Page 143 of Lost in Love

“He’s like Al Pacino inScar Face.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You’ve seen that movie?”

“Yeah, on Netflix. Rest in peace, Mr. Poppy.” Callan pets the cat’s head softly and then stands next to me watching Noah still riding away. “It’s like the ending of a movie, and he’s riding away in the sunset.”

Mr. Poppy? Who the fuck names their cat Mr. Poppy?

“Let’s hope he comes back. Your mom would miss him,” I tease, attempting to draw a little humor to the situation, though I know this isn’t the time. My toddler son just murdered a cat.

Sure, you could laugh and say, “Oh, he’s three, he didn’t mean to,” but let’s be honest. You saw the look in his eyes. He totally meant to hit him.

There’s no blood or anything, the cat went peacefully, at least that’s what I’m telling myself. Staring down at him, I have flashbacks of my own cat slaughtering experience when I was younger. I’m not ready to share that dark part of my life just yet. It’d be too emotional right now.

Let’s focus on the bigger issue here. The fact that I have a dead cat on my hands and a son who’s showing no remorse. Should I have him tested?

I got one kid who could potentially arm nuclear weapons and one killing animals. Isn’t killing animals a sign of a serial killer? Are we going to look back on this moment years from now and say, “There were signs?”

MY LUCK FUCKING sucks.I should be thinking of ways to make my wife fall back in love with me but no, I’m attempting to bury my neighbor’s cat without him and my wife knowing.

“What are you doing with that shovel?”

I jump at the sound of Madison’s voice and attempt to hide the shovel behind my back. I’m not sure why. It’s obvious she’s seen it since she asked. At least I don’t have to worry about her now. I only need to hide it from the neighbor.

Can you see how much I’m sweating? Christ, it’s embarrassing. It’s like the time I had to bury my neighbor’s cat when I was a kid. It was a very traumatic experience. I’ll tell you about it later but it’s why I can’t stand cats. “I’m burying George’s cat.”

Her eyes widen and then she notices the black plastic bag at my feet. “Why?”

“He scratched the shit out of Noah earlier tonight so Noah ran over him with his big wheel.”

“Oh my God,” she panics, her eyes wide and darting from the bag to me and then back to the bag. “What do we do?”

I raise an eyebrow and then lean down to pick up the bag. “Bury it?”

“Shouldn’t we tell George?”

“No.”

And now she’s staring at me like I’ve lost my mind, but then she bites her lip. Fuck, that’s hot. She doesn’t do it often, but it gets me every time. “What if the cat comes back?”

Let me tell you something here. Madison hates scary movies about as much as I hate cats. She once watchedPet Cemeterywhen she was seven-months pregnant with Callan and already paranoid as shit. Pregnancy hormones do strange things to her. Anyways, she forced me to sleep with the light on in our room for three nights and made me swear we’d never get a cat. Like I’d fight her on that one. Though on the fourth night, I was done with it. I made her turn off the light and sleep like a normal person because that shit was getting out of hand. We still have our no cat pact though.

“This isn’tPet Cemetery, Mad. He’s not going to claw his way from the ground and sit on your chest in the middle of the night meowing.”

She shivers at my detail. Maybe I’m a shit, and maybe this is why she wants a divorce, but the boy inside of me senses my opportunity, and I act like I’m going to throw the dead cat at her.

Madison jumps, her hand on her heart. “You son of a bitch!” And then she scurries inside the house.

Maybe I shouldn’t have done that because now she might not talk to me and the chances of us having sex tonight are slim.

With the bag in hand and amused with myself, I sneak out to the corner of the yard and then it hits me. The guilt. I can’t bury the cat without telling George, our neighbor. I just can’t. Call it my conscience, but it’d eat me alive if I knew I had his cat buried in my yard and didn’t say anything.

I’ve also seenPet Cemetery,and while I enjoy giving Madison a hard time about her paranoia, I’m not at all wild about having a dead animal buried in my yard.

Picking up the bag, I take it next door and knock on the door. Thankfully George answers the door and not his bitchy wife who hates me for starting my truck early in the morning. It’s not my fault she likes to sleep until eight in the morning. IwishI could sleep that late.

“Hey, Ridley, what’s up?” George is a friendly man, or at least he always has been and waves every time I see him, which is about once a month with my crazy schedule. But I’m not sure how friendly he’s going to be when he Wolverine killed his cat.

Though I should, I don’t feel as bad about the cat as I should. Mostly because he leaves footprints all over my black truck. There’s nothing worse than a black truck with dusty cat prints all over it. Pisses me off.

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