Chapter 12 #2
And now the cat is three times as much to love, because Lavender has a gift for chaos and sneakiness.
“My sister used to put her mouse cage in my room, and I’d have bad dreams that they were growing overnight and trying to eat me,” Cricket says in a rush.
Fuuuuck.
“I actually hadn’t thought of that in years. And I know I’m an adult and I should get over it but I—it’s not—” She cuts herself off with a half sob-laugh as she angles toward the door.
Why is it so much harder to be kind to her than it is to be kind to any of the rest of the guests here?
Because she needs more, dumbass.
And I don’t know how much more I have to give, but I give it anyway. “Scars from childhood don’t magically go away.”
Her eyes connect with mine again.
She’s in the doorway, the fermentation tanks lined up behind her, the light out there flickering, and I can almost smell the wheels turning.
I stifle a sigh that she doesn’t need to see or hear, and I turn my attention back to the pile. We have almost enough for the start of a trellis, and if I set some mouse traps, she’ll probably come back here and finish the job, even if she brings someone else with her.
She’s pretty good at finding the good stakes.
I should tell her that.
But when I open my mouth to say something nice, something else comes out instead.
“My grandpa had this stuffed deer head on his wall that used to scare the shit out of me and give me nightmares when I was a kid. So much that when my class took a field trip to a petting zoo and I saw a deer, I freaked out and ran and hid. Cops got called when my teacher couldn’t find me when it was time to head back to school.
First time I remember seeing my mom cry was when they found me and brought me out to her.
Swore to myself I’d never make her cry like that again. ”
Least favorite childhood memory.
Even worse than the memories of getting in trouble in high school for partying and skipping school.
My grades were fine.
Stellar, in fact, despite the stories my in-laws told about how I barely graduated.
Not like the school was going to kick me out.
So that was my rebellion.
And then my punishments—they were light.
I couldn’t even get my parents to do anything bad about it.
Part of growing up, they said. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t have unprotected sex. Don’t cut off opportunities you’ll regret later.
I’d have to help clean up after the parties or help my teachers whose classes I skipped, but that was it.
Cricket leans a shoulder against the doorframe. “You had a rough childhood too?”
“No. It was good. Not like—not like Ava’s was either. She—she had it a lot like it sounds like you did.”
“Did you know her growing up?”
“No.” We met at a bar. Dated for a year before she got pregnant. Rough pregnancy. Rough post-pregnancy. Life finally started evening out for us, and then she got sick.
I barely knew her in those good times so often referenced in marriage vows.
None of which I tell Cricket.
“Some of her videos used to cross my feed,” Cricket says. “She seemed like such an amazing person. And it was really inspiring to see—well, to see someone who wasn’t a size two sharing what she loved about vegetables and fitness.”
I almost smile. “She did love vegetables. Not always fitness. But she was trying.”
“That’s what was so great. She was real about it.”
I nod.
“So, there’s something I should probably tell you…”
I lift my brows.
One thing I’m learning about Cricket—her brain squirrels. So there’s no telling where this is going.
“I heard Lavender singing a song about feeding Fluffy while Daddy’s in the shower so he doesn’t know.”
Of course she did.
I squeeze my eyes shut and count to five.
“I shower and have my coffee before she’s awake,” I tell Cricket.
“That’s what she likes you to think. I hear her feet while I can also hear the plumbing running in the mornings. She’s definitely playing you.” She winces. “Sorry.”
“Did she happen to sing about where she’s getting the food?”
“From Pip.”
I stare at her.
And then I bark out a laugh.
Velveeta.
From Pip.
That actually tracks.
Wonder what new food Pip’s sending over now that I haven’t found yet.
Cricket sucks in a breath that she seems to draw from her toes.
“If you—if you want—I could sit with her whenever you’re busy.
Like mornings. Or you can send her down when you’re cooking dinner.
Or I can take the cat when you don’t want them together unsupervised.
Not like take your cat take your cat. Just like, cat-sit.
I—I really like the little apartment, and I’m grateful that you’re letting me stay there, so if I can help, if I can repay the favor, I’d like to. ”
Mabel’s always had one rule for living here.
We help each other out to the best of our abilities, and we respect that not everyone can be one hundred percent every single day.
I ask for help with Lav—too much lately, but fuck, it’s hard enough being a single parent when my kid isn’t getting kicked out of summer camp—and I give back with the skills I learned from my dad and occasionally playing paramedic.
Cricket’s offering to do the same.
To live up to what’s asked in exchange for being here.
New residents get grace to work through their shit before they’re asked to take a full load, but most people don’t last long enough to want full-time chores and responsibilities the way Mabel, Ginny, and Samantha and Olivia do.
I think Cricket’s going to be a long-timer.
Not just because it’s been a couple years since we added long-timers. Samantha and Olivia are a little newer than me, and I’ve been here over three years.
It’s a gut feeling.
And that annoys me.
I don’t want to feel responsible for her, but I don’t know how to shut it off, and if she’s here forever—then I’m going to feel responsible for her forever.
But if she can help with Lav?
My handful of an unpredictable daughter?
Who already adores Cricket, probably because they’re both chaos gremlins?
Might as well make that strawberry lemonade.
“You don’t have to volunteer to do everything,” I tell her.
“I like to stay busy.” She laughs a humorless laugh.
“Ginny says it’s probably a trauma response from all of the lessons I got in childhood about having to work harder to be as good as I was always told my sisters were when they were my age.
But I do. I like to be busy. Especially if it’s something that makes me feel like I’m not a complete fuckup at being an adult. ”
“You’re not a complete fuckup.”
“That’s very kind of you to say.”
“Lavender’s sneaky.”
“Clearly, if she’s getting food to the cat without you knowing.”
“Appreciate that reminder of my failures.”
“Are you kidding? You’re like, the most patient man I’ve ever met in my life. Lavender’s lucky to have you. But no one’s perfect, and seeing that you might still need some help makes you less intimidating.”
I file that away to ponder later.
Probably at three a.m. when I wake up and can’t get back to sleep and my brain starts rolling on all of the stress in my life.
I have good parents.
My in-laws are leaving us alone, if you don’t count the emails and voicemails that come in like clockwork from my mother-in-law, demanding to see Lav, which I’ve learned to archive in case they’re needed later, but mostly ignore.
Lav’s living her best six-year-old life.
Despite all of that, I’m on edge. There’s too much I need to do to help take care of this place and prep for a wedding, and I worry about how I don’t even realize I’m fucking up my daughter and I can’t shake the feeling that something bad is about to happen.
Also probably a trauma response after all the shit life’s thrown my way since before Lav was born.
But the cat can’t keep eating this way.
And Lav needs to redirect her energy into something that’s not sneaking around, but not in a way that’ll crush her spirit or make her feel like she’s bad.
Having someone help with that in the thirty to forty-five minutes that I get to myself each day might help with that.
Especially since Cricket’s hardly intimidating herself.
Annoying, yes.
Intimidating, no.
And Lav loves her, and since Cricket’s been playing with her in the mornings, Lav’s been fighting bedtime less for being more tired too.
Regardless of what I want or don’t want, my daughter would be thrilled.
“We can try—” I start, but I’m cut off by a loud, reverberating crack of wood that’s followed by Cricket shrieking as she falls sideways into the wall.
The doorframe broke.
The fucking doorframe broke.
I toss aside the trellis post and dash to her side, coughing as a plume of rotted drywall dust swirls around us.
“I didn’t do it,” she rasps before coughing in my face.
I yank her out of the doorway and into the main fermentation room.
There’s a long creak, then a sharp crack, and the top board of the doorframe crashes down right where she was standing too.
“Are you for real?” she gasps at the doorway.
The frame’s collapsed sideways into the wall, where I can quickly see evidence of water damage on all of the rotting support beams.
There’s a roof leak.
Has to be.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Oh my god,” she shrieks.
It’s all the warning I get before she’s climbing me. “Mice! Mice!”
One mouse runs out from a hole low in the wall and across my boot.
Three more scatter toward the fermentation tanks behind us.
A large mouse that’s clearly eating as well as Fluffy these days lumbers slower than the rest, and it goes back into the storage room instead of out.
Dean always hired the lowest bidder.
Pip says it all the time when things break.
And this building?
It’s breaking too.
Also breaking?
Me.
Because I have a soft woman clinging to me with her raspy, shaky breath blowing into my neck, her legs wrapped around my hips, and her arms squeezing my neck so tight that I’m in danger of losing circulation to my brain.
As if I haven’t already.
When Cricket hugged me last week—that was a problem.
Because this woman that I bitch and moan to myself about, complaining that she’s one more thing that I have to be responsible for—she gave me something I didn’t even know I needed when she gave me that hug.
She gave me a minute of feeling like I had someplace to lean when I’m overwhelmed too.
A sense of being less alone.
And like I don’t need to feel guilty for feeling alone when I’m surrounded by people who are the best definition of community.
Like I get to be complicated and messy too.
And now she’s climbing me like a tree, and my brain is flashing back to images of her wet and naked in the shower, and my dick is waking up and excited about every bit of this.
My dick hasn’t been excited about anything in ages.
“Sorry,” Cricket sobs. “Sorry. Sorry. I—I’ll let go.”
Not in here she won’t.
She’s fucking terrified.
Instead of putting her down, I wrap my arms around her to hold her tight, turn, and walk us past the old steel tanks and out into the sunshine.
“You’re safe,” I murmur to her. “Promise. I won’t let them hurt you.”
I won’t let anything hurt this woman.
The woman who has such a generous spirit despite the shit hand she was dealt in the parent and internet virality departments.
The woman with the big doe eyes and pillowy-soft breasts and a squeezable ass and strong-as-fuck thighs.
The woman who’s trying too hard and overcompensating in all the wrong ways, when all anyone here wants from her is that she be herself.
And that—that’s most everything that I don’t like about her.
When I’m being honest, when I’m thinking at three a.m., when I hear her talking on the phone under my porch, that’s when I can admit what I don’t like about her.
That she’s attractive.
That she’s just as much a mess on the outside as I feel like on the inside.
That she’s been more of a help with my daughter than anyone else who’s ever been here, and that I genuinely believe Lav’s helping her as much as she’s helping us, which is also terrifying.
That I want to protect her from what brought her here, from the scare I gave her myself two weeks ago, and from anyone who ever thinks of looking at her wrong again.
She needs to leave.
For my sanity, she has to go.