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“I can sleep on the couch,” I say. “That couch is bigger than most beds.”

“The couch is for reading.” He sets my duffel on the dresser. “The bed’s made. Use the bed.”

Billy Bob has followed us down the hall. He walks into the room, nose to the floor, investigates every corner, and stops at the side of the bed. He looks up at it. He looks at me.

“I know,” I tell him. “Hang on.”

Merek unfolds the ramp and props it against the side of the mattress. One of the hinges in the middle is loose, and the whole thing sags and wobbles when he lets go of it.

He frowns at it. “This is broken.”

“It’s mostly fine.”

“It’s held together with a twist tie.” He turns it over to look at the hinge, then sets it back against the bed and keeps one hand on it to hold it steady. “Go on, then,” he tells Billy Bob.

Billy Bob climbs the ramp, slow and dignified, with Merek’s hand bracing it the whole way. At the top, he steps onto the duvet, walks straight to the head of the bed, turns around three times on the pillows, and collapses across all of them diagonally.

“Billy Bob,” I say. “Get off the pillows.”

He closes his eyes.

“He’s fine,” Merek says.

“He’s on the good pillows.”

“They’re all good pillows.”

I sit down on the edge of the bed. Billy Bob has his chin on the clean white duvet, and his ears are spread out on either side of his head. One back foot twitches. His sides go up and down, slow and even. He’s stretched all the way out, the way he hasn’t been able to in the car.

I put my hand on his ribs and leave it there.

Behind me, Merek doesn’t say anything. After a while, I hear him set the ramp down carefully against the wall.

The duffel is soaked.

I don’t find out until I unzip it. The rain got through the canvas on the walk across the lot, and everything near the top is damp, and everything near the bottom is wet. My last clean T-shirt. My sleep shorts. All of it smells like wet bag.

I stare at it.

Merek is in the doorway. He looks at the bag, then at me, and goes away without saying anything. When he comes back, he’s holding a folded black T-shirt.

“It’ll be big,” he says.

“I figured.”

I take it into the bathroom and lock the door. The shirt is soft cotton, worn thin from washing, and when I put it on, it falls nearly to my knees. The sleeves hang past my elbows. The neck is so wide that it slides off one shoulder no matter how many times I pull it up. I give up and leave it.

It smells like him. I stand in his bathroom with my nose in his collar for longer than I’d like to admit.

My braid is still damp at the end. I dry it with a towel. Then I unlock the door.

Merek is in the hall, holding a glass of water. He’s taken off the wet jacket. Under it, he’s wearing a gray T-shirt that’s dark at the shoulders from the rain.

He looks up when the door opens and stops.

Just for a second. His eyes go over me once: the shirt hanging off my shoulder, my bare legs, my braid lying wet against the collar. The lines along his throat flare from orange straight to bright gold, as if somebody turned up a dial. Behind him, his tail curls once around his own ankle and stays there.

Then he gets hold of himself. I watch him do it. The gold eases back down, slowly, to a dull, steady orange, and he holds out the glass.