Page 16 of Back to You
“Thankgod.” She groaned. “And because. It’s complicated. Her name’s still on the damn lease, and my prick of a landlord sucks. The sooner she leaves, the better of we’ll both be. That ship has sailed. Bye-bye. Worse? She keeps bringing girls home. It’s weird.”
“So? You can bring girls home, too?”
Abby wrinkled her nose. “I think I’m over girls.”
“You’re going straight?” I teased.
“Hah. No. Maybe I’ll become celibate. I could become a nun?”
I smiled. “A nun in tripp-pants. Very chic.”
“Shut up, boy. Don’t seeyoubringing anyone around. When’s the last time you got laid, huh?”
“Not going there.”
“So it’s been awhile, then. That blows. Too bad you’re not a chick. I’d do you.” Her brown eyes twinkling with mischief, she winked at me.
“Abigail!” I sputtered. She burst out laughing. “I think you’re the one that needs to get laid. Damn.” I didn’t mind, not really. She came into my life when I needed a friend the most—ironically at the shrink’s office. She and Tori were attending couples’ counseling while I was there to see my therapist. We struck up a chat in the waiting room, exchanged numbers, and the rest was history.
“Here we are. Now take your cotton candy smoke-bomb and get the hell out of my car,” I said as sweetly as I could muster. Abby just laughed and leaned over to peck me on the cheek. “Be good. Don’t kill the roomie.”
“No promises,” she singsonged back, slamming the car door shut behind her. “Bye!”
Oh, Abby.I shook my head with a smile, then backed out of the drive and headed for home. Grandma Gin would probably be fussing with dinner; she always tried to have food on the table when I got off work, bless her heart. If it wasn’t for her kindness, I didn’t know where I’d be right now.
Definitely not here, that was for sure.
Grandma Gin’s house was tall and skinny, with a slanted blue roof and windows that looked like sleepy eyes staring back at you. It was wedged in between two bigger, fancier homes. They’d long-since bulldozed the other old lots and turned them into a nice little housing addition. According to Gran, they’d offered her a lot of money to give up her house. She’d refused.
“Ain’t no money worth losing my home over. My Calvin built this house with his own two hands and I’m not giving it up for some big-wig corporate morons to tear it down. They can have it when I’m good and dead,” she’d said firmly.
I parked beside the old white Civic she used to drive before her eyesight got too bad and they took her license away. It probably hadn’t been run in a good seven or eight years, but just like her home, she loved that car too much to part with it.
The minute I got out of my car, I could hear Grandma Gin yelling at the top of her lungs from inside. “You rotten old bastard! Give it back, you thieving little shit, or so help me, I’ll cut off your damn tail.”
I made a dash for the front door and yanked it open. She chased the scrawny yellow cat around the living room, waving her cane in the air. Custard yowled, his tail puffed up to twice its size. He dodged her swing and dove beneath the sofa, growling all the while.
I froze in the doorway. “Gran? What thehellis going on?”
Grandma Gin threw up her hands and stomped her slippered foot. “That damn cat, he stole our dinner! I worked my tail feathers off, roasting this wonderful rosemary chicken. Turned my back for one second—one flipping second—and the bastard took it right off the counter. Oh-oh-oh, I’m so angry I could spit!”
She looked like it too. Her usually-pale face was bright red, and sweat dripped down her nose and onto her blue cooking apron. Her salt-and-pepper hair was in a state of disarray, and she was gripping her cane so hard that her arthritic knuckles had bled white.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I told her.
“It damn well isn’t,” she snapped right back. “Dinner is ruined.”
“Gran.” I rested my hand over hers, giving a squeeze. “I’ll deal with the cat. Why don’t you sit down, have a cup of tea?”
Muttering under her breath, she shuffled across the cracked tile floor and started clattering around in the cupboards, presumably for a mug. I inhaled deeply, then went searching for the culprit.
Custard was only one of Grandma Gin’s eleven cats, but he was the biggest pain of them all. An ex-street cat, he was constantly getting into things and making messes, shitting in Gran’s flowerpots and scratching up the furniture. This wasn’t the first roaster hen he’d stolen, either. We learned not to leave any food on the counters. He even ate loaves of bread.
“Custard, you crusty old man. What are you doing?” I peered beneath the couch. Custard growled at me while gnawing on his kill. I knew if I reached under there, he’d shred my hand, so I’d have to go with Plan B—the broom. His mortal enemy.
I fetched it from the closet.
“Let it go, dummy.” Hissing and spitting at me, I wedged the broom head between him and the mangled chicken. I snatched it away before any of the other numbskulls could get any bright ideas, then dumped it in the trash can beneath the sink. “Got it,” I told Grandma Gin.
