Chapter 15
DANCE OF THE GLITTER PAW FAIRY
Cricket
I dance up the stairs from my little apartment to Heath’s house early Thursday morning, almost four weeks after I first arrived here, with one of my favorite songs in my head and my new favorite hand lotion rubbed into my skin up to my elbows, making me smell like a field of strawberry shortcake.
Yes, yes, I know strawberry shortcake doesn’t grow in fields.
But Lav and I played that it does yesterday.
Heath has been leaving the door unlocked for me, so I let myself into the upper part of the house and head to the kitchen, where I start coffee for both of us before going in search of Fluffy.
It’s nice to have a routine again.
Especially a routine in a warm, welcoming place.
There’s still a bit of tension with Heath—likely all in my head because of this stupid crush I can’t shake that gets a little worse every time I interact with him or watch him with Lav—but it’s better than the passive-aggressive sighs that my former roommate would make if my coffee machine was too loud or if I hadn’t pulled my clean laundry out of the dryer fast enough for her liking, or, honestly, the simmering tension in the house I grew up in.
But Heath doesn’t sigh.
He doesn’t yell.
He doesn’t lecture, and he doesn’t tell Lavender to tone it down or play differently unless there’s a visible, immediate safety hazard in what she’s doing.
She’s getting the childhood I wish I’d had. A safe place to explore and pretend to her heart’s content.
As the coffee maker burps and bubbles, I locate the cat lying dramatically in front of her food bowl as the first rays of the new summer day peek through the gauzy curtains over the sink in the kitchen.
“Morning, sunshine,” I whisper.
She scowls at me, then meows mournfully.
I tilt my head.
Is she fluffier, or is she skinnier?
I can’t tell, but I think she’s fluffier today.
Must be the lighting or the angle. Since we cut off her secret extra food supply, she’s been slimming down some.
“Breakfast is coming as soon as your daddy’s out of the shower,” I tell her.
I’ve said the same thing for almost two weeks now.
And just like every morning that I’ve said daddy’s out of the shower, my brain flips a switch and takes control of itself and flashes me erotic images of Heath—naked, wet, and slamming me into the side of the shower with his penis.
Stop it, Cricket.
Distraction.
I need a distraction.
And what’s a better distraction than chocolate chip pancakes?
It won’t be the first time I’ve made breakfast up here. Late last week, I made an egg frittata that I left in the oven for Heath to finish when he showed up in the kitchen smelling like a woody forest with towering trees, which made me think of—
No, Cricket, focus.
Breakfast.
I’m making breakfast.
For the third or fourth time now?
At least the third.
Without dropping eggs or spilling milk or exploding flour or confusing salt for sugar or doing any of the other things that could go wrong in a kitchen.
I’m making both breakfast and progress.
And I’m not thinking any deeper than that about it.
I hum the song that was in my head earlier, getting my favorite earworm back on track as I dig for flour, sugar, chocolate chips, baking powder, salt, milk, butter, and eggs, then find a griddle that I preheat on the stovetop, keeping half an eye on the hallway in case Lav’s up early.
Since I’ve been here on Fluffy patrol, she’s sleeping later.
I asked Heath yesterday if he wanted me to stop coming since Fluffy’s food issue seems to be resolved, but he said routine was good for Lav, so here I am.
Doesn’t take long to have the first pancakes on the griddle.
But as soon as I’ve put the last one on, I hear something clatter to the floor behind me, across the countertop to the living room.
“Lav?” I call softly.
No answer.
“Lavender?” I say a little louder.
Still no answer, and I can’t see her in the living room, so I head down the hallway.
Her door’s shut. No noises.
Just in case she’s still asleep, I go check on Fluffy to see if she’s the source of the noise.
But kitty’s not in the kitchen.
Huh.
I flip the pancakes, then head fully into the living room instead of stopping with a cursory glance, where—
“Oh my god, kitty,” I whisper-shriek.
Fluffy is stuck.
Stuck-stuck.
And not only is she stuck, but she’s stuck underneath the couch, and she’s coated in glitter.
Yes, glitter.
Green sparkly glitter that’s all over her, all over the wood part of the floor, all over the side of the couch, and all over the rug beneath the couch and coffee table.
It’s like a green garden fairy exploded in here.
Fluffy yowls at me from her wedged position beneath the couch, shakes her head, then tries to lick the glitter off the one paw that’s sticking out from under the couch, then tries to clean her tongue with her glittered paw.
“No, Fluffy,” I hiss as I dash to her.
Crap, crap, crap.
How do I do this without getting glittered myself?
She yowls again, louder, like she’s in pain.
“I’m trying to help you,” I whisper while her yowls get increasingly louder and more panicked and she throws glitter around while trying to shake it off herself. “Don’t eat the glitter. You’ll be pooping it out for months.”
I should get Heath.
I should get Heath to help.
But I do not want to walk into the man’s bedroom.
I don’t want to see him sleeping.
I don’t want to know if he’s in the shower.
Mostly because of how much I do want both of those things.
How does everyone at this place not have a crush on him?
There aren’t really rules against it, but the vibe around here is don’t cause drama.
Having a crush on the resident handyman?
That has potential for drama written all over it.
I cannot cause problems with Heath.
I just can’t. Not worth the complications when things are finally evening out.
So I have to do this myself.
“It’s just glitter, Cricket,” I mutter to myself.
Hardly an emergency that warrants getting Heath.
But Fluffy’s in clear distress, yowling and shaking her head and batting her paw like she can throw the glitter off of it and trying to pull herself out from under the couch all at the same time, while occasionally stopping to push her tongue out over and over, similar to the way I do when I get peanut butter stuck on the roof of my mouth.
I sigh.
Glitter Cricket it is today.
Might as well match the cat.
I reach for her. “If you’d just stay still, I can get you out of there.”
Her yowls turn to a hiss, and she swipes at my hand, claws out.
“How did you even get under there? Oh my god. Oh my god. Tell me you weren’t chasing a mouse.”
The cat yells even louder.
Possibly like I’m the stupidest person in the world.
A person who can’t even successfully manage a glittered cat.
“You’re the one who got stuck under a couch,” I snap back.
She swats at me again.
I grab a throw pillow and bat back at her as gently as I can.
I don’t want to beat the cat—clearly, that’s the last thing I want—but if I can knock some glitter off of her fur—sorry, Heath, this pillow’s toast—maybe she’ll attack it instead of me and then I can pull her out.
And I know better than to try one of the balloon animals that are also littered all over the living room.
She bats at me, I bat back, glitter poofs around us, landing all over my arms, and she gets a claw stuck in the pillow.
Yes.
This is it. This is my chance.
I grab a blanket—sorry about this one too, Heath—and wrap it around her, getting a solid grip on the cat just under her arm and yanking.
She hisses, then yowls an unholy yowl like nothing I’ve ever heard before in my entire life.
It’s like she’s trying to summon the dead.
“You shouldn’t be under the couch, and you shouldn’t be glittering the whole house!” I whisper-shriek at her.
She does the demon yowl again.
My arm hairs rise.
A shiver makes the rest of my skin prickle from my scalp to my tailbone.
I pull the blanket off and check to see if I’ve made any progress.
Nope.
I have, though, made progress at making the glitter demon cat angrier.
She’s baring her teeth at me, and I swear her eyes are glowing.
“Okay, okay,” I say softer. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but you did this to yourself by playing with glitter unsupervised.”
Her lip curls, and she growls.
Growls.
The cat is possessed.
The cat is possessed, and she’s tugging herself with one paw like she can force her chunky little body out from under the couch through sheer willpower.
I stumble back a little.
And suddenly, alarms blare all around us.
Real, loud, shrieking alarms that are accompanied by a hint of burnt toast in the air.
The cat yowls while I dive even farther back. “Stop, demon cat,” I gasp.
Alarms.
Alarms.
The pancakes.
Oh my god, the pancakes.
Fluffy hasn’t made the alarms go off with her yowling and hissing and hidden demon powers.
I forgot I had food on the stove.
I bolt to my feet and turn, running smack into Heath.
His chin connects with my forehead with a crack, and I realize three things at once.
One, there’s smoke coming from the kitchen.
Two, Lavender’s running out of her room in pajamas, shrieking in terror.
And three, Heath is naked.
Naked naked.
Naked and dripping wet, half-hard, and—
Stop, stop, stop, I order my brain, but no, this is actually happening.
The cat screams at us.
Lavender throws herself at me, sobbing. “The house is on fire, Cricket, run.”
Heath dashes into the kitchen, giving me a view of two very firm ass cheeks.
“I’ll get Fluffy,” Lavender cries.
Tears stream down her face.
“Don’t touch the cat!” I cry back.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
We can’t leave the cat in here to die.
But if Lavender gets glittered—
There’s a fucking fire, Cricket. Quit worrying about glitter.
Heath’s saying words I’ve rarely heard him say out loud before, never in front of his daughter. Far worse than the single dammit I heard out of him the day we met.
And Fluffy’s still hissing and growling at all of us.
“Go outside,” I tell Lavender. “I’ll get Fluffy.”
Shit.
Shit.
I’m crying too.