Chapter 9 Thatcher
THATCHER
“You’re late,” Alli calls from behind a tower of dog-food bags, but I can hear the smile in her voice. She appears around the corner, her work apron covered in what looks like fish food and possibly hamster bedding.
“I have pastries,” I say, shrugging off my messenger bag and reaching for my own apron with tiny paw prints that I added myself.
“You’re forgiven.”
Three jobs and nine months ago, when I was between jobs, Alli suggested I help out at her pet store to stop me from doing something silly like starting an OnlyFans account, where I sketch what the followers request. I still think the idea has legs, but Alli gives me one of her looks whenever I bring it up.
She’d handed me an apron, pointed me toward a stack of dog-food bags that needed organizing, and somehow, everything felt a little less overwhelming.
Now, most Saturday mornings, I come over to help her. My weekly pet-therapy session, as Alli calls it. No matter how chaotic my week gets, I can always count on these peaceful Saturday mornings where I’m surrounded by furry friends.
Alli measures the coffee grounds and adds them to the coffee maker she has on a high table in the gap between the cash register and her stock room.
“So, what was it you wanted to tell me about last night before you so rudely ate all my leftover pasta and then fell asleep for two hours on my couch?”
“Sorry, I guess I didn’t realize how tired I was.” I grab two mugs from the shelf, mine decorated with cartoon animals.
A customer enters the shop, and Alli helps them find the right type of fish food. I use the moment to check on the axolotl tank, making sure the water temperature is perfect. The creature’s perpetually grumpy expression reminds me so much of Pierce that I have to smile.
“You’re making heart eyes at an axolotl,” Alli observes, appearing beside me. “Should I be concerned?”
“I’m not making heart eyes. I’m checking the water temperature.”
“Uh-huh.” She hands me another box to unpack, her knowing look making me suddenly very interested in examining the contents. “You’re not adopting an axolotl, but tell me what ‘workplace improvements’ you’ve bestowed upon your poor boss.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve been a model employee. No disasters. No catastrophes. Even Anthony is behaving himself.”
Alli pauses mid-reach for another box. “Who’s Anthony?”
“The ant I rescued from the Great Cookie Invasion,” I say like it’s obvious. “He lives in the plant on my desk now. We’ve bonded.”
“You named an ant.”
“I named the ant I saved from certain death, yes. He’s very grateful. Waves his little antennae at me every morning.”
Alli stares at me for a long moment. “You realize that’s probably not the same ant, right? They all look—”
“It’s Anthony,” I interrupt firmly. “I’d recognize him anywhere.”
She shakes her head, but a fond smile tugs at her lips because she finds me adorable. I know it.
“Well, at least you haven’t convinced Pierce to adopt a real office pet.”
“Yet,” I add ominously, and we both laugh.
As the coffee maker finishes brewing, we head to the counter. I grab the pastries from my bag while Alli fills our mugs.
I pull my sketchbook from my messenger bag, its pages slightly wrinkled from being carried everywhere. “You have to see this,” I tell her, flipping through until I find the right page. “After my pasta-induced nap, I couldn’t sleep once I got back to my place.”
“Is this about the ants?” she asks, taking a bite of her favorite pastry and chasing it with coffee.
“It’s about Pierce’s face when he saw the ants,” I correct, finally finding the right page. “Look. See how his eyebrows do that thing? Where they start out all professional and then just sort of…give up?”
The drawing spans two pages. Pierce stands in the center, his suit perfectly rendered despite the whimsical treatment, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose while the other clutches what is clearly a very important document.
Around him, a parade of anthropomorphized ants marches in formation, carrying pieces of chocolate-chip cookies like tiny triumphant soldiers.
“How do you do that? Make him look both annoyed and endearing?”
“Practice,” I admit, then quickly add, “I mean, he makes that face a lot, usually at me. It’s like his special ‘Thatcher, what have you done now’ expression.
He stood there watching Roberto spray and set traps, looking like he was mentally calculating how many gray hairs this would add to his already unfairly attractive silver-fox situation. ”
“Unfairly attractive?” Alli’s eyebrow rises.
“Professionally speaking,” I mumble, picking up my pencil, suddenly very focused on drawing tiny coffee cups for the ants to carry. “From an artistic perspective. You know, for accuracy in the drawing.”
“Uh-huh.” She watches me add more details. “You’ve gotten really good at drawing him.”
“I have a lot of reference material,” I defend, then realize that’s not helping my case. “I mean, I see him every day. At work. Where we work. Professionally.”
I close the sketchbook with a soft thud and trace the cover with my fingers.
“A crush on your boss aside—” she starts.
“I don’t have a crush on my boss!”
“Sure, sure, sweetie pie. What I want to know is if you’re going to New York this year.”
I let out a breath. Every year since I met Alli, she has asked me if I’m going to attend CANVAS Con, the Creative Artists Network & Visual Arts Society annual conference in New York. It’s the best place to pitch my comic book ideas to potential agents and publishers.
Every year, I almost buy my ticket. Every year, I chicken out.
“I don’t know,” I admit, fiddling with my coffee cup to avoid her gaze. “Things are working well at VSE. Asking for time off when I’ve only just started feels like…”
“Like what? Like pursuing your dreams might inconvenience someone?”
“It’s not that simple. Pierce needs someone he can rely on.”
“And you don’t think he can rely on you if you take a few days to focus on your art?” Alli’s voice is gentle but firm.
“I just don’t want to disappoint him.”
“Meatball,” Alli says softly, “what about disappointing yourself?”
The question hits harder than it should.
“I haven’t forgotten,” I say finally. “About finding a publisher, about making this more than just a hobby. It’s all I think about when I’m not thinking about—” I catch myself before I prove her right and confess that I am struggling to separate the man I work for from the man I got down on my knees for all those months ago.
This is supposed to be my pet-therapy day, so before the conversation can get any heavier, I go do just that.
While Alli tends to new customers, I escape to the back room and set up a fence around the kitten cages. Then I open them and sit on the floor, waiting for my furry friends to attack me with all their itty-bitty furry love.
A tiny orange tabby is the first to pounce, followed by a gray ball of fluff with too much attitude for her size. Within minutes, I’m covered in kittens, their tiny claws pricking through my jeans as they climb and tumble over each other to reach me.
I lean against the wall, letting them do their worst, and my mind drifts to yesterday’s lunch with Pierce.
I’d convinced him to follow me out of the office, ignoring his protests about taking a lunch break. The look on his face when I led him up the service stairwell to the rooftop garden was worth every confused question he’d asked along the way.
“How did you even find this place?” he’d asked, staring at the small oasis hidden above the city—raised flower beds, a couple of weathered benches, and a view that made the concrete jungle below feel miles away.
“Roberto showed me,” I’d admitted, setting our takeout containers on one of the benches. “He comes up here on his breaks. Said hardly anyone remembers it exists because everyone is always working.”
We’d sat side by side, the afternoon sun warming our faces, and for once, the professional mask had slipped just enough.
He’d laughed—actually laughed—at something I said about the ant invasion.
Up there, away from the glass walls and fluorescent lights, he’d seemed almost… relaxed. Human. Touchable.
The gray kitten bats at my finger, and I absently scratch behind her ears.
It’s getting harder. Every day, it’s getting harder to sit across from him and pretend I don’t remember how his hands felt on my skin. How his voice dropped low in that bathroom, rough and wanting. How he looked at me like I was the only person in the world.
Now he looks at me like I’m his assistant. Professional. Polite. Distant.
I’ve caught him watching me a few times—quick glances through the glass walls that he thinks I don’t notice. But he never lets the mask drop. Never gives me any indication that he thinks about what we did at the wedding. What we were before we became this.
And maybe that’s for the best. He’s my boss. There are rules. There are reasons.
But god, when he loosened his tie yesterday and started explaining how he likes his calendar organized, his voice all business while the breeze ruffled that silver-peppered hair, I had to physically grip the edge of the bench to stop myself from reaching for him.
He was teaching me how to be a better assistant while I memorized the curve of his jaw.
A black kitten with white paws crawls into my lap and curls up, purring like a tiny motor.
“You don’t have these problems, do you?” I murmur, stroking its soft fur. “No complicated feelings about silver foxes in expensive suits.”
The kitten purrs louder, completely unbothered by my romantic disasters.
I pull out my phone and open my camera, snapping a picture of the kitten pile. Maybe I’ll sketch this later to balance out all the Pierce drawings filling my sketchbook.