Gaze rolled off of me and lay on his back, too. Asshole was squawking and slamming into things. Gaze stood up and looked out of the window before closing it.
“Well, that was something.” He offered me his hand and I used it to pull myself up. “This bird is crapping all over everything. We need to catch him if you want to fix his foot.”
Gaze was better at recovering from almost dying than I was. I felt like my knees were still weak. My mother would’ve been so pissed if I was dead when she came home.
But Gaze was already on the hunt for something to use to catch Asshole, so I shook it off and joined him. I closed my bedroom door so Asshole would at least stay in there.
Gaze was coming at me with a strainer, a pot, and a kitchen towel. I turned and reopened my door, and we smooshed ourselves in so Asshole wouldn’t get out.
He’d already pooped on three places, but luckily not my bed. He was currently perched on my windowsill, and I felt a little bad for him, despite the fact that he’d basically almost killed Gaze and me. Asshole was looking at us and then out the clear glass, almost wistfully. It made sense. Some freak had tied him up with a twist tie, so he wasn’t loving humans much. At least that was my guess.
“He’s going to peck our eyes out. And our hands,” Gaze observed.
“Let’s suit up then. Prepare for battle.” I went to my closet and began digging for my winter gear. I was able to come up with a pair of mittens and a pair of gloves. We both wrapped our heads with scarves that we could see through.
Now, we really were ready. Gaze held the strainer and the pot. It took us about a half an hour of chasing the bird around before he was trapped in the kitchenware. His eyes were wild, and he did indeed try to peck me every time I attempted to touch him. Finally, Gaze lost his patience. He stripped his hands of the gloves and boldly grabbed Asshole’s body and beak.
“Just see if you can get that thing off of him. Maybe you have scissors?” The strain of holding the bird was evident in Gaze’s neck tendons.
I moved quickly to my small chest of drawers and dug through until I found scissors. I skidded low so I could get a better look at the bird’s undercarriage. There was a dirty white twist tie that was tangled. I located the loop that was holding it all together and snipped it carefully. The twist tie fell away from Asshole and it took just a bit more coaxing to get the rest free.
“He’s done!”
Gaze took Asshole over to the window and I opened it. Gaze let his fingers release one at a time, but saved the hand holding the beak for last.
When Gaze let go completely, we both took a step back. Asshole let out a shrill squall, lifted his previously bound leg, and pooped once more before trying his foot out. It was good. He was mobile again. He yelled at us one more time, but then hopped out the window. Gaze and I ran over to the window and peered down. Just before Asshole hit the pavement, he took off flying, shooting us one last dirty look.
After threading his hands behind his neck, Gaze let out a low whistle. “That bird almost killed us.”
“To be fair, I think we were the ones that almost killed ourselves.” I shrugged and frowned at the broken plank. It wouldn’t work as a way to bounce the ball to each other anymore. “Now, I’ve got to clean the rest of this place up. But thanks for helping him.”
“Yeah. No problem.” Gaze started helping me clean, which he didn’t have to do. I wondered what he was avoiding at home if he was here with me scrubbing bird poop off my floor. “Your mom’s going to go to the first day of school, right?”
“She said she’d be here. I’ve got to get supplies, but I don’t want to think about it just yet. We have two and a half weeks left.” I threw the dirty paper towels into an old CVS bag.
“For sure. You think the guys are playing basketball today?” Gaze looked out the window again in the direction of the park, but I knew he couldn’t see it from my window.
“Yeah, Tocks mentioned to me that they were having a tournament tonight. He wanted to know if you wanted to be a sub. They’re allowed to have one.”
His face lit up as his eyes went wide with pride. “Hell yeah! That’s amazing. They really must like me.”
I nodded and left out the part where Tocks told me one of his regulars had a broken ankle and the other had a new girlfriend who was pregnant. But Gaze was good at basketball. I’d watched enough games from under my tree to know he had skills. He was keeping up with guys much older and taller than him. And it probably was why he was able to walk across a plank five stories up to save a bird.
We finished cleaning and then washed our hands in the kitchen sink. That turned into a bubble fight when Gaze realized he could make little bubble “snowballs” out of the sudsy water. I double-timed it back to my room and grabbed my bubble gun. We screamed and laughed as we went to war in my apartment. Eventually, we sprawled out on the carpet in the living room/dining room area.
“You know we kissed, right?” He turned his head and his hair fell away from his cocoa-colored eyes.
I squinted. “You mean when we were trying not to die and the only way we managed that was being lip to lip?”
“Sure. Call it what you have to, but it was what it was. First kiss. For me anyway. Not sure how many guys you’ve been swapping spit with.” He pursed his lips.
“That’s gross. And we didn’t swap spit. It was literally the driest, we’re-almost-going-to-die press of anyone’s life. It doesn’t count. When I get a real kiss…” I trailed off. I didn’t want to be talking about kissing with Gaze. It was just...wrong somehow.
“It’ll what? Not five stories up with the floor giving out?” He winked at me then, letting me off the hook. I fake punched him, not really whacking him.
“Seriously, I’m going to have a bruise from here to here.” I pointed from my shoulder to my hip. “Pulling you in from the dying.”
Gaze sat up. “You know that move was some Avengers crap, right? I was very impressed.” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“Me, too. Not sure where that came from.” I sat up, too.
“Black Widow.” He stood the rest of the way, again holding out his hand for me. “Let’s get pizza. I bet you don’t want to cook here tonight.”
“No way. We’ve already cleaned more than I want to. Let’s have pizza then.” I got my keys and Gaze closed the window, reporting back that Fat Asshole was looking fine and was back in his regular perch.
“He’s ready to jack our next snack right out of our hands again, isn’t he?” I held open my front door and waited for Gaze to flick off the light switch, saving electricity.
“That’s his plan, I’m betting.”
Chapter 11
Gaze
WE WALKED DOWN the stairwell that seemed a lot like the one in my apartment building. I knew it was the same designer that did over half the next three streets’ worth of buildings. The sun was going down, but we had plenty of time to take our time. I loved when summer was a lazy toe-dragging procrastinator. I’d worked up a hunger, and I didn’t want to face Dad again. He’d switched to the next phase: drinking at home. I was usually dragging him home from bars or ignoring him as he went out all night.