Page 23 of At the Heart of It
“I think she’s plotting to rip my eyelids off.”
“Want her? She’s really sweet.”
“Eh.” Jonah turned away and started tidying the counter, turning all the pens in the holder so they faced the same direction.
“Never mind. I forget you have commitment issues.”
“I do not have commitment issues,” he muttered. “I’m holding out for the right pet.”
“That’s right,” Jossy teased. “One who speaks to you.”
“You make it sound like I’m waiting for a dog to serenade me Disney-style,” Jonah muttered. “I’m just waiting for the right fit. The one I look at and instantly think, ‘Here’s what your life is missing.’”
“I’ve got news for you, bro,” Jossy said. “The pet-sized hole in your life could be filled by any one of a hundred animals. You’re just being picky because you spent so long with your control-freak wife saying you shouldn’t get a pet.”
“It would have been tough to travel,” Jonah muttered, not sure why he was defending Viv.
“You have a sister who doubles as a pet sitter,” Jossy pointed out, shaking her head. “You know, if any of these animals could speak for real, they’d tell you to pull your head out of your ass.”
“That’s exactly what I need,” he muttered. “A pet who passes judgment.”
He let his gaze slide back to the cat, whose disapproving eyebrows seemed to lift a fraction of an inch. Something began to buzz like a malfunctioning refrigerator, and it took him a moment to realize the cat was purring.
Jonah turned as Jossy bumped into him en route to the file cabinet. He saw her grimace as she bent down to shove a manila folder inside. The cabinet was gray and battered, a castoff she’d gotten for free when a warehouse had closed down a few weeks before she’d opened this place. Jonah had hauled it in for her, along with all the other furniture and cages. He’d given her the seed money from his portion of the advance for On the Other Hand, insisting she take it as his personal contribution to animal welfare.
He watched Jossy try to hide a wince as she stood up. This time, Jonah couldn’t help himself. “Your leg bothering you again?”
“It’s fine.”
“You know, they’ve made a lot of new advancements in prosthetics. If you want, I could check into?—”
“I’m fine, Jonah. Seriously.”
Her amber eyes flashed as she stared him down, not blinking at all. Jonah sighed. “Just be gentle with yourself, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
She moved past him, skirting a bucket half-full of muddy-looking water. He looked up to see the rainwater ring on the ceiling had grown larger over the last week. He’d already patched it half a dozen times, so it was probably time for a new roof. Maybe there was a way to convince her to let him pay for it.
“You’ve got your own business to worry about,” Jossy always insisted, which was true. Still he wanted to help her. Needed to help.
“So tell me about your day,” she said, and Jonah stopped staring at the ceiling. “You whipped in here and grabbed Buster before I had a chance to talk to you.”
“Not much to report,” he said, leaning back against the counter. “I got a new shipment of cookbooks at the store, spent some time doing inventory, told my ex-wife to go fuck herself?—”
“Wait, what?” Jossy laughed and shook her head. “That’s right, I totally forgot she wanted you to go over there today. What did Snobby McBitcherson want?”
Jonah felt a stab of guilt for starting this round of bad-mouthing his ex. Jossy had never liked Viv, not even when she and Jonah had been married. They’d always been cordial to each other, but there was an undercurrent of unpleasantness between them. Jossy found Viv’s attempts at empathy to be patronizing, and Viv found Jossy repressed and out of touch with her own grief.
Still, Jonah felt bad feeding the animosity. “I didn’t literally tell her to go fuck herself,” he admitted. “But I did impolitely decline to be part of some stupid reality TV show she’s doing.”
“Reality TV?” Jossy rolled her eyes. “Please tell me it’s Survivor and she’ll have to eat cow brains and pee in the woods. Or no!” Jossy smacked her hand on the counter. “It’s The Bachelor and she’s going to have to dress slutty and degrade herself to get the attention of some schmuck who uses grammar like, ‘Viv and mine’s relationship is very much good.’”
“A nice thought, but no.”
“So what is it then? Cake Wars? Deadliest Catch? What?”
“Actually, it’s a brand-new show. She’d be the star. Couples would come on and she’d try to fix their relationship problems and wrap everything up in a neat little bow at the end of the thirty-minute segment.”
