Chapter 18
Now
Bea
Silas finds me waiting for him in his kitchen as soon as he walks through his front door. He stills, instantly sensing something amiss. I shift my weight and watch him catalog the room, his smile rising when he sees the vase.
“Aw, Beanie Baby, flowers? For me? You shouldn’t have,” he says, enchanted by the bouquet on the island. The goofy smile plummets when he picks up the bottle of urine spray beside it. “Guess the honeymoon phase is over. That was quick.”
“I might have screwed up, Silas,” I say anxiously.
He tosses his keys and wallet onto the counter and rounds it, coming for me with a concerned frown. “What is it? What happened?”
Impeccably timed—a low, scratchy grumble sounds off from his living room. Silas’s frown turns quizzical.
“I went to the farmers market and they were doing pet adoptions and I was having a good day and thought it was, like, a fucking sign or something that I should tackle this on my list. And then I didn’t even stick to the list!
I said adopt a dog. Why even write a list if you’re not going to stick to it?
! But then I turned around and this cat was staring into my soul.
And fucking Gina conned me with some heartfelt speech about the enduring spirit of love and before I knew it I was loaded up in her van with supplies and a new companion.
Every time I try to coax my companion out of that crate, she makes that noise!
The one time I got her out, she took a swipe at me and pissed on your rug. She hates me, Silas!”
He blinks and nods along to my rant, then reaches over and gives the ball of my shoulder a soothing squeeze. “All right. Let’s just take it one step at a time,” he says, irritatingly calm. He strides over to the crate and crouches down.
“You’ll be attacked! Mauled!” He unzips the top of the carrier. Another vibrating growl.
“Your first cat and you went with an orange, huh?” he says, amused.
I stiffen. “What does that mean? What’s wrong with the orange ones?” Have they been fashioned to adapt to hell?
“Nothing at all,” he says, quietly and in a babying voice. The growling turns into something more urgent as he reaches in with both hands.
“Silas!”
But he simply plucks her right out of the carrier, yowling and hissing be damned. She melts into an instant, loose-limbed puddle in his arms. He murmurs close to her face, and she touches her nose to his before she rubs her head along his stubbled jaw.
“What’s her name?” he asks.
I’ve been categorically betrayed by this cat. It takes me a full minute to answer. “I’m supposed to come up with my own,” I say, voice distant.
I reach over to pet her, and the purring morphs into a low growl again. It probably says something about me that she doesn’t like me, doesn’t it? Animals and their instincts and whatnot.
“Well, I think it’s pretty obvious what her name should be,” Silas says before he babbles some more nonsense into her fur.
“By all means,” I grouse. “Do share.”
He’s kissing her. She’s maintaining eye contact with me while he does it, and I swear to god she’s smiling. A literal Cheshire smile. “Obviously,” he says, “this is Calcifur, your little fire demon. You may call her Cali for short. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious for long.”
“Noted.”
At my tone, his mouth presses into something sympathetic before he scoops me into his side with one arm. Cali snarls at me, and I step right back out, devastated.
“Hey. Give her a week or two,” Silas says sweetly. “Cats are just . . . tricky.”
“It’s fine,” I lie. I pointlessly rearrange the stuff on the counter. “It’s a new place. New people. New people are hard—unless, I guess, they’re you. I’m not taking it personally.” I’m taking it way too personally, and I am unjustly sad. Maybe the injections are affecting me more than I realized.
“Is she an outdoor cat, then?” he asks.
I wheel back around. “What? Why would she be an outdoor cat? There are snakes out there. Coyotes.” I sound abjectly horrified. “What about bird flu, Silas?!”
He sets her down on his couch, and she curls up easily. Already comfortable. Silas puts his palms up in the air.
“That’s completely fine and preferable, for the record. I just wondered, that’s all. Just means I’ll need to change the litter box. We should probably set that up in the laundry room if you haven’t yet.”
“Jesus, Silas. That’s very sweet of you and all, but regardless of whether or not she wants to be, she’s still my responsibility. Of course I don’t expect you to change her litter.”
“When you’re pregnant, you won’t be able to, Bea.” He chuckles kindly. “You can get an infection.”
Oh my god. I’d forgotten. A cascade of hot embarrassment pours through me. I drop my elbows onto the island and my face into my palms.
After a moment, some of my hair is swept off my shoulder. “Tell me why this is upsetting you,” Silas says.
Logically, I know my emotions are reacting disproportionately to this, I suspect the estrogen is making it worse, and yet it’s impossible for me to immediately self-correct.
Before Merritt died, I loved winning people over.
I loved figuring them out, charming them.
I loved when they’d tell me things and how it’d feel to earn a smile or a laugh or a blush.
I’d been a paralyzingly shy kid until I met her, and making a true friend brought me out of my shell in so many big, important ways.
I felt braver in every aspect of my life, I think, until it was inconceivable not to love meeting new people, not to love trying new things.
“Why would I care about being great at just one thing, when there are so many interesting things in the world to try that I could probably still be decent at?” Merritt had once said.
And that sort of curiosity was both contagious and liberating.
I wanted to embody that. I became an extrovert extraordinaire, type A edition to Merritt’s type B.
In another life, I would have instantly shrugged this off.
I’d have gone on to compete with Silas on who this cat loved more and laughed off the oversight with the litter.
And I get it, this is a cat, not a person, and I can still go on to do all of that.
But I think part of me had felt restored today after starting up a fledgling friendship with Wren, and I’d felt brave enough to leap head-and heart first into this.
I’d felt like that old version of me again, forging onward. Now I just feel foolish.
But . . . self-correct, I will. I straighten abruptly and wipe my palms on my shorts.
I’ll deal with this and manage the consequences, just like I would manage any other bump in the road, especially one of my own making.
“I’m not upset. I’m just—I’m mad at myself.
Embarrassed I didn’t think about it beforehand, that’s all. ”
“Why would that have been something you’d reflexively think of? Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s not common knowledge. Not really,” Silas says.
I sniff. “Are you able to cite your sources on that?” I ask, somehow both pleading and sarcastic. “Where is this book of common knowledge for us to refer to?”
“I memorized it before I burned it, sorry,” he says with a wince. “Only way to ensure I’m not made redundant. But I can tell you it is common knowledge that, when you bravely go for something and it doesn’t quite work out like you hoped, the best remedy is pizza.”
“Is it now?” I snort a reluctant laugh at the floor between us.
“Also common knowledge that these make excellent pizza crusts.” He holds up the bag of naan I purchased.
“That seems like something you’d find in a recipe book and not a book of common knowledge, Silas.”
“Stay with me, Ruby.” He’s matched every backward step I’ve taken away from him and reduced the space between us, again. Thick arms wide open, mouth tilted, plain black shirt and dark jeans. My rear end hits the counter by his sink.
“All right,” I say. “I’m with you.”
His eyes flash, and he circles me into a rough hug. My hands get indulgent, pressing themselves into the slabs of his back. “You’re so damn handsy,” I sigh into his chest. One of his pecs flexes against my cheek. My fingers wander over a particularly firm muscle below his shoulder blade.
“Sorry,” he says into my hair. “Too much?”
I pull myself incrementally tighter for one tick of a metronome before I force myself to let go. “No. All good,” I say. Too good.
We throw a salad and a medley of pizzas together and leave Calcifur to explore. Silas shows her the litter box in the laundry room that I had, in fact, already put together. For him, she uses it without issue. She’s quick to retreat to the safety of her carrier after each venture out.
“I’ll go get her some toys and a cat tree and a bed and stuff tomorrow,” I say, nonsensically loud like I’m hoping the cat will hear and understand me. And give a shit.
“Quickest way to warm her up to you is with treats,” Silas says around a mouthful of pizza.
He’s seated beside me on his couch, spread-eagle with a cloth napkin slung over his thigh. His napkin drawer was one of the earliest things he explained to me when I moved in—when I’d been looking for a saucepan and came upon probably fifty neatly rolled, sienna-orange napkins instead.
“It’s only me, and especially after twenty-fours, the last thing I want to do is dishes, but I feel bad overusing paper plates, so I just use these most of the time instead,” he’d told me.
“Figure since I have to do laundry, anyway, throwing in a napkin or two was the most environmentally conscious thing I could do.”
I find this inordinately sexy.