Shane sobered, his eyes on mine. “Your place, then?”
The house I was renting wasn’t mine, but it sure as hell would say a lot about my finances. “Maybe a motel?”
Shane stepped back. “Because I’m not good enough to take home?”
“No!” I needed to banish that idea immediately. “No. I just…” No good excuse occurred to me.Maybe the truth.“I have more money than I think you realize, and if I take you to the house, you’ll know that for sure.”
“I’m not an idiot,Thibault.” Shane shook his head, still frowning. “You said your sugar daddy gave you a house. You flip houses, so you fixed it up and sold it, bought another. I’ve heard, here on the coast, even a shack could cost half a million dollars.”
I nodded.
“That means you think of money in millions, while I have barely twenty bucks stashed on me. But you know what? I have Mimsy and you’re smashing mirrors.”
“If you’re saying money isn’t everything, shouldn’t that be my line?”
“I’m saying it for you because you’re the one making a big deal about this. I’m not putting down being rich. Hell, ninety percent of the problems in my life could be solved with a million dollars.” Shane tilted his head and looked off into the distance in a way that tugged at my chest. “Ninety-nine percent. But money wouldn’t have made my stepdad a caring father, and there are plenty of rich people killing themselves with drugs and booze. Money doesn’t make them decent, happy people.”
“No.” It hadn’t for my grandparents, that was for sure. “You wouldn’t take a million dollars for Mimsy.” I was sure of that, however many of his problems it would solve.
“She’s not mine to sell. And she wouldn’t love me more if I was rich—” The cat had wandered back to us when we stopped, and she meowed up at him. His tone lightened. “I take that back. Dried shrimp every day. You’d trade me in for that good life, wouldn’t you, Mims?”
She meowed a different sound and rose on her hind legs to pat his knee. He lifted her and buried his face in her fur, then laughed as she wriggled free.
I said, “I don’t think I could live the life you do. I had it cushy, even when I ran away from home with nothing. Not even one night without a place to stay. But I’d trade a lot for a cat like Mimsy.”
“What’s stopping you? Talk to Arthur. I bet he could line you up with a cat or kitten on a moment’s notice.”
“I don’t know.” For years, I’d lived in my remodeling projects, not a safe place for pets. But now, I had a condo. “I’m not home much.”
“You might be if you had a cat.” Shane slipped into his jacket and glanced up at the low cliff behind us. “So, do we have to walk all the way back to the pier before we head to your place and get naked, or is there a shortcut?”
“There’s stairs up to the road around the next bend and then it’s an easy fifteen minutes.”
“We’ll work up an appetite.” Shane licked his lips.
I stared at his mouth. “Maybe ten minutes if we hurry.”
Mimsy wasn’t thrilled to leave the beach and climb the dozen steps to the road, but Shane offered her a treat from his pocket and she eventually consented.
On the walk back to my rental, we talked about the first-date stuff that usually comes before “I fucked for money,” like favorite movies and food and books. Shane was a fan ofThe MartianandDr. Doolittle.“The old books, though, not the stupid movies. Mom had these copies from when she was a kid. Hardcovers with all the old illustrations.” Shane huffed a short laugh. “My younger half-brother wrote right in the book on the illustration of the Pushmi-Pullyu?—”
I said, “The what?” and he turned to me.
“You don’t know it?”
“No. Sadly, I never read those.” I hadn’t been allowed to read anything frivolous for most of my childhood. I ached for the small boy I’d been, when anything fun was called a waste of time. I’d hidden a few precious novels over the years, but if Grand-mère found them, she threw them straight in the trash.
Something of that realization must’ve come through in my voice because Shane bumped my shoulder with his. “It was this imaginary creature like a gazelle with two heads, one at each end, and no butt. Anyhow, my brother wrote, ‘How does it shit?’ which, okay, fair question, but it’s, like, fantasy, right? You’re not supposed to believe it. And he wrote in pen. I wanted to pop the little shit in the nose, but he was five years younger.”
“How many siblings do you have?”
“I don’t know.”
“Uh.”
“Well, I had six half-sibs, but my parents tossed me out when Mom got pregnant again. Could’ve been twins. So seven? Eight?”
You never went back?It wasn’t my place to ask and I didn’t want to dig at something painful. The sun was warm and Shane’s easy strides at my side made me feel light and hopeful.
