29. Amygdala and Hippocampus Are Fighting
AMYGDALA AND HIPPOCAMPUS ARE FIGHTING
Connor remembered loading Pawsley’s gear, litter box, and carrier into his Subaru.
That part he could clearly recall because Ribby had been unhappy to be left at the house, but he didn’t remember the drive. Yet here he was, turning his car off in the library parking lot, which low-key terrified him.
He could have hurt someone. He shouldn’t have been driving, wasn’t any different from Tony, but he had to return Pawsley before Jonathan ended his shift at four. Had to tell him dinner was off, and Jonathan couldn’t come to the house today.
It would break him to see Jonathan standing in the bare hallway looking around and saying, What happened, Connor.
So much better to give him Pawsley here.
Kitten.
Jonathan’s choice was Kitten.
Pawsley had been temporary, a rest stop of a name that Jonathan would blow past and forget as soon as he knew how Connor had fucked up.
He checked himself in the rearview mirror before he climbed out of the car. His eyes looked red, and his lip was cut and puffy where Tony…
He needed to hide his lip.
There was an old KN-95 mask in the glove box, wedged between a paper map of Oregon his father insisted he carry, an empty granola bar box, and the owner’s manual. The face covering part had softened with time, but the ear elastic hurt when he put it on.
It would conceal what he’d let Tony do.
A few minutes later, he staggered through the lobby doors, dizzy from the stink inside his mask. He’d scrubbed his teeth five times, maybe more, but he couldn’t brush inside his nose, so the last molecules of puke had immediately fermented when he put on a mask.
Kitten squawked from the carrier as Connor crossed the space to the children’s area.
“Connor!” Lily recognized him. She wasn’t loud, but her librarian voice was steady.
“Is Jonathan…” He felt very far away. Puke or not, he must focus.
“I think he’s shelving holds, you know where—”
Jonathan was already trotting over, eyebrows raised and pressed hard into a line.
Don’t panic. I can’t help you. I can’t.
“What’s going on?” His gaze fixed on Connor’s face mask. “Is everything okay? Are you—”
“I think I’m sick.”
Rating: somewhat truthful. He had been sick.
“I can’t.” His words felt chopped up and his brain couldn’t make them come out the way he wanted. “I can’t take care of Kitten and I’m going home to sleep.”
“What can I do? What do you need?” Jonathan reached for him, not for the cat carrier, and Connor stumbled. Kitten yelped and he froze.
He stared at Jonathan’s hands. His polish was dark blue with silver sparkles. Graceful and gentle hands, nothing like Tony’s. If only he could put himself in the care of those hands, he’d feel better, but he’d fucked up.
“Connor?” Jonathan took the weight of the cat carrier from him.
“I’m sick. Going home to sleep.” The idea of pulling down his shades and getting under his blankets with Ribby wrapped itself around him and didn’t let go. That made two not-lies in a row.
Pawsley mewed.
No, Kitten. His name was Kitten and always had been.
Connor unslung the shopping tote he’d stuffed with cat things. Jonathan couldn’t really take all the gear at once, so he looked over at Lily, who was already coming out from behind the counter to grab the portable litter box.
Jonathan’s attention was torn between his cat and Connor. “Should I bring dinner after—”
“No!” Seeing Jonathan take a step backward alerted Connor that he’d raised his voice. In the library. He looked at the floor. “I need to sleep. I’ll feel better tomorrow.”
The weight of the carrier pulled Jonathan’s arms lower. Connor watched him set it on the floor. Everything seemed to be happening very slowly.
“It’s the championship tomorrow,” Jonathan said.
Fuck. Twenty-four hours.
“I need sleep.” He was stuck in a verbal loop.
“Okay, okay.” Jonathan came closer.
By focusing on Jonathan’s fingernails, Connor made himself stand without shivering. They were pretty fingernails.
Then Jonathan set his palm gently on Connor’s forearm and slid that light touch, so light, not grabby, downward.
His eyes prickled, but he was too aware of their location, of the smell trapped in his mask, of the cat noises, to cry. If there was a word for being too torn up to even cry, that was him.
He wrapped his fingers and thumb around Connor’s wrist and held him for a moment, with his warm palm covering the veins on the back of Connor’s hand.
If Jonathan could feel Connor’s heart thump, he didn’t show it. “You’ll drink plenty of fluids? That’s the only thing I know about being sick, drink fluids.”
Connor took a deep breath, but all he could smell was his own rancid lies.
He nodded, pulled his arm back, and turned away. Left the building, left Jonathan, left what he knew was his heart there on the library floor. He was going home.
He was going to get in a hot shower and then bed and he would finally get warm.
As soon as the doors closed behind Connor, Lily turned to Jonathan. She looked as bewildered as he felt. “What was that?
“I don’t know. He was fine this morning?” He couldn’t explain Connor’s red-rimmed eyes, and he shied away from asking Lily if she too had noticed the scary-colored stains on the hem of Connor’s cargo shorts. They were probably a stain from the crawl space or the kitchen.
It had looked like several smears of blood. Like fingerprints. In blood.
This wasn’t a thriller novel, and Connor hadn’t been in a Reacher-style fight in an alley. This was the Eugene, Oregon public library, and Connor had been carrying a cat.
A cat he’d called Kitten instead of Pawsley.
Something had happened, and Jonathan wasn’t convinced it was a virus, but Connor said he was sick. That’s what Jonathan had to believe. Connor didn’t lie to him.
“He definitely seemed weird, though.” Lily was rambling. “He didn’t bounce when he walked.”
“I know, right? He was all heavy? Should I have driven him home?” Worry was giving him vocal fry, which he absolutely did not want.
Having to manage his pet unexpectedly was going to be rough enough, he didn’t need to present as a teen girl while he did it.
No shade to teen girls, they were awesome and he loved their energy and style and deadass stares, but not right now.
He took a deep breath. Counted.
Connor was the type of guy who did what he said he was going to do, so he’d go home to bed and Jonathan shouldn’t worry. At least, not while he had work to do. Or, at least, not to the exclusion of doing work.
He swung the carrier a tiny bit, approximating a baby swing, which he assumed baby cats would also like. Before Lily could make up some of her usual bullshit about influenza or food poisoning or whatever, Boss Becca arrived. “What is this? Another cat, or the same one?”
Their explanations sufficed, and he and Lily moved all of Kitten’s gear to the break room, then he rummaged in the bag for the makings of a bottle. The man who was so organized he slipped felt pads between his nonstick pans had sent a jumbled mess of far too much stuff with Kitten.
“I don’t understand. It looks like Connor brought everything.”
“So?”
He showed Lily the contents of the tote bag. “All the toys. And all six cans of food. We only need one here, and I have others at my place. This is Connor’s whole supply until the next box I ordered arrives.”
Lily shrugged, which meant he was worrying about nothing and should move on.
Kitten had grown bigger so quickly, and he could really smack his paws on the bottle and the hand that held it and even try to knead. He also purred while he suckled. Lily appeared to be near tears from sheer joy.
Jonathan glanced at the door to the public areas. “Maybe I should ask Becca if she wants a turn?”
Lily narrowed her eyes and made a hissing sound through her clenched teeth.
“Right, not taking him away from you, Aunt Lily. Just thought maybe our boss would be a smidge more cheerful about the whole situation if she also had the chance to feed the little tyke.” He didn’t see an alternative to leaving Kitten in the carrier for the next couple hours.
It broke his heart, but he knew intellectually that Kitten would nap, like Connor.
“I mean, letting her do the bottle part is probably better than asking her to do the next part?”
Lily sighed and popped the nipple out of Kitten’s protesting mouth. “You’re not wrong. Get her.”
As soon as he asked Boss Becca if she wanted to give Kitten a bottle, she took off to the break room. Jonathan wasn’t sure he’d seen her walk so briskly other than for a fire alarm.
In moments, Lily had the feeding demonstration well under control, and their boss didn’t need two junior supervisors, so he set the portable litter box in the corner farthest from the fridge and sink and removed the travel cover.
Connor hadn’t scooped the used litter before packing it. That wasn’t like him.
Jonathan didn’t want to text while Connor was going home. He’d wait twenty minutes and then send a picture of Kitten and say something nice. That was the right way to handle this, because Connor was a grown man who regularly cared for mewling students, so he’d be able to take care of himself.
Lily glanced over at what he was doing with the litter box. He gave a hopefully insouciant wave. “Don’t worry, you can handle this part.”
“Or, you know, you can. It’s your cat.”
“But you want the full auntie experience, don’t you?”
“Oh, you middle monster you, you cutie bug.”
Was that their boss, the self-professed dog person? She bent closer to Kitten and continued to babble as if he and Lily weren’t even in the break room.
“You drank all your milkie, didn’t you, little sweetie. You gonna be a big, big kitty weal soon.”
Lily looked at him, mouth open in a circle and eyes exaggeratedly huge in her face.
The words coming out of Becca’s mouth, the tone, the grammar—or more accurately, the lack of grammar—what was happening? His face must reflect Lily’s expression, because this was clearly the weirdest day ever in the Central Library’s history.