unshakable.
But I am shaken, and so is he, if our extended mutual silence is anything to go by.
“Joey—” he starts.
“What are you doing here?”
I cross my arms. I mean for the motion to be angry and full of attitude, but I worry it looks defensive and self-conscious.
I uncross them.
