“You’re right,” I told Twain, thudding my shoulder into the wall to avoid whacking him with my cane on my way to Shane’s front door. The bell rang again, and I winced. “It’s my own stupid fault my head hurts.” He whined and hovered at my heels.
I’d come back to Shane’s after my doctors’ appointments and lazed around all afternoon, instead of going to the shelter. The surgeon had said my thigh was healing well. No more bandages and I could shower again if I wanted to. Which, heck yes! First thing I did when I got back. And she let me trade the crutch for a cane, which felt a bit ambitious right now as I tripped over my damned dog for the second time.
The less said about the neurologist the better. I’d lied through my teeth about how tolerable my symptoms were, which was ridiculous—I knew that—but I didn’t want to be a burden or an object of pity. But lying also meant I didn’t have any new medications for the next time pain and vertigo hit. Today was tolerable, but I’d been kicking myself for the past three hours.
“Coming!” I yelled, at a longer buzz of Shane’s doorbell.
When I reached the foyer, I looked out the tiny window, since I didn’t have the link to the doorbell cam, and then cracked the door open. “James. What are you doing here?”
“Mama sent me.” He squinted in the late afternoon sun and hefted two bags of groceries. “Are you gonna let me in?”
“Of course. Just got to corral the pups.” I caught Twain’s collar with one hand and dropped my cane to hold Eb’s with the other. Chili hated strangers, so she wouldn’t come to the sound of the door, and Xandra was basking in the back window ledge. “Come inside quick.”
James ducked around the door and shut it. He had a dog too, so he knew the drill. Eb gave a happy bark and pulled toward the bags, sniffing noisily. James raised the sacks high. “Not for you, greedy guts.”
“Wait,” I said, as James headed for the kitchen with the bags raised above Eb’s nose level. “How does your mama even know where I am? I haven’t told her yet. And why send you?” I bent, fished my cane off the floor, and followed him.
“Mama knows everything.” James flashed me a bright grin as he set the bags on the counter. “In this case, Joe told Kevin that he drove you and the menagerie to Shane’s, and Kevin told Danny when they met while out on a morning dog walk. Don’t ask me why the topic came up, but small town, you know. Danny told Mama, and she got hold of me to ask if you’d likely have food in the house, since Shane expected to be gone a month.”
“Uh.” I pulled my phone out.
James and Danny’s mama had blown up my phone the first couple of days after my accident, making sure I was doing okay, and she’d texted daily since. Even offered to come down that second day, or to send one of the extended family to help out, till I’d convinced her I was fine. I was just one of James’s many friends, but Mama treated me like family. Even though she had a whole lot of real family who needed her more than I did. “She didn’t ask me.”
“Of course not.” James began putting milk and eggs and cheese in the fridge. “Mama’s no fool. She knows if she asked you, you’d say you were fine, great, don’t bother. So she just skipped the middleman and sent me.”
“Oh.” I sat down with a thump on a kitchen chair. Eb came over to lick my wrist before focusing back on the tall Black dude with all the food. Eb had his priorities.
James glanced over his shoulder. “Looks like she was right. You have next to nothing in here. Some condiments. And cat food.”
“I didn’t have time to shop yet.” Or energy. “I had appointments.”
“With the doctors? How’d that go?”
“I’m healing. I get to ditch the crutch, but still not drive for three more weeks, which sucks.”
“You know Colin and I are home most days, right? Happy to give you a ride wherever.”
James worked his computer-security business from home. Colin, while mostly recovered from his liver transplant surgery, had enough money to be a stay-at-home foster dad. Which didn’t mean they weren’t busy with those kids and that business, especially first thing in the morning. “Thanks.”
“Thanks, he says,” James muttered to the carton of yogurt in his hand. “But will he call? No, he will not.”
“I would if I needed to.”
“Exhibit A.” James swept his hand up and down the mostly empty fridge, put the yogurt away, and closed the door.
“I could’ve gone shopping. It’s not that late.”
“Hey, you’re lucky I dissuaded Mama from coming down here and cooking for you.”
I’d never turn down Mama’s awesome cooking, but she had her heart problems and her family. I wouldn’t want her to stress herself. “Thank you. Anyhow, I could go out to eat.”
“Tell me that scowl on your face isn’t because your leg’s killing you.” He pulled out a chair and straddled it backward, arms crossed on the back, gaze fixed on me. “So. Why are you here instead of at Brooklyn’s? Because I heard the way you talked about him. You liked him.”
I looked down at Twain, ruffling his silky ears. “Yeah, but his teenage sister arrived. It’s all a big thing. She needed his time and space, and there wasn’t room for me.”
“And when he settles up with his sister, you’ll go back?”
“I’ll be healed up enough to go back to my own place by then.”
