Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“He defiled you, Mother. In my earshot. I shall never be the same again.” He sobbed as he buried his face in the crook of her elbow. She had to ruffle between his ears just to get him to calm down. Though she had no idea how she managed, while so not calm herself.
It felt as if she were holding her dreams in her arms.
And her dreams were manifesting in a very strange, almost mundane sort of way. Like a TV drama about minor betrayals between loved ones. Spectacular, she thought, but also somehow so ordinary at the same time. A soap opera suddenly mixed with a fantasy series about flying whales.
All of which sounded bad, she knew.
But truthfully it was even better than she’d ever imagined or remembered from childhood.
She had a real relationship with this fantastical talking animal.
And now she could comfort him with her words.
He could understand what she said. “Well, you’ve got that right,” she murmured. “I mean, now you can apparently speak.”
“What do you mean? I could always speak. I am your familiar, it is the way of things. You just couldn’t hear me until now.”
“Yeah, and why is that?”
“I am not going to give him the credit, if that’s what you mean. He has become my enemy now. I shall loathe him until the day I die. Nothing can move me from my vendetta against him; I shall not rest until—” he ranted, little squat face turned up to hers, eyes still teary.
Then they heard Jack from the kitchen.
“Hey, doggo, you want some of these tater tots?” he hollered.
And Popcorn didn’t even have enough pride to hesitate.
He heard the words and just fully reverted to the dog she had always known.
He started wagging his tail. His face broke into that doggy grin.
He even whimpered happily before flinging himself off the bed and charging toward the kitchen.
It was incredible. It was heart-stopping. Suddenly she was the girl in the fantasy novel with a talking animal friend. And that wasn’t even the only thing that got her right in the feels, as she clambered out of bed and stuffed herself into the nearest one of Jack’s plaid shirts she could find.
No—there was also the thing she noticed once she’d gotten the last button.
She looked up, and there it was. The bed was bigger.
The bed was bigger, and comfier. It filled the room now, as soft and plush as a marshmallow.
And the room it filled? She felt pretty sure it wasn’t the same.
The walls were a different color—a pale lavender, like some of the trim on her store, instead of the gray they’d been before.
Like someone had painted them overnight.
Which she supposed they had.
They’d just done it with magic instead of Dulux.
Jack had done it with magic instead of Dulux.
Or maybe the house was magic, like the truck, and he’d just commanded it.
She didn’t know. She didn’t suppose it mattered.
Everything was too wild to really focus on the underlying details.
All she could do was stumble out into the living room in a daze, taking in a million things as she did.
The couch was not just slightly plumper.
It was enormous, and wrapped in a rich burgundy leather.
Same as the chair in my store again , she thought, but couldn’t linger on it.
The television had already caught her attention.
It was still older, clunky, not digital.
But it was huge. It stood like a monolith in the center of the room.
Tom Hanks’s face on it looked about seventy feet wide.
She stood in front of it, giddy as anything.
Though she couldn’t maintain it. Of course she couldn’t. Because as she took in every new bit of comfort, every new soft thing, all it did was make her slowly realize that he’d done all this for her. Just for her, only for her.
He had never done it for himself.
Ten years he said he had lived as a human, with the constant power to make his life more comfortable. Yet somehow he just hadn’t. He’d lived in the ramshackle remains of the many films and shows he half understood. He had made a home amidst the rubble.
And yeah, she knew part of that was trying to look convincing as the kind of man he thought he was. But there was clearly something else there, too. A terror of being too comfortable, of being too content. Like the night before, when he’d hardly been able to stand a gentle touch.
He thinks he doesn’t deserve even that , she realized in a heartbreaking rush.
Then didn’t even think about it. She went into the kitchen and crossed the now hardwood floor, and just as he turned and started to say something probably innocuous about breakfast, like hey, the eggs are almost ready , she slipped her arms around his waist from behind. She pressed her face into his back.
And he laughed.
He said, “Well, if I thought frying up some over-easy eggs got me one of these, maybe I’d have started doing them sooner.” But then he seemed to realize she wasn’t stopping, and she felt him go still. She heard him swallow thickly. “Oh, honey,” he said, soft and sad but also something else.
It seemed to her like relief.
God, she hoped it was relief.