Page 25 of Karma Kitty Christmas
“Seven months from now?” Isaac supplied so she wouldn’t have to.
“Yeah.” She glanced at Luca. “He’s right. There’s a lot of space here. And it’s not that far from the office. And, you know, ifI took downstairs and he took upstairs, we might not bounce on each other’s toes.”
Luca realized that for one reason or another, they were both looking at him for permission.
He glanced at Euclid, who was still baking in a sunbeam, super pleased with himself.
“You sure you’re ready for this, Isaac?” he asked. “You, uhm, just got a cat.”
Isaac shrugged. “I remember right after college—I mean, I was a mess, but I shared a two-bedroom flat with four other guys. Can you imagine? One of us always ended up on the couch.”
“Which one?” Allegra asked.
“The one who didn’t have a hookup that night,” Isaac said. “And only two of us were gay. Trust me. Awk. Ward.”
Allegra’s laughter burbled through the house, and Luca had a sudden shaft of good feeling, as bright and clear as Euclid’s sunny spot.
“You won’t be lonely,” Luca said, still doubtful. He’d had one of those flats too—he seemed to recall he wasn’t speaking to any of those guys anymore. But then, he’d been young and prideful and wounded by his parents’ rejection. Like Isaac kept proclaiming about himself, Luca too had been a mess, and even after he’d spent two years at his grandparents’ place, he’d still lived in his office trailer for a few months before getting his own apartment.
“I’ll think about it,” Allegra said, but she giggled to herself for the rest of the afternoon and evening.
ON THEway home, after Isaac cooked for them and they watched two episodes of one of Allegra’s favorite “murder shows,” which Isaac was rewatching, Allegra sat next to Luca as he drove them back to the apartment, her yarn bag with herWIP, as Isaac called it, (short for Work In Progress) at her feet, along with some extra yarn for the thing she was planning to start next.
She kept making happy sounds that Luca could barely hear under the classic rock station, and he liked those sounds better than the knowledge that the “classic rock” he was listening to had been cutting-edge when he was in middle school. Like Isaac, his “I’m a mess” days were further and further behind him.
“What?” he asked finally, turning the music down.
“I really wanna,” she said, smiling into the warm spring night.
“You really wanna?” he asked. He didn’t even have to ask what she wanted to do.
“He’s nice, Luca. And he’s right. He knows our grandparents, he’s part of our community. And he’s gotstupidamounts of room there. And he seems….”
She paused to ponder, and he tried not to grip the steering wheel too tight. Hereallywanted her opinion, good or bad, of this guy he’d been crushing on.
Isaac still seemed like that giant box of yarn.
Tangled, yes, but so, so full of… possibilities.
“Seems what?” he asked, in agony, when it appeared pregnancy brain was about to eat what she’d been thinking of saying.
“Seems… open to a new life,” she said thoughtfully. “I know his husband passed, and you say the relationship wasn’t, you know. Happy. But this is more than that. It just feels like his house is becoming more colorful, and he got a cat, which is amazing, and… I don’t know. Like he wants more than color in his life. He wantspeoplein his life. And jeez, Luca, doesn’t that sound like exactly the opposite of the people we grew up with?”
Luca grunted. “You’d think—” He stopped in the middle of the sentence and then had a solid epiphany. “Huh.”
“What?”
Well, Luca had insisted Isaac finishhissentences. “Mom and Dad,” he said, and even when he said it, he remembered the mom and dad from their childhood. “They were good parents, right? I’m not crazy stupid about that, right? I mean, aside from the church thing, which drove us a little nuts, they were… they weregood. There were trips to Disneyland and family jokes and new clothes. Mom taught me how to cook, Dad taught you engines—we had a good childhood,right? I’m not deluded about that?”
“No,” she said, her voice aching. “No. They were good parents. I thought so. And then….”
And then Luca had come out to them the summer after he’d graduated, thinking,Hey, I’m eighteen, and they’ve been good parents. They’ll still love me, right?
“They kicked me out,” he said, and to his shock he heard the same bewilderment in his voicenow, twelve years later, that had been in his voicethen, when Allegra had met him in the backyard with his bank book and his money and a suitcase full of clothes.
“I don’t understand,” she said, sounding exactly like he did. “I’llneverunderstand why they thought that was okay. Why it was okay to kick you out, just like that. Why it was okay to kickmeout when I was eighteen, because they found out I was still talking to you. How…?” Her hand rested protectively on her abdomen, and she said, “This is why Isaac can’t finish a sentence that begins with his late husband’s name, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he exploded, grateful for his little sister in many, many ways. “I was just thinking that.”
