Charlie
I want the mama cat to be orange—Mango Tango, according to the name on the wrapper—but my crayon keeps veering past the lines.
I scrunch my face as I try to slow down, to press softer, to find the perfect grip, but my wrist is hurting and weak, and the crayon tip dances across the page like a frightened bug.
“Stop it,” I whisper to my trembling hand, hoping politeness will tame the tremor.
It doesn’t. I grab a fresh crayon anyway—sometimes a swap fools my fingers into behaving.
One kitten is already sky-blue; next is the yellow one, but my fingers fumble the crayon, so I wrap my whole fist around it.
The line wobbles, but messy is okay—mama cats don’t mind messy.
I lean in, jaw clenched, every muscle keyed on coloring.
My wrist throbs, I pause to rub it, grit my teeth, then press on.
The door creaks, and my shoulders jerk in response.
Someone’s coming. I don’t look up—if I pretend I’m not here, they usually leave.
My crayon skids outside a kitten’s paw. I correct it poorly; it still looks snarled.
Footsteps crunch closer. Closer. Right next to me.
My heart hammers so loud I’m sure the person can hear it.
But the person doesn’t leave. They sit. Right beside me. I force a tiny peek and see a man—colossal, broad-shouldered like an oak tree, arms thick as logs, with a dark beard across his jaw. Even sitting, he towers. He smells warm and expensive. I drop my gaze to the page.
It’s fine. It’s fine. He’ll go away.
The orange crayon veers outside the lines again, and my hand shakes so violently that the tip snaps with a pathetic, childlike crack. I bite my lip, hard.
If you cry now, everything will be ruined.
You’ll be the club joke for a month.
I pick up the broken half, but my fingers are so numb that I just end up pushing it farther away.
Then the big man’s hand comes down, impossibly gentle, and plucks the crayon remnant off the table between a thumb and forefinger.
He holds it out, palm up, waiting. My eyes dart up to his, then away so fast I see only the suggestion of his dark gaze.
I reach for the crayon, not wanting to touch his skin, but there’s no way around it.
My knuckles brush the side of his thumb, and the contact is so warm it takes something out of me. The crayon is soft; his hand is softer.
“Thank you,” I whisper, but the sound is so faint it doesn’t even reach my ears.
He doesn’t laugh, or poke, or say anything crude. He doesn’t do anything.
I turn my wrist so I can finish the line along the cat’s tail, but the pain is like a shock—electric and immediate—and the crayon slips again.
I drop it before I can help it, then rub my wrist with the other hand, just under the sleeve-scrunched cuff.
It’s a habit at this point, a tic of apology for my body’s many betrayals.
“Does your wrist hurt, baby?” The man’s voice rumbles. The word “baby” is so out of place that it jars me.
I freeze. I try to answer, but if I open my mouth, it will only open too much, and too many words will come out, and he’ll know how weak I am, so I nod, barely moving my head.
He makes a noise deep in his chest, not a laugh or a hum, but a sort of acknowledgment. The kind people make when they see something they want to protect, or maybe just something they want.
I color another line, then another, and the man watches every motion.
I can feel the intensity of his gaze, but it isn’t hungry in the way some men are.
It’s worse, actually. It’s like he’s memorizing, burning each movement into his brain.
I try to move slower, to not make mistakes, but the focus only makes my hands clumsier.
“Are you coloring a mommy cat?” His words are gentle, oddly light for someone this big.
I nod again and add, “And her babies,” because I need him to know.
He leans in, gaze tracing my page.
“I see that,” he says. His tone is pleased, approving.
My cheeks flare. I press the crayon to the paper too hard again, and have to ease off as my wrist complains.
He’s looking at my hand now, concern sharpening his features. “Does it hurt a lot?” he asks softly.
I shake my head. “Just a little.”
He hums, thoughtful. “May I see?”
Nobody ever asks to look at my hand. They always scold me or ignore me. But I stretch it out, tentatively, and he takes it with the gentlest touch imaginable, like he’s holding a fragile glass sculpture. His warm fingers circle my wrist, probing without pressure, patient and calm.
“How long has it been hurting?” he asks, voice steady. I shrug, too shy to say. He nods, as if that makes perfect sense. “That must make coloring hard.”
I nod fiercely.
“But I wanna finish,” I whisper, because the kittens need their colors.
He glances down at the page again.
“They’re very lucky,” he says quietly, “to have someone working so hard to make them right.”
My face burns. I hide it by sliding the orange crayon along the mama cat’s tail.
“They’re already right,” I mumble. “They’re mama’s.”
He considers this, then exhales softly. “Yes, I think you’re right.”
I keep expecting him to get up, end the conversation, grow bored, but he doesn’t move. He just continues sitting there like he’s meant to be here.
“Charlie,” he says.
My crayon stops mid-stroke, my stomach twisting. Did he just say my name? I didn’t tell him. I swallow and look up.
“How do you know my name?” I whisper.
His brows knit together, surprise flickering in his dark eyes.
“That’s a good question, sweetheart,” he says, not actually answering the question.
I look back down at my coloring page and try to finish the mama cat’s tail, but the line keeps wobbling now, and I don’t like that.
“Who are you?” I ask after a second, because that feels important.
He answers me this time. “I’m your new Daddy.”
Everything in me goes still, and my eyes start burning again.
He’s making fun of me.
He has to be.
People don’t just—
They don’t say things like that.
Not to me.
Not really.
Not unless they’re joking.
Or being mean.
Or both.
“I not—” My voice wobbles, and I swallow hard, trying to hold back the tears.
“You’re not.” I shake my head vigorously, staring down at the coloring book to hide my face.
“You can’t just—” I blink rapidly because crying in front of strangers is bad and embarrassing and makes people leave faster.
“I just coloring,” I mumble, smaller now.
“I not do anything. Don’t be mean to me… ”
My shoulders hunch inward, and I pull the stuffie closer against my side like it might help.
One moment, I’m curled in on myself, gripping my crayon too tightly and trying not to cry in front of this strange man, and the next, his arm is around my back as his other hand slides carefully under my knees.
I make a small, startled sound before I even understand what’s happening. “Wha—”
Then suddenly I’m not sitting on the floor anymore.
I’m in his lap.
My breath catches in my throat.
He’s so warm.
So big.
One of his arms wraps around my back, pulling me closer against his chest. His other hand comes up slowly, like he doesn’t want to scare me more than he already has.
“Shh,” he soothes. “It’s alright.”
My hands end up pressed awkwardly between us. The pink kitty is squished between my stomach and his coat, but he adjusts it gently, so it doesn’t fall.
His hand starts moving up and down my back in a comforting rhythm.
“Hush, Charlie,” he says quietly. “I wasn’t joking.”
My chest squeezes uncomfortably.
“You can’t say that,” I whisper, my voice barely audible. “You don’t know me.”
“I know enough,” he insists softly.
His hand continues its soothing motion across my back, each pass slow and warm and steady.
“You’re mine,” he says gently. “And I’m yours.”
My stomach churns with a mix of fear and longing.
“No,” I protest weakly, but my voice lacks conviction. His hold on me is firm yet gentle, and I can’t remember the last time someone held me like this. “P-put me down,” I force out, the big part of my brain screaming at me that this is not okay through the syrupy haze of little space.
The moment his hand moves higher, fingers threading through my hair with a grotesque parody of tenderness, my whole body goes cold, then hot, then numb again. There’s nothing sexual about it, not for me, not right now.
He’s just… touching me as if he has every right to, as if I belong here in his lap, and my fight-or-flight circuits are so blown out that I can’t even tell if staying still or trying to get away would be more dangerous.
He says, “I won’t hurt you,” so quietly it’s almost not there.
That should mean something. It should be a magic password that unfreezes my body and restores oxygen to my head and makes everything okay.
Instead, it’s a curse because my body doesn’t believe him, but it wants to.
It wants to so badly that my face presses harder into his coat, and my fingers clutch at his chest for anchorage.
I can feel the thump of his heart, slow and unbothered, as mine whips itself to shreds.
I know I shouldn’t be doing this. You’re not supposed to seek comfort from the thing that’s scaring you. You’re not supposed to melt into the arms of a stranger, not after all the warnings drilled into you since preschool.
The big part of my brain is howling that this is wrong, that it’s dangerous, that I should fight, should scream, should break the spell before it’s too late. But the little part—the small, soft, neglected part that’s been starving in the dark for years—just wants to rest.
It just wants him to hold me and not let go.
I hear myself say, “I—” and stop, because the words are all tangled and too many and not enough. I try again. “I don’t know what to do.”
“That’s alright,” he soothes, his hand never pausing in its gentle stroke through my hair, back and forth, back and forth, as if he’s calming a trembling animal. “I do.”