But I’ll take it as a good sign that all her stuff is here. Plus, her toothbrush is out in my bathroom, which feels weird, but not wrong.
Not like I’d expect a woman’s toothbrush in my bathroom to feel.
Her cat’s also still here. Rufus and I are having a stare-down, him from my kitchen sink, ears slicked back, eyes wide, his weird brownish-tannish fur puffed up so he looks like his face is one of those craft pompons my sisters’ younger kids glue to their art projects.
I snap a picture from my spot at the edge of the kitchen, then send it to West with an accompanying question. Does this look normal?
He and Daisy don’t actually know how many cats they have, but it’s a lot. She adopted an entire shelter after a photo shoot gone wrong in her mansion not long after Remy landed on her doorstep.
“I’m coming to get a glass, and it’s above your head, okay, cat?”
He jerks and lunges like he’s attacking a dust bunny on the side of the sink, then lifts his head and looks at me again, mouth open like he’s skated a few laps and is gulping oxygen.
He’s freaking hilarious.
West doesn’t answer, but I hear the telltale click of the door lock, then shuffling, and a moment later, the door swings shut with its normal bang.
The cat rowls and leaps for safety, but he doesn’t account for the faucet and dives headfirst into it.
Before I can move to check on him, he’s using the oranges in my fruit bowl as a trampoline to leap to the top of the fridge.
All of the artwork from my nieces and nephews that I’ve stored up there rains down as he scrambles to get purchase on the edge of the refrigerator.
I grab my thickest oven mitts and dart for the cat. Not hard to see what’s coming next.
Rufus Superman-ing it off the top of the fridge and landing in my trash can.
“Calm down,” I order as I reach for him.
He scrambles again, switching directions on the flying papers, and sends an old Valentine’s Day card coated in glitter straight at me while somehow managing to get enough traction to leap up onto the cabinets instead of falling into the trash can.
This should be an improvement.
But one, I have glitter falling into my face, and two, he’s trying to climb into the vintage brown and tan pitcher that I insisted I wanted from my grandma’s estate merely because I knew Keely wanted it and she was royally pissing me off.
It’s one of those weird pitchers that’s wide at the top, narrows in the middle, and goes wide again at the bottom, which means the cat’s butt is now hanging out of the pitcher, back legs spinning.
The pitcher’s toast.
Oh, hell.
Shit.
Keely will kill me if that pitcher gets broken.
I vault myself onto the counter and grab the damn thing by the handle—the pitcher, of course, not the cat—pull it down, and dump the cat back on the counter.
Just in time for Muffy to walk in.
She’s in jeans, a Thrusters hoodie, and her fluffy blue coat. Her hair’s cascading in soft curls down her shoulders, and if she’s wearing makeup, it’s light.
Her gaze darts to Rufus as he leaps into the trash can—dammit, cat—and then to me, standing on the counter, wearing oven mitts decorated to look like lobsters and holding an ancient pitcher without enough room to get down gracefully on my own.
She bites her lower lip, and I go hard as granite so fast I feel it in the bruise on my ass from this morning.
If she notices, she doesn’t let on. “Sorry about Rufus. He’s—”
“Hilarious,” I finish for her. Mostly because I know the trash is empty. I took it out before I left to pick her up yesterday.
She blinks. “You think my cat’s funny?”
“Yes. And also not stealthy enough to eat my face while I’m sleeping. Best kind of cat to have.”
Her lips spread in a full smile, the same one I’ve seen her use so often at Chester Green’s after a game, or when she’s talking to Kami and their friends, and I want to kiss her.
I want to kiss her just to kiss her smile, and I don’t care if it doesn’t go anywhere but kissing.
“Um, do you need help? I can grab a stepladder if you tell me—” Her gaze travels down, pausing halfway down. Her eyes flare wide, and she visibly swallows as they darken.
Yeah.
No hiding that woody.
And if she’s not horrified, what am I still doing on this counter?
I leap down and tilt the trash can so Rufus can escape and wreak havoc elsewhere.
Muffy’s watching me.
I like Muffy watching me.
I also like that she’s not moving away as I cross the kitchen to her. “You smell like fish.”
Her smile blooms again. “You like that.”
“I do.” Look at that. I’m smiling back at her.
“You put me in your bedroom.”
She says bedroom, my dick blows a kazoo in celebration.
Figuratively speaking, of course. “That a problem?”
“No. I mean, we handled it fine last night, didn’t we?”
Shit.
What does that mean? I liked cuddling with you? Or we managed to not have bad sex again?
“About Saturday,” she says. “When we talked about Saturday—you know, the date thing?—we didn’t know…I mean, we didn’t plan on me spending any time at your apartment. So are we still doing this date thing on Saturday? Or—”
Fuck it.
I’m kissing her.
No more talking. No more awkwarding. Just kissing.
Except I miss her mouth, because Rufus shoots into the kitchen like a bat out of hell, dragging Muffy’s pink messenger bag with him.
She ducks away and lunges for the cat, missing as he bounces off the bottom cabinet under the sink. “Rufus! We’re guests. We have to behave.”
I lunge for the cat too as he gets close to me. “My nieces and nephews have done worse. I found one pooping in my house plant last time they were here.”
Rufus dashes out of the kitchen.
We both follow, since the bag’s wrapped around his neck.
“He sleeps twenty-three hours a day and spends the last hour trying to maim himself,” Muffy pants.
I accidentally check her into the wall as we both try to run down the hallway. “Shit! Sorry. You okay?”
“Padding. I’m great. Rufus!”
I’m a romantic disaster, and the cat just took out the lamp in one of my guest rooms.
I am not getting laid tonight.
But that cat?
That cat’s getting caught.
I dive for him as he streaks back out of the bedroom, manage to snag the messenger bag, but Rufus doesn’t stop.
Muffy shrieks.
The cat makes an unholy noise that’s cut short as the handle tightens around his neck.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I just killed Muffy’s cat.
27
Muffy
When I adopted Rufus, I couldn’t understand why he’d been at the shelter so long when he’s utterly adorable.
But it took about forty-eight hours for me to get it.
Rufus is the cat version of me if I were a little klutzier, a lot more YOLO, and completely lacking in any natural sense of self-preservation. If he understood English, he’d leap out of an airplane without a parachute because he’d heard cats always land on their feet.