“This guy I met.”
“Guy?” There was an odd note in Theo’s voice.
“Yeah. Big, sweet dude, does a ton of animal rescue. I ran into him and he offered me some money to come to his house and clean up the dog shit and litter boxes.”
“You should be careful if people invite you back to their place. You never know what they want.”
I gave him an incredulous look. “Dude, I’ve been on the streets since I was seventeen.”
“Me too, in a way.”
“Seriously?” Theo seemed too soft for that, but what did I know? We’d barely said a word to each other. “That can mess a guy up,” I tried.
To my surprise, he laughed, his head tipped back, a genuine sound that landed in my chest and pulled a laugh from me, too. “Apparently. Are you headed back to the tasting venue?”
“The wine place?” I’d been thinking about a stroll, due to the boredom thing, but if I had company? “Yeah. You wanna come?”
“Yes, please.”
I chuckled. “You don’t need to say please to me. Some rich bastard out there owns the property and he’ll never know the difference. C’mon.”
As we crossed the street, a gorgeous young man in tight bike shorts jogged by. I turned to watch him go becausethat butt— if he wasn’t a hockey player or figure skater, he spent way too much time doing squats. When he’d dodged around two women with strollers and was out of sight, I turned back, only to catch Theo doing the same. His face went red, so I grinned at him and raised an eyebrow.
Busted.Theo looked away, biting his lip, but I was glad I wasn’t wrong about us having something in common besides crappy teen years.
We strolled the long blocks back to my squat in silence. The sun warmed my dark sweatshirt and eased my stiff shoulders— that mat wasn’t the best mattress— and a soft breeze blew in from the water with that seaweedy tang. I liked that Theo didn’t chatter. I’m a talker myself, but a guy who can share a comfortable silence makes a good friend. Not that we were friends, but something simmered between us in the occasional looks we exchanged.
When we reached the side door to the wine place, Mimsy jumped off my shoulders and strolled away into the tangle of weeds in the empty lot behind us.
I called after her, “Watch out for coyotes and don’t eat anything dead.” She flicked her tail at me and disappeared into the tall grass.
Theo eyed me. “Wouldn’t it be worse if she ate something alive?”
“She got sick this one time, and I had to rush her to the vet. She had bleeding in her mouth and butt.” I gripped the doorhandle tighter, remembering that. “They said she probably ate a dead mouse that’d eaten poison and the poison in its stomach got to her.”
“Jesus. But she looks okay now?”
“Yeah, there’s an antidote.” I’d rarely fucked for money, but I had that week, to pay for her care. Thank God for a vet who let me come back to cover the second half of the bill. “Now I make sure to feed her good, so maybe she’s not hungry enough to eat dead things.”
“You could keep her from wandering off.”
“She’s her own person, not a prisoner. I don’t lock her in. Might be okay for cats who don’t know better, but she’d hate it.” I picked up the big rock I used as a doorstopper. “Come on in and I’ll block the door open for her.”
“What if she doesn’t come back?”
I wanted to punch him for putting words to my worst fear, but he didn’t know that. “She always has so far.” I waved him inside, then knelt and blocked the door eight inches ajar with the rock. Plenty of room for a slim cat to slip through. “If you leave before she comes back, make damned sure… Nah, I’ll fix the door myself when you go.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t know you,” I pointed out. We eyed each other. He felt so damned familiar for a guy I didn’t know. “Come on upstairs. That’s where I mostly hang out. It’s less creepy.”
At the top of the stairs, he paused and looked around. The blankness of his eyes suggested he was seeing something that wasn’t there, and I had a moment of worry. “Theo? You in there?” This one paranoid guy I knew was super sweet until he thought you were, like, the CIA or a Russian agent and then he might try to kill you.
But Theo blinked back to awareness and gave me a crooked smile. “Reminded me of something is all. There’s no bedroom up here, is there?”
I laughed. “There is now.” I led the way to the long front room. Sun streamed in the south and west windows, making the temperature comfortably warm. Might be a bit of an oven in the summer without AC. But then, I wasn’t likely to be around in the summer. I pulled out one of the plastic chairs at the small table by the window and said, “Have a seat in my boudoir. You want something to drink? I bought some soda.” A luxury when I had free water, but I had a weakness for Coke. “It’s not cold, of course.”
“Um, sure. Thanks.”
