Page 89 of Hold the Pickle
Rhett’s room fits him, all black and maroon, moody and stark.
Still no cats.
I’m feeling panicked. Did they go downstairs? Did they tumble?
I call their names as I head downstairs. “Pumpkin? Doppelgänger? Greyson?” I make it down. “Ferris? Ferris?”
My mom spots me. “As in Bueller?”
“Mewler, actually.”
Dad calls from the living room. “I think I might have what you’re looking for.”
I hurry past the front door and into the large room backed by floor to ceiling windows looking out on the mountainside.
Dad lies on the sofa, only his head visible from the back.
I hurry to him. Four kittens crawl all over him like he’s a play scape at a park.
He lifts Ferris. “This one bites.”
Relief flows over me. “They all do. They’re learning.”
I sit on the coffee table next to him. “Mom came in to check on me. I guess they snuck out.”
Mom leans over the back of the sofa. “They’re so little.”
“Eight or nine weeks. I’ve had them a month.”
“This is a lot of cats,” Dad says.
Mom reaches out to pet Pumpkin. “They got her kicked out of the apartment we didn’t know she had.”
Dad peers up at me. “You moved out from Max’s?”
“Cattarina was making Camryn sick. She’s allergic.”
“Oh,” Mom says. “That makes sense. You should have told us. We could have helped.”
“I was making money at Max’s.”
Dad lets out a scoffing laugh. “And you could afford a place in LA?”
“I had a roommate.” I swallow hard. Nobody knows anything different about who Dalton was to me.Isto me.
“A roommate!” Mom sits at the end of the sofa, making Dad shift his feet. “Someone at the deli?”
“No, a doctor at the nearby hospital. He’s an intern.”
Dad’s head snaps up at that. “He?”
Damn. Now I’ve done it.
“Don’t be weird, Dad. It was just an arrangement.” But my voice wavers at the end. They’ll hear that.
And they do. They share a glance.
Mom picks up Greyson and sets him on her lap. “So you got kicked out over the cats. What about your roommate?”
