Felicity

Take A Tank To Work Day does not go well.

First, every time I set Ares in a room to elevate his ankle and get some ice on it, he disappears. I have to leave a therapy session to ask him to not use the five-gallon water jugs as curling weights and convince him to sit back down. He snuck Loki in with him—in his coat or his pants, I don’t know—and while the monkey’s charmed everyone he’s met, my boss for this rotation is clearly not happy with the situation. Then I re-order everyone’s lunch after Ares eats three of the five pizzas Dr. Ricci had delivered for the whole staff. When I take a break to grab my own lunch from home—my favorite sweet potato chickpea salad with lemon tahini dressing—I find him building a fort in the corner of the kitchen out of Dixie cups, which Loki is happily smashing by throwing ice packs.

And I don’t want to talk about Ares stealing a wheelchair and using it to log some miles on a treadmill while giving the stink-eye to a college-age patient who asked me if I was free for dinner.

Also, that’s not even the strangest thing Ares does today.

No, the strangest part happens when I pull my car into Gammy’s carport off her alley.

For the record, I drive a six-year-old Corolla. The only way we can get Ares comfortably into my car is to pull the passenger seat as far forward as it will go and recline it all the way back so he can sprawl out in the back seat with his booted foot propped into the front seat.

And now that we’re home, he’s passed out cold, head tipped back but held up by the car roof, Loki sprawled across his chest, also sleeping, while Ares mumbles about spider cookies.

Yes.

Spider cookies.

Of everything I ever expected from Ares, talking in his sleep about spider cookies never would’ve ranked on a list.

While I sit in the car debating if—and how—I should wake the two of them, I text my brother, who’s probably on WiFi on a plane somewhere over middle America right about now since the team’s heading to the west coast for a two-game rotation against LA and Arizona.

Felicity: I need to borrow your Jeep. Ares doesn’t fit in my car.

Nick: Use his car.

Felicity: He has a car?!

Nick: Yeah. Brand new Escalade. Sweet ride.

Felicity: WHY DID YOU NOT BRING HIS BIG CAR?

Nick: Didn’t think about it. Or maybe he doesn’t want a woman driving it.

Felicity: I’m telling Gammy’s ghost you’re a sexist asshole. Watch yourself next time you’re over here.

Nick: That reminds me. You owe me rent. It’s half my house too.

I send him a gif of Liv Daniels—the actress—dressed like an alien and flipping off a mechanical bull in some movie she was in last year, then turn and look at my passengers.

“Spider bunny eight ears,” Ares mumbles.

Almost seven feet of power and drive on the ice, 350 pounds of complete mischief at the clinic today—yes, my professor did call to chastise me about bringing friends and pets with me to clinicals, and wasn’t that fun?—yet now he’s passed out cold after a twenty-minute drive through traffic, muttering about bunnies while his head bobs and lists on his neck, cuddling a monkey, a smile teasing his lips.

He’s fucking adorable.

I’m debating waking him when someone raps at my window. I shriek, jump, and bang my elbow on the steering wheel.

“Step by step,” Ares blurts as he, too, bolts upright, shaking the entire car. Loki screeches and scrambles onto his head.

Or tries. There’s not much room. Which means Loki’s basically scratching his feet into Ares’s ear and pounding his head into the ceiling while Ares pets him until he calms down.

Maren peers in at us. I roll my window down a notch, and cold air slips inside.

“Am I interrupting something?” she asks.

I glance back at Ares and Loki again. “No. Just thinking.”

“You ready?”

“Five minutes.” I turn in my seat. “You two want to go lie down inside instead?”

He blinks as though he’s clearing the sleep fog, then shakes his head. Loki shakes his head too.

No way are they going with me to Doug’s place while I sweet talk a manager into giving me a key. First, he needs to stay off his ankle. And second, I don’t need the testosterone show. Ares might smell like cake, but I recognized that look when he saw Doug’s car this morning. He probably would’ve taken a bite out of the car if Doug hadn’t floored it when he did.

I’m not entirely certain why Doug was here, but I’m guessing he wanted a picture of Soggy Dick Cookie Mountain.

It’s something Nick would do too. Capturing the moment of glory for posterity.

A shiver slinks down my arms, but I ignore it. Blame the cold.

“Time to ice your ankle again,” I tell Ares.

He scowls.

“Come on, crankypants,” I vent as Lucy. “Can’t get better if you don’t take care of it. You’re probably due for pain meds too.”

I roll my window up while Maren pops the back door for Ares. “Need a hand?” she offers.

He looks her up and down. She’s not a waif, but he has her by over a foot and at least two hundred pounds.

“What? I’m strong.” She flexes her biceps. Or so I assume, since she’s wearing a giant white parka that looks like it’s pumped full of helium, and therefore we can’t actually see her biceps. “Try me.”

Loki gives a monkey laugh. Ares ignores her, grips the top of the car—I sincerely hope he’s not crushing the metal—and maneuvers himself out with a surprising amount of dexterity.

I saw him do it this morning in the parking lot at the clinic too, and I’m impressed all over again. He’s like a 350-pound jungle cat. Flexible and graceful and powerful, even when he’s dragging around a bum ankle.

Which has to hurt.

He refuses the crutch and only limps a little on his way to Gammy’s back door, which he holds open for both me and Maren while Loki sits on his shoulder. The tape holding the cardboard over the broken window has come loose so the house is chilly.

Maren gives me a side eye. “How old is the furnace in this place?”

Translation: How much energy are you wasting between the hole in the window and the ancient appliances? “Younger than Gammy was,” I answer. Which gives me some wiggle room. Gammy was eighty-eight when she passed. So even if the furnace is thirty years old, it’s young in comparison.

Maren’s eyeball twitches.

“Here, Ares.” I make Maren twitch harder when I crack ice out of the trays and straight into a plastic zipper bag—I know, I know it’s wasteful, but all my reusable ice packs are, yep, you guessed it, at Doug’s house—which I wrap with a towel. Gammy’s fridge is also too old to have an ice maker, and it’s making weird noises.

Probably Nick and I should just burn the place to the ground and let someone buy the land and start over.

An ominous creak overhead makes all of us look up. A small chunk of plaster cracks out of the ceiling and plops in a dime-size heap in the center of Gammy’s prized table.

Sorry, Gammy’s ghost. I didn’t really mean it. I won’t burn your house down. Pinky swear.

“Go sit,” I tell Ares. “Maren and I are running to the store for more food. If there’s anything you and Loki like, text me, and I’ll see if I can find it.”

Ares takes the ice bag, but his gaze bores into me as if he knows I’m lying. My pulse kicks like it’s a shooting for a goal, and my breath comes quicker.

For a guy who doesn’t say much, he seems to be saying volumes.

But I stare back and pretend I’m not lying. I don’t know if he’d tell Nick if he knew where I was going, but I’m not taking the chance.

“I’m picking up some ice packs too,” I add.

“And an energy efficient refrigerator,” Maren suggests.

Probably she wouldn’t want to help me switch out my car for Ares’s massive beast of a gas guzzler. I’ll call Alina later. She’ll do it.

Not that I want to drive a gas guzzler. But there’s a complex equation running in my head of the balance between Ares’s comfort, the risks of him getting hurt by having to do gymnastics to get in and out, the additional wear and tear on my car from the extra weight, and the complications of putting him on public transportation instead.

The easy button is winning, and the easy button is using his car.

I finally get Ares moving toward the living room. “You want the remote for the TV? Or I can run upstairs and get your tablet. We shouldn’t be gone more than an hour or so. I was thinking about grabbing Indian for dinner. You ever had dal? It’s delicious. Or just text me what you like and I’ll pick that up too.”

“An hour?” Maren mutters behind me.

Right. Because getting my stuff back from Doug—who lives near downtown—grocery shopping, and grabbing Indian in rush hour traffic will probably take closer to three hours.

And that’s assuming I don’t have to hunt for the signed Chester Green Thrusters jersey that I accidentally left there.

If he hurts my jersey, I’m going to be almost as mad as I will be if he’s hurt Harold. They’re both priceless.

“Maybe two hours,” I amend. “You two okay here by yourself?”

He lifts a single brow. I’m not exactly fluent in Ares-ese, but I think I’ve just been put in my place.

He’s a grown-up who’s successfully proven he can raise a monkey. Or maybe that the monkey can successfully babysit him.

“Right. You’re fine. Okay then. We’re out.” I add a goodbye in my Lucy voice, then my Harold voice, and also my Tim voice. “Later, gator! Don’t get blood on the carpet. Ignore those two and enjoy the quiet.”

Maren grabs me by the collar. “Later, Ares. Bye, monkey.”

Ares grunts. Loki chirps.

I vent a quick “Bye, Felicity! I love you and I’ll miss you so much!” in my Loki voice, which earns me a middle finger from the monkey and a grin from Ares that makes more than just my pulse spike.

Ares doesn’t just give intense, concentrated glares.

He gives killer grins too.

Holy puppets.

I think my clit just did a backflip.

This isn’t good.

We’re out at my car before either of us speaks again. Maren adjusts the passenger seat and slips inside. “You didn’t tell him about Gammy’s ghost.”

“Didn’t seem wise.”

“Hope she likes him.”

“He’s a hockey player. Of course she’ll like him. I think she’ll even like the monkey.”

Maren studies me as I turn the key in the ignition.

“What?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing. Let’s go get your stuff.”