Chapter 9 Henry
Henry
Iwas cutting up vegetables nervously when my doorbell rang. I heard the frantic skitter of Curie’s claws on the wood floor as she reacted as she always did to the doorbell: with a scooby-doo run-in-place. It was comical when I knew to expect it, a little startling when I didn’t see it coming.
I put down my knife and considered the carrots and celery I’d cut into sticks.
Would Jamison even want them? I hadn’t had a lot of food choices to draw from when I looked into my fridge, and it had been these and some dip or cold cuts.
Maybe the cold cuts would have been better; I could have offered him a sandwich instead of finger food?
Were sandwiches more appropriate for meeting your one-time hookup with whom you were now trading test results? More serious, maybe?
Curie, recovered from her catfit, sauntered into the kitchen and meowed at me as if reminding me there was someone at the door.
Right, that. I pushed the knife toward the center of the island, just in case Curie got the notion to jump onto the counter, which she regularly did, and made my way to the door.
Jamison was wearing skinny jeans - really skinny - and an old band t-shirt with a stretched-out neckline that nearly hung off one shoulder but managed to look like it was supposed to be that way.
Meanwhile, I was in loose jeans that inevitably bore a layer of sawdust baked into the fabric, as practically everything I owned did, and a college sweatshirt with a ragged hem that the cat had clawed one time too many. I felt like a slob next to him.
“Hey,” he said, breaking what I belatedly realized had been an awkward silence while I studied him and compared our outfits.
“I brought vodka.” He hoisted a grocery bag with the distinct shape of a glass bottle inside.
“That means you have to let me in,” he added when I continued to just stand there like an idiot.
“Oh! Oh, right.” I stepped back, allowing him inside. “Sorry. Vodka is good.” Vodka is good? What the hell kind of hello was that?
He managed to act like nothing I’d said was abnormal as he followed me into the house.
He adjusted his glasses as his head swiveled around, taking in my decor, such as it was.
Which it mostly wasn’t. Woodwork, yes, I had plenty of that.
Artwork, not so much. My mom had offered to help, but honestly, I didn’t want to have to be dusting knicknacks every week anyway, so I’d turned her down.
My handcrafted rocking chair and Ikea couch were enough decoration in my humble opinion.
“Oh my god, is this her?” Jamison squealed, making me jump and my head jerk away from the living room toward him.
He was standing with his arms outstretched, making grabby hands a safe distance away from Curie, who was peeking around the corner at him curiously. “You didn’t tell me she was a floof!”
I followed his gaze to the cat, who, yes, was kinda fluffy. The vet had called her a domestic medium-hair, which as best I could tell meant she was 50% cat and 50% fur (and 100% attitude). “Sorry?” I ventured carefully.
He shoved the bag of vodka into my hands. I fumbled it but managed to keep it from falling to the ground. “Can I pet her?”
I shrugged. “If she’ll let you. It might take her a while to come all the way out. I don’t get a lot of visitors, so this is probably weird for her.”
Without further ado, Jamison dropped to the floor, splaying his legs out and making kissy noises at the cat. “Come here, pretty lady. Come see Jamie. I want to give you pets and kisses and love.”
Curie appeared somewhat puzzled by the hullabaloo, but she slowly ventured into the room, seeming to be drawn to the noises Jamison was making. She gave a quiet chirp and reached out a paw to tap his leg.
Jamison made a high-pitched but quiet Eee noise, and I couldn’t help but grin. This man was going gaga over an ex-stray cat. It was fucking adorable.
Soon, he was running a hand down her back, carefully staying with the grain of her coat, and Curie, the traitor, was purring.
She flopped down along the length of his leg and began kneading at his jeans with her paws.
Though she was exposing her belly, I was impressed to see that Jamison resisted the temptation and kept his hand on her back.
It was hard to fight the urge to snorgle the belly, but it was probably best if he left here today with no new holes in his body, and snorgling would lead to holes.
Leaving them to it for the moment, I went back into the kitchen to retrieve the veggies and dip I’d prepared.
I carried the tray - ok, plate, it was just a large plate - into the living room and set it down on the coffee table.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d want something to eat,” I ventured as Jamison tickled Curie’s ear.
“And I didn’t have much. But so yeah. Um, eat away. ” I gestured at the plate.
Jamison gave Curie another scratch, then sat up. “Ooh, this looks like an actual thing,” he complimented. “If you’d come to my place I’d have opened a bag of chips and called it good enough. You’re clearly classier than I am.”
I couldn’t resist a hint of pride coming out in my smile. I’d impressed him! He didn’t need to know this had just happened to be what I had. So of course, I opened my mouth and what came out was, “I didn’t have a lot of other food so I kind of settled on this.”
So much for impressing him. Dumbass.
“Well,” he said, dipping a carrot in the onion dip, “you done settled good. And I mean, you’re letting me play with your cat, you could probably serve me liver and I’d still be happy.”
“Noted,” I replied. “Next time: liver and onions.”
After swallowing his carrot, he offered me a teasing smile. “I’d just feed the liver to the cat and be her new hero. She’d want to come home with me.”
I shook a warning finger at him. “What did we say? No stealing my cat! Anyway,” I added thoughtfully, “if you love cats so much, why don’t you have your own? At least, I don’t think you have one. I don’t remember there being one when I was at your place that night.”
“Honey,” he teased, “I could have had a circus elephant in the apartment that night, and I don’t think either of us would have noticed.”
“Yeah, fair,” I allowed. We’d been preoccupied. Very preoccupied.
“But no, I don’t have a pet. I guess it always seemed like a really big…
commitment? Not in the sense that I don’t think I could take care of something long-term, but more in the sense of, like, am I really a good home for a cat or dog?
I work from home, yes, but I work long hours and would a pet feel neglected when I’m physically there but mentally checked out?
” He shrugged. “I dunno. It didn’t seem fair. ”
I thought about that. “Actually, that sounds like a really good environment for a cat, especially. They mostly just want to be where you are, more than they want to be interacting with you a lot of the time. Curie is content to sit in my workshop and nap, even when I’m at it for hours.”
He thought about that for a long moment. “But does she snuggle when you are free? I don’t want a pet who completely ignores me, either.”
I gestured to where the cat was still plastered against his leg, purring up a storm. “No,” I said dryly, “she definitely doesn’t ever want to touch humans.”
A giggle burbled up out of him and he looked down where his hand was against Curie’s side. “Ok, fair point. I guess it would depend on the cat, but this one seems snuggly.”
“She’s not usually like this with strangers,” I confessed, needing to be honest for some reason. “Usually she hides when my family comes over. Possibly because my mom gets a little…overenthusiastic.”
He munched another carrot - I noticed he was studiously avoiding the celery - thoughtfully and then smiled. “Let me guess, she tries to touch the belly?”
I couldn’t help my laugh. “She says that if she’s exposing it that way, she must want it petted.
She left last time with a nice suite of scratches on the back of her hand and Curie escaped on top of the bookshelf.
” I gestured to the six-foot-high bookshelf that stood in the corner of the room.
It held a mix of books and my random junk, including a wood plane - why was that in the house?
- two reversible, snarky-faced plushies, and a bottle of hand lotion that I had failed to return to the bathroom last time I used it.
No, get your mind out of the gutter. Woodwork is hard on the hands, it sucks all the moisture right out!
He eyed the book - junk? - shelf curiously for a moment, then popped to his feet, carefully avoiding Curie’s tail, which was curled around his knee, and walked over to it.
His hand reached out to one of the plushies - a rainbow octopus with a scowl on its face - and then drew back. He looked at me. “Can I touch?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Nothing there is breakable.”
He picked up the plushie, appearing delighted when he realized that it could be flipped inside-out to expose a smiling face instead of the scowling one.
“This is awesome!” He flipped it to the smile and beamed a matching smile at me, then flipped it back to the scowl and put on his best glower, which mostly made him look like an angry puppy, not that I was going to tell him that.
“You can make it match your mood!” He put the plushie down in its spot and reached for the plane, fumbling it a little when it was heavier than he anticipated.
“I’m assuming this is for woodworking? Either that or it’s a torture device. ”
It probably would make a pretty decent torture device, now that he mentioned it. You could plane off layers of skin, starting with the outer layers just to scare someone and then moving deeper…