Chapter 6
Stella
“Honey, I’m home,” I said, shutting my front door.
From deep inside the apartment came a loud, squawky, “Fuuuck you.”
I shook my head and started unlacing my boots. “Why are you cranky, Amos? I spent an hour with you at lunch, and you were the one who threw me out at the end.”
“Treat?” the parrot cawed back at me. “’Stash, ’stash, ’stash, Snack Bitch.”
I grimaced. African grey parrots were like toddlers.
You had to be careful what you said in front of them because you never knew what they’d fixate on.
I’d jokingly referred to myself as his “Snack Bitch” one time three years ago, and now it was the only thing he called me.
And yes, I knew it was intentional because usually he laughed afterward.
Also? His species was known for being as smart as a three- to five-year-old child, and most of Amos’s other phrases changed on a weekly basis.
Yet this one had stuck. Because he knew it was an insult and no one could convince me otherwise.
My apartment was right above the tattoo parlor, and parrot hearing was on par with human hearing, so I’d had the contractors soundproof the floors during the build, wanting to keep it as quiet as I could for Amos.
I kicked off my shoes by the door and went to find him, passing through the small entryway into the open-concept living room.
Amos’s cage took up almost the entire far side, surrounded by plants meant to mimic his natural habitat.
In summer, the cage sat close to the floor-to-ceiling picture window, which looked out onto the back deck—again, filled with so many tropical plants that it resembled a small jungle.
I’d also put bird feeders and plenty of pollinator-friendly flowers outside so Amos had something to watch all day.
We called it Bird TV.
Right now, there wasn’t much to look at. It was past midnight, and beyond the window, the sky sat low over the city, heavy with clouds and the threat of rain.
I snagged the bag of pistachios (aka, ’stash, aka, Amos’s favorite food) off a side table and approached his cage.
The only light on in the apartment was a small lamp in the kitchen set to a timer matched to the sunset.
The bulb was soft and warm, and dim enough that it wouldn’t keep Amos from falling asleep.
I’d tried to do the whole cage-cover thing with him, but he wouldn’t have it, constantly complaining and gnawing at it through the bars until I finally gave up and let him have his way—a regular occurrence in this household.
Thankfully, the lamp provided just enough light for me to see where I was going, and I threaded through the plants to the cage. Amos was already climbing the bars toward the door to meet me, doing his signature mix of whistling and chirping to show he was happy.
“Only one. You had one at lunch earlier.”
“Three, three, ’stash. Shit please,” he said.
Amos swore so much because I swore so much, but he didn’t quite have the knack of when exactly he was supposed to curse, so he ended up throwing the words in randomly whenever he wanted to emphasize something.
“One,” I told him, opening his cage.
He strutted out onto the knobbly wooden perch and then flapped onto my shoulder, cuddling right up to the side of my face like the manipulative little asshole he was.
His feathers were soft against my cheek, and while his talons pricked at my skin, I could tell he was trying to be as careful as possible.
Something most people didn’t know was that African greys have an oddly clean scent, like fresh linen that’s been dried with fabric softener.
I took a deep breath of it and leaned my face in to cuddle him back.
He let out a happy whistle (clearly sensing his win), and popped his head forward enough to look me in the eye. “Peekaboo!”
“You’re too cute and you know it,” I grumbled.
“’Stash? ’Stash?”
“Yes, fine,” I said, holding up a nut for him.
He took it with one claw, and had it open and down his gullet in less than a second. “’Stash?”
I held up a second, and he demolished it as fast as the first.
“Okay, but that’s it,” I told him. “You’ll get the shits if you have too many.”
“Shits, shits. ’Stash?”
“No, sir. Now come on, I have to go shower and you need to go to bed.”
“I love you,” he said in an adorable little sing-song voice.
“I love you, too,” I told him. “Which is why you can’t have more.”
He mimicked a sad sound effect that he’d picked up from a movie, but allowed me to transfer him back to his perch, and then walked into the cage himself.
“Go to sleep, bud,” I said.
“Go to sleep, bud,” he shot back at me.
I shook my head, shut the cage door, and headed toward the bathroom.
I’d inherited Amos from my paternal grandmother after she passed.
He’d spent the first thirty years of his life in a much smaller cage with almost zero environmental stimulation and no one for company but another crotchety old bird (my grandmother), and I wanted him to live out the rest of his days as happy as he could possibly be in captivity.
At first, I’d tried to introduce other birds because the experts said that was best for a parrot’s social and mental well-being, but Amos hated absolutely every creature besides me, so instead, I focused on improving his environment, diet, and physical enrichment.
Which meant no more than three pistachios a day, no matter how much he begged.
The sound of his complaints followed me out of the room.
This apartment had the same footprint as the shop below it, and my bedroom and en suite branched off the living area.
I headed straight to the shower, cranking up the heat in hopes that it would ease some of the ache in my back.
As steam started to fill the room, I paused to glance at myself in the mirror, my expression guilty.
Today, I’d sunk to a new low. I’d kissed a client. What was worse, I’d chosen an obnoxious gym bro to swap saliva with. No, wait. That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was how much I’d enjoyed it.
I grabbed the edge of the sink and bowed my head, trying to calm my racing pulse, desperate to ignore the little throb of unfulfilled longing emanating from my core. My underwear was still slightly damp, slick since Theo dragged me over his cock and definitely not before that moment.
Thank fuck Derrick had interrupted us again before things got out of hand. God, what had I been thinking, letting a virtual stranger manhandle me like that?
I hadn’t been thinking, and that was the problem. Even after I’d resolved to be the better person, I kept letting Theo antagonize me into reacting to his childish needling. And then all it had taken was one brush of his fingers for me to launch myself at him.
My face heated with embarrassment. Ugh, he was right.
I had attacked him. And the bitter truth was that I’d spent the rest of the appointment fighting the urge to kiss him again.
In my defense, it was a good kiss. Hot, bruising, our disdain for each other spicing it with enough heat that I’d felt like my clothes were about to catch fire.
I really needed to take a day off and go find some other, nicer person to hook up with. For the safety of all my future clients, because, clearly, I could no longer be trusted.
The shower spray was nearly scalding when I stepped beneath it, but I couldn’t tell if it was because it was just that hot or because my skin was still so hypersensitive.
I had my answer when I brushed my soaped-up loofah over my breasts and my nipples tightened painfully.
Giving in, I closed my eyes and dropped my hand between my legs, the first roll of my fingers over my clit shooting stars across the inside of my lids.
I came less than a minute later, definitely not imagining Theo’s thick fingers inside me instead.
Afterward, I toweled off and did my skin care routine in record time, resolving to never think of Theo again. Or at least not until I had to when he came in for his next appointment, scheduled for a week from now.
I dressed in sweats and a ratty old band tee and quietly padded back into the kitchen.
“’Stash?” Amos sleepily called from his cage.
“No, bud. Go to sleep.”
He grumbled under his breath, half words, half grouchy noises, while I looked for a bedtime snack for myself. I’d eaten dinner a few hours ago, but I always went to sleep with at least something in my stomach to help settle it. Usually a few pieces of bread or some crackers.
I was just opening a cabinet when my phone chimed with the notification that someone was out front on the street level.
Normally, I’d ignore it—my standard assumption was that anyone pushing the shop’s buzzer at this hour was either drunk or had some nefarious motive—but I worried it was Derrick, having accidentally left something else behind.
I pulled up my security app and saw a dark, hooded shape standing outside. Yup, definitely ignoring it.
They pushed the buzzer again. And again.
I tapped the microphone button. “Get fucked.”
The figure pulled their hood back and turned toward the camera. Surprise shot through me. It was my brother. What the hell was Blake doing here this late? And why hadn’t he texted or called first?
Frowning, I went downstairs to let him in.
The second Blake was through the door, I locked it behind him and reset the exterior alarm.
If I took after Mom, he took after Dad: tall, sandy-haired, freckle-faced, with shoulders too wide for his gangly body.
He looked like shit. Like he’d aged a decade in the week since I’d last seen him.
Dark circles stood out beneath bloodshot brown eyes.
His cheeks were hollow, skin paler than normal, and the reek of stale alcohol wafting off him was strong enough to turn my stomach.
What the hell happened to my baby brother?
I ushered him over to the seating area. “Are you okay?”