Page 2 of The Plus One
“What the actualfuck,” Indira shrieked, stomping to the door and ripping it open. Grammy darted out, back legs skidding across the tile as she booked it to the bedroom.
Besides Grammy’s continuous wailing, a piercing silence fell between everyone as they continued to stare at each other.
Then Chris turned himself into the world’s douchiest cliché. “Indira, it’s not what it looks like.”
That trite little phrase set off a trip wire of rage in Indira’s chest.
“Really, Chris?” she yelled. “Because it looked like you were tongue-punching the tonsils of a stranger on the couch I paid for. But please, explain to me what I’m actually seeing.”
Chris’s face turned an alarming shade of mauve as he spluttered, and the woman’s jaw dangled open.
“And why the fuck is there so much peanut butter?” she added, her hands turning into claws at her sides. “That shit isorganic. Andexpensive.” Indira stared expectantly at the duo.
“We…”
“I…”
Chris and the blond woman looked at each other with a combination of fear and longing that made Indira want to dry heave.
“We both really love peanut butter,” Chris eventually whispered, saying it like he was delivering the world’s most melodramatic line in a play.
Indira slow-blinked at him for a moment before throwing her head back and shrieking out a laugh. If she didn’t laugh, she’d scream.
“Un-fucking-believable,” she said. “I’m out of here, you piece of shit.”
Indira darted to the bedroom, ripping through the closet and grabbing any bags she could find. She moved like an efficient tornado, shoving shoes and chargers and shirts into duffel bags as she went.
Grammy added to the drama with her ceaseless cries in the background. Indira didn’t even know a cat couldmakenoises like that. She made a quick mental note to ask Harper, one of her best friends, if earth-shaking screams were normal in felines or if Indira had unwittingly adopted a demon-possessed creature instead of an old, docile ball of fluff. But at the moment she had more important things to deal with.
“Indira, hold on,” Chris said, standing in the doorway, hair mussed, pants unzipped, and shirt on backward, globs of peanut butter visible under the fabric. “Let’s just calm down and talk about this like adults.”
“That would require you to be one, Chris. And from where I’m standing, you’re a cheating, cat-imprisoning man-child with the emotional intelligence of a rusty nail. So, no. I won’t be calming down.”
She marched to the bathroom, picking up what she could from the floor as she went, then used her entire arm to swipe her toiletries into a bag.
“You don’t understand. This is different. You and I… we haven’t been happy for months. I—”
Indira stopped in her tracks, eyes so cold and hard Chris slammed his mouth shut.
Months? In that moment, Indira didn’t think she’deverbeen happy with the asshole.
“Get out of my way,” she said through clenched teeth. Chris at least had the decency to lower his head and slink back to the couch.
She stormed through the apartment, dropping bags on the kitchen counter as she gathered up odds and ends.
Moving back into the bedroom, Indira took a deep breath in preparation for her final mission: saving Grammy.
Grammy was no one’s idea of cute. She perpetually looked like a bolt of lightning had just jolted her wiry frame, sooty hair standing on end at wild angles and back permanently hunched like a dramatized Halloween cartoon. To top off her loveliness, she had a half-missing ear, a curled lip that always displayed one stained fang, and the spectacular ability to infuse havoc into any situation.
This dazzling creature was currently hanging (sagging) from the bedroom curtains, her claws gouging through the fabric in long tears and head thrown back as she continued to howl as though she were being electrocuted.
“Get a cat, they said.It’ll be fun, they said,” Indira muttered to herself.Theyprimarily being Harper, who had enabled Indira’s impulse decision to adopt a furry companion to fill the dull and gnawing sense of loneliness that hit Indira regularly.
But, observing the unearthly noises and mentally preparing to lose at least a nipple, if not an entire boob, to Grammy’s claws in what was about to go down, Indira wondered if she was making a fatal mistake.
With no other choice, she walked across her bedroom, unlatched Grammy from the curtain, and winced as the cat’s claws slammed into her skin. The torture continued as she pried Grammy off herself—Indira’s sweater gaining some lovely rips in the process—and squeezed the poor gremlin into a cat carrier before moving back to the kitchen.
With rage still pumping through her system, Indira found a surge of superhuman strength and, like a mother lifting a car off her child, hefted all of her earthly possessions onto her back and into her arms.
