Chapter 12
CASH
My shifts at Sunny Fields were never especially exciting—I liked that about them—but over the next week they really dragged. Even seeing Grandma Jane and Mr. Conrad didn’t make them go much faster. Not when I had Mason and Dog and the kittens to get back to.
“Is that Alissa still giving you trouble?” Grandma Jane asked me on Thursday afternoon.
Alissa was one of the workers. She’d pulled my earbuds out by the cords one day because she didn’t like that I didn’t say hello to her, and she thought I was being rude.
But the manager had told her to leave me alone, and Grandma Jane liked to talk loudly in her hearing about how the problem with some people was they just didn’t know how to not be dicks, and Alissa had apologized a bunch of times.
“She’s okay now,” I assured Grandma Jane as I restocked the toilet paper holders in the visitors’ bathroom by reception.
Grandma Jane had sailed right past the yellow cone I’d put down outside to warn the ladies I was in here.
I guessed since she’d caught me in her shower that time when we were having plumbing problems at home, she figured she had the right.
“You’ve been a little distracted is all,” she said. “And I’m a worrier.” She narrowed her eyes. “What’s that face for?”
“You’re not a worrier,” I said. “You’re a fighter.”
She laughed. “Well, maybe I’m both! You’re okay, though?”
I nodded. “I’m good.” I thought about that for a moment. “I might be great.”
“Well, something’s changed with you,” she said. “You’re coming out of your shell, aren’t you? That was four complete sentences in a row.”
I flushed.
Jane pinched me on the cheek. She didn’t really do grandmotherly stuff like that usually.
Like, if you found her baking cookies, you’d think aliens had body-snatched her.
Unless they were hash cookies. So when she did something a TV or a storybook grandmother would do, it felt a little weird. Mostly, though, it felt special.
I didn’t tell Grandma Jane about Mason. Well, she knew about Dog and the kittens, and she knew that I was spending a lot of time at Mason’s place, but I hadn’t told her we’d kissed or anything like that. I wasn’t going crazy with the talking thing yet.
I’d told Mr. Conrad because he’d helped me get there, with figuring out stuff about communication and attraction generally, and about those things and Mason specifically.
Sometimes after work we didn’t even touch the Lego anymore.
I just showed him lots of photos of Dog and the kittens, and he asked questions about them that I answered.
“I like the orange one,” he said that afternoon, looking at a photograph of the kitten hanging by his claws from the top corner of the cage in the kennel room. “He’s a scrappy little rascal, isn’t he?”
“He’s my favorite too.”
“I thought Mason was your favorite,” he said, nudging me gently with his elbow so I’d know he was joking.
My face grew hot despite it, and I ducked my head. “I wasn’t counting him.”
“I know that, son,” Mr. Conrad said. “There’s cookies in the yellow tub if you want to grab some. Not the blue tub. Those are Jane’s, and, well, you have to ride your bike home.”
I huffed out a silent laugh and fetched the cookies. “Why is Grandma Jane making you cookies?” I asked.
Mr. Conrad wrinkled his nose. “Well, we share a common interest, as it happens.”
“Hash cookies?”
Mr. Conrad snorted. “No comment. Anyway, Jane saw you’d been spending time with me and came to make sure I’m not an asshole. Her words. I showed her some of my photo albums. The ones from the road trips I took with Aubrey, remember?”
I nodded. Mr. Conrad and his wife had traveled the country in an RV for six months.
“Well, Jane has a vintage Meopta Flexaret, can you believe that?”
I didn’t even know what that was.
“It’s a camera,” Mr. Conrad said. “We’re thinking of starting a photography club.”
Something about the way he said it caught my attention, and I raised an eyebrow and said, “Is that what they’re calling it now?”
It was Mr. Conrad’s turn to blush.
Oh.
I grinned at him. It was kind of funny when someone else was speechless for once.
He cleared his throat and said, “Show me that orange kitten again, son.”
Trying not to laugh, I did.
I stopped off at home before I went to Mason’s that afternoon because I needed to pick up some fresh clothes.
Well, I didn’t really need to since I’d been doing laundry at Mason’s place, but I missed the guys.
I missed Chase mostly. I’d seen him every morning this week when I’d walked down to get coffee from Gobble de Goose, and we texted a bunch of times every day, but it wasn’t the same.
And Chase was missing me too, because I sent a text to let him know I was coming by the house.
And when I got there he was sitting on the old couch on the front porch, staring at the road like a kid waiting for his lost dog to come home.
By the time I reached him, he’d set his face into a scowl because he never wanted anyone to know he had actual feelings.
“Missed you,” I told him when we hugged.
He squeezed me tight. “Dick.”
“Asshole,” I mumbled into his neck.
He didn’t let go for a long time. Had to get his scowl back in place.
“So,” he said when he finally released me, “you sleeping okay?”
Of course that was the first thing he’d ask. “Yeah,” I said.
He gave me a skeptical look, but I was telling the truth.
My second night at Mason’s, Dog had scratched at my bedroom door until I’d let him in and then he’d jumped up onto the bed like he owned it, so that was where he slept now.
And the couple of times the dream I was having had started to turn bad, Dog’s wet tongue rasping against my cheek had woken me before I could sink too far into nightmare territory.
Knowing Dog was watching out for me made it easier to go back to sleep, and the weight of him curled up against the back of my knees was somehow enough to convince my brain to behave at night.
I wasn’t sure why it worked, but I wasn’t questioning it.
Chase gave me a long look, then asked, “How’s your bunnies or whatever.”
“Kittens,” I corrected, even though of course he already knew. “Want to see my photos?”
“No,” he lied, already craning his head to look at my phone.
We settled on the ratty old couch and he rested his head on my shoulder as we looked at the pictures for a while and he pretended he didn’t think the kittens were cute. I caught him smiling at the orange cat, though.
Chase reached over and slid his thumb across the screen for the next photo and froze. His mouth turned down. “Why do you have a picture of your vet?”
It was a picture of Mason grinning as he held a kitten in each hand, and it was clear that he was the main focus and not the cats. Mason was stressed a lot of the time, but he’d looked so happy in that moment that I’d wanted to capture it, and he hadn’t objected.
“We’re friends,” I said.
“You don’t have friends,” Chase pointed out.
He wasn’t being mean. It was true. Chase knew me too well.
How did you make a friend when you couldn’t even make a conversation?
My whole life I’d let Chase take the lead when it came to talking with strangers because I couldn’t.
We’d gotten lucky when we’d landed in Goose Run, both our defenses down too far to resist being dragged into Danny’s collection of strays.
And we’d stayed long enough that we were family.
But we’d skipped right over the friendship part.
Chase had been surprised enough to find out I was talking to Mr. Conrad, and I was sure he pictured him as frail and doddering and therefore nonthreatening, even though he wasn’t either of those things.
He was just old. But Mason? I usually avoided people like Mason.
I usually avoided people, period. But I’d changed, and Chase hadn’t realized because he was too close to see it.
But he wasn’t stupid. He looked at the picture again and narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re not fucking him, are you?”
Heat rose in my cheeks as I shook my head.
Technically, it wasn’t a lie. We hadn’t gotten any further than kissing—mainly because we were both too tired for anything else.
But that didn’t mean I hadn’t thought about it.
About sneaking into Mason’s room at night and curling up with him and waking him up with kisses and seeing how far things would go.
I knew it wouldn’t work like that. I knew that Mason wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t let anything happen without explicit consent. Because I hadn’t told him much about me or my past, but Mason wasn’t stupid either. And he’d seen how I flinched when he touched me unexpectedly.
If he’d been a dick, we would have fucked already. But also, if he’d been a dick, I never would have gotten close enough to him to consider fucking him.
If anything was going to happen, it was up to me to initiate.
I must have been quiet for too long because Chase let out a slow breath and whispered, “Holy shit. You like him.”
My face burned.
“I didn’t think you liked anyone.”
“Me neither.” I shrugged. “He’s… it’s different with him, okay?”
Chase glared at Mason’s picture and said, “I don’t like him.”
“You don’t like anyone,” I said. “And don’t be an asshole. You don’t even know him.”
Chase’s protective streak mostly manifested as an aggressive streak.
“I don’t like that he’s your boss,” he said, his scowl deepening. “He’s not like, pressuring you, is he?”
“He’s not my boss,” I said. “We’re friends. If I wanted to quit helping out there, I would. But I don’t want to. And yeah, I do like him. And also, fuck you, because if anyone is sleeping with the boss, it’s you, not me!”
“Ugh.” Chase rolled his eyes. “That was hate sex that went horribly wrong.”
“So wrong he practically lives here.”