Page 54 of Scaredy Cat
I can’t deal with another story about how her mother was the best chef this side of the Ohio River tonight. Nor can I deal with a lecture on how I need to improve my cooking skills if I’m ever going to find and keep a man.
“I know it’s old-fashioned,” Mrs. Elmore has sighed to me many times before with an air of motherly patience. I’ve heard it so many times that her voice is clear in my ears as I drive along our dead-end, deserted street. “But there’s only one way to keep a man, and that’s by keeping him wanting more of your cooking. They’re simple creatures, really. You have to treat them like a stray dog you’ve taken a fancy to if you want them to do more than visit when it suits them.”
My lips twitch into an unseen smile at the memory. While I’ve never managed to keep a man—or find one I want to keep—the advice feels pretty sound, if I’m honest with myself.
My trip is quick, at the very least. I settle for the nearest fast food place and play whack-a-mole with the value menu. With no idea what I want and only the gnawing hunger in my stomach to guide me, I end up with a hellish, questionable combo of fried food and tacos, along with an extra large frozen cherry limeade with fresh limes smooshed against the plastic of the lid.
Even the boy in the window looks at me like he has questions, and I consider it a new low or an all-time high to be judged by a fast food worker for what I’ve ordered. But he doesn’t ask, and I don’t really have an explanation for any of this, honestly. ‘Let your stomach be your guide,’feels like something out of achildren’s movie parody that would just have him questioning me even more.
Back home, Arugula even sniffs the bag with a few twitches of his fluffy nose, and looks up to glare at me with pale green eyes.
“Well, I didn’t buy it for you anyway,” I mumble, rolling my eyes and placing the food on the sofa like an underwhelming buffet. From there, I line up my food in order of best to least desirable, and it’s unsurprising that I spend the first few minutes of the movie I turn on chowing down on chicken nuggets.
Arugula even gets one, though he only gnaws on the breading and swipes it onto the floor like it’s offending him, causing me to roll my eyes and scoop it up to toss it back into the bag.
By the time I’ve eaten everything except the mac-n-cheese bites that are getting soggy, I’m both full and exhausted. The week’s anxiety and staying up late at the sanitarium have finally truly caught up with me, and I barely manage to check my email and adjust myself to be Arugula’s personal mattress before I can feel myself drifting off to the dulcet tones of teenagers getting murdered by chainsaws on my tv that provides the only light in my otherwise dark house.
22
The first signmy brain registers to tell me something’s wrong is the fact that Arugula is no longer sleeping on my back. Since he arrived, I’ve woken up with the cat having been there all night, and had to move when I woke him in the morning. He doesn’t even take litter box breaks, which has gone from worrying to just making me think he’s a heavy sleeper.
I move my arms, then my legs on the plush, comfortable sofa, trying to see if he just rolled off and is sleeping somewhere else. I swear I can hear his purring, though I don’t feel him anywhere.
“Rutabaga?” I mumble, using one of my twenty nicknames for my new furry friend. Whenever Shiloh takes him back, I’ve decided I need to get a cat of my own. Having a friend in my otherwise empty house is?—
“Did you just call my catRutabaga?Like the vegetable?” a voice full of disbelief asks from above me.
The shock has me rolling over so fast that I flip right off of the sofa with a yelp, landing between it and the coffee table in a tangle of blankets and confusion. The room is still mostly dark, with the only light coming from the menu on the TV where it defaulted once the movie ended. I look up, eyes adjusting, and my heart jumps to my throat when I see the looming figurestanding behind the couch. I can just see Arugula in his arms, his fluffy tail flicking back and forth while he purrs.
“I—who—yes?”I gasp, managing to get to my feet without doing something else stupid. “What are you doing here? My door was locked!” There’s only one person it could be, and my brain has finally, happily supplied Shiloh’s identity so my heart can stop trying to race out of my chest in the confines of my ribs.
“Yeah,” Shiloh agrees. “Want me to relock it?” As I watch, he goes back to the door, shifting Arugula in his arms as he does. I just stand there, perplexed, while Shiloh locks the door like he belongs here.
“How did you get in? Wait, no.” I rake my fingers through my hair and step out of the alley between the coffee table and couch. “That’s not my question. Give me a second to get the light?—”
“Maybe you don’t do that?—”
“And I can think of—” The light flicks on just as I look back at him with my finger on the switch. He’s frowning, and Arugula is kneading at his arm, but those details quickly fade out of my head as I stare at him.
Blood stains his shirt, his jeans, and his boots. There are bloody tracks on my floor and smears of it along his face and arms. To my credit, I don’t scream, but in a sudden, childish reaction, I turn off the light, only to turn it on again.
He’s still covered in blood.
A crooked smile curls over his lips as I get my first real look at him in the light. Well, first good look even though he’s drenched in the drying, flakinginsidesof another person, since he’s not looking particularly injured or unwell.
“Did that make it better?”
“Please tell me that’s fake.”
“If do, and it’s a lie, will that still make it better?”
Finding myself unable to hold his gaze, I look down between us to focus on my bloodied floor. It’s not real wood, since there’sno way I could afford that or deal with the upkeep. But I press my lips together and stare at it, anyway. “There’s blood on my floor.”
“Hmm?” Shiloh looks down, following my gaze. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I thought I got all of it off the bottom of my boots, but?—”
“You have gotten blood on myfloor.”Somehow this is the biggest issue for me right now, instead of something reasonable like wanting to know why he’s covered in blood. “I have questions.”
“I would hope so. It feels kind of weird that you’re more worried about me getting blood on your floor than about me being covered in blood in the first place.” He pauses, tickling Arugula’s chin with hands that are impeccably clean from the wrist down. “I would’ve showered and cleaned it up before you woke up, but the moment Arugula saw me he walked up your back, then you were making cute noises and nuzzling your pillow. It was adorable, until you called himRutabaga.”
