Chapter 5 Unexpected Purrings #3
Isaac shook his head and let out a sigh.
“You paid me a great compliment,” he said, “about something I’m super proud of.
I…. Roxy’s the only one who ever tells me I’m good at my job.
” Roxy was amazing at teaching. Isaac always thought that getting the kids to connect with math was, like, her superpower.
She once got an entire class to understand vectors by talking about a stroller rolling downhill and into the street, because that was her worst nightmare.
Luca swallowed. “What you’re not saying,” he observed cannily, “is that Todd probably thought it was no big deal.”
Isaac let out a sigh. “We’re not going to talk about Todd right now,” he said, and then he pulled that happy bemusement he’d been feeling back around him like a comfy Mr. Rogers cardigan.
“We’re going to talk about why I have to leave right after dinner, because somebody has to hear this story besides Roxy. ”
“Let me wash up,” Luca said, toeing off his work boots in front of Isaac’s porch.
Isaac thought of putting stuff there—one of those things with scrub brushes so Luca could get dust off the soles, and one of those wedges that helped people remove boots with leverage.
He could tuck it right next to the porch swing so Luca would always feel…
Welcome.
Isaac regarded him yearningly as he stepped aside to let Luca in.
Please, let Luca feel welcome here in his big bland stupid house until Isaac got his shit together enough to ask for more.
Isaac hadn’t kissed anybody in so, so long.
He’d really love to explore that plush, smiling mouth.
Maybe kissing had gotten better since he and Todd had gotten married.
Todd hadn’t been great at it—he seemed to treat it as an alpha male contest, and Isaac had never been great at those.
He’d never gotten the point. He was five seven and slender.
Why would he want to mash teeth together to prove he was strong?
If he’d been that strong, he probably wouldn’t have let Todd bully him into bed for most of his adult life.
He seemed to remember—back before Todd, before his parents had passed, when he’d been an undergrad crushing on his fellow students and necking at parties—kissing had been fun, hadn’t it?
Suddenly he wanted to kiss Luca in the worst way, to see if it could be fun again. He felt that magnet pull of the man as he strode through Isaac’s house in his stocking feet. Kissing him seemed like it could be really fun.
But Isaac remembered that tangled ball of Todd—uhm, of yarn—again and resolved to simply make Luca feel welcome until he could sort that shit out. It just wouldn’t do to wrap those tendrils of shit-brown yarn around this nice man.
Isaac had his plan firmly in place by the time Luca came into the kitchen to sit at the island.
“So,” Isaac said, his voice brimming with excitement, “let me tell you what happened today….”
As he launched into the telling of Mr. Euclid, the father of geometry, in relation to stoned orange kitties, his brain went on record to tabulate all of Luca’s expressions as he listened.
Not once was he bored or disgusted (except by Paula, but even then he showed a certain delighted incredulity that the woman was not actually the Wicked Witch of the Math Department). Instead, he was interested, bemused, and, in the end, so very happy.
“So you’re getting a cat?” he asked.
“Yes,” Isaac said, and by that time, the casserole was done, and Isaac pulled it out and set it on the stove to cool.
“In fact, I am waiting for my cat to finish his, uhm, operation”—he lowered his voice and whispered the word so Luca would know they were talking about poor Euclid’s balls—“so I can go fetch him home.” He paused.
“They were going to give him his first round of shots and flea treatments and a bath too.” He glanced at the clock and saw he had about forty-five minutes before he was due at the vet’s.
“In fact, we have just enough time to eat before I have to go pick him up.”
As he turned to get the salad mix from the fridge, Luca said, “Hey, can I come with you? I’m super excited. I love cats.”
“Really?” Isaac grabbed the salad bowl from the shelf above the counter. “You want to see him?”
“Well yeah!” Luca regarded him with puzzlement. “Who wouldn’t?”
Isaac knew his expression closed as he busied himself with the little bags that made up the salad mix.
“Of course,” Luca murmured. “The whole reason you don’t have a cat in the first place.”
“I was going to go get one after summer vacation started,” Isaac told him.
“But the cat distribution system had other ideas,” Luca said, perking up again.
Isaac shook his head. “What is this cat distribution system everybody keeps talking about? Why didn’t I know about it until now?”
Luca shrugged. “Because you don’t know about the cat distribution system until it distributes a cat to you. It’s like kitty karma—very Zen.”
Isaac snorted. “Yes, it’s so Zen this cat just wandered into my classroom to get fed, fixed, and baked. Where was the boyfriend distribution system when I was in high school, that’s what I want to know.”
“Same place it was when I was in high school,” Luca said reasonably. “In the cheerleader’s pants, pretending it was straight.”
Isaac snorted and put the salad on the table. “You were not,” he said.
“Well, for a couple years, yes. And then it hit me that it probably shouldn’t be that hard, and I shouldn’t have been dreaming about the school quarterback while I was doing it.
” He sighed and moved the salad so there was room for the casserole when Isaac took it from the stove.
“The years after that were muddled. I think even if the distribution system had been working, it would have skipped me entirely. I was not fit for distribution for a couple of years.”
Isaac hmmed, because he doubted Luca had ever not been fit as boyfriend material. Even those cheerleaders had probably had nice things to say.
AFTER DINNER, he dished up the extras and put them in the refrigerator in a big container, showing it to Luca as he did so.
“This is for you and your sister,” he said seriously. “I will not eat it—it will go bad if you don’t take it, do you understand?”
Luca chuckled. “I understand I’m bringing Allegra by tomorrow so you can teach us both to yarn is what I understand, so don’t panic. Now let’s go get the cat.”
On the way out the door, Isaac realized that he’d spoken to a grown man the way he spoke to his students. Oh God. Oh God. He did that sometimes—he knew it. Todd used to get cold. Cold and disdainful and superior.
When we met you were too stoned to remember the rubber, Isaac—don’t talk to me like a student.
Except Isaac had never meant to talk to him that way—it just slipped out!
No amount of apologizing to Todd had made that better until Todd had frozen Isaac out for at least two days, but that didn’t stop Isaac from apologizing now.
“I’m sorry for the lecture on the leftovers,” he said as he locked the door. Mid-May had fallen with full force, and even at nearly eight in the evening, the heat coming off the pavement was suffocating.
“That?” Luca’s perpetual goodwill was untarnished.
“Naw, I figure most teachers do that at one time or another. I mean, don’t you people have to take classes in how to give instructions?
I dated a guy in the credential program once, a few years ago.
He had this bit when he was pretending to give instructions on how to wipe your own ass—I can’t do it like he did, but it made me laugh until I cried.
And then one night he cried for real, because apparently the whole thing was taking over his brain.
You got a tough gig—control issues, they gotta be a blowback, right? ”
Isaac gazed at him wistfully, forgetting for the moment that they were going to go get one of the most wonderful things to happen in Isaac’s life in a really long time.
Except for Luca coming to talk to him the week before. That had been wonderful too.
“Do you know how badly I needed to hear that when I was starting out?” he asked, his eyes almost shiny. “I thought I was some sort of mutant, and Todd….” He snapped his teeth together and gestured to Luca to get into the Sportage.
For a moment they were silent as he piloted through the quiet, still-sun-dappled streets to the vet’s office. Then Luca spoke.
“Look, Isaac?”
“Yeah?”
“I get that you’re trying not to bitch about your late husband too much. But I don’t think it’s doing you any good not bitching about him. I mean, there had to be some good about the guy, but you’re never going to see it for all the resentment you’re holding on to.”
Isaac sighed. “Yeah.”
“So maybe, when you’re mad at him, you just keep saying whatever he did that pissed you off. And then, even if it’s not to me, you finish off with a thing he did you liked. Then you won’t feel so guilty, but you won’t feel so… so obligated to hold on to all the bad stuff. What do you think?”
And Isaac’s eyes grew hot. “I think you’re a genius,” he croaked.
“And that’s super good advice. But you’ve got to…
I don’t know, remind me, I guess. If someday all I do is talk about Todd, you’ve got to tell me to stop.
I’m… I’m afraid I’ll get stuck on loop. Like I was when he was alive.
It was all about Todd. I got up in the morning, and I couldn’t set a certain alarm because of Todd.
I couldn’t sing in the shower because of Todd.
I could only eat fruit and yogurt because Todd couldn’t stand it if I ate toast and peanut butter instead.
I-I want to think about somebody else, because God, he’s been gone for a year and a half, and wouldn’t it be great if I could remember who I was without him? ”
Luca’s voice was infinitely gentle. “Is he the reason you never got a cat?”
“Yeah,” Isaac sighed.
“Then how about you tell me more about this cat?”
Isaac brightened. “He’s orange,” he said happily.
“Did I tell you the girl at the vet counter told me that orange cats have three collective brain cells, and they only get partial custody? So you never know if you’re going to get the smart orange cat or the idiot orange cat who just sits and bakes in all the catnip. ”
“Sounds like me, post–high school,” Luca said. “I think me and this cat are already destined to be friends.”
“I was too cool to smoke pot,” Isaac said primly. “Not when gummies tasted better, and I could get the ones with the extra THC.”
Luca’s hearty laughter was what he remembered about the trip to the veterinarian.
And then he got the box with his new best friend, Euclid, who seemed a little dopier but just as sweet and poised as he had been when he’d been eating Isaac’s sandwich, and as much as he liked Luca, Euclid sort of sucked up all the attention.
“What do you think?” Isaac said as they belted themselves back in the Kia, the cat purring—purring—in the box behind them.
“I think you’ve needed a Mr. Euclid all your life,” Luca said. “This could be a once-in-a-lifetime orange cat.”
Isaac smiled, feeling almost as happy and almost as dopey as the cat. “I wonder if he likes to play?”