CHAPTER 19
Vaughn
We were snorkeling, William and I. In my dream, the sun-shot blue water was so clean that I could see straight to the bottom, where improbably bright fish swam peacefully and the sand glinted gold. Will was as lithe and smooth as a dolphin, and he put his face right up to mine, so close our goggles clicked. He kissed me, and I felt it, even through our snorkels. Then he pulled away and tried to tell me something. He was yelling it, gesticulating wildly, flippers churning the water white, but I couldn’t hear him.
“Get to a safe place, and call the cops!” Will yelled as I slammed awake.
“What?” The sun was freshly risen, and I could smell sex and warm bedding and Will’s hair.
Will was on top of me, which was nice. But he was yelling again, which was not.
“I’m going for my gun. Vaughn, you have to get up and call 9-1-1.”
“What’s wrong?” I said, coming up on my elbow, instantly alert. William’s eyes were wide as he stared up toward the window he couldn’t see while lying on top of me.
That’s when I heard it—pop, pop, pop.
Gunshots. Followed by yelling.
I flopped back onto the bed with a chuckle. “It’s fine,” I said, and tried to pull William down on top of me in a position that was more early-morning-cuddle and less shielding-me-from-an-attack.
“You don’t understand.” He pulled at my shoulders, trying to get me to—what? Roll onto the floor and under the bed? No, not happening.
I pushed his hands away and groaned when he shook me.
“There’s an active shooter on the lawn. Possibly more than one.”
“Uh huh, I know. It’s the British army.”
“What. The. Hell. Are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry, darling, they lose this one. C’mere.” I wrapped my arms around him, already well on my way back to our underwater paradise.
William levered himself off me and peeked out the window, keeping his head low as if he might be shot at any moment. “Amory.”
“Mmm?” I slid my palm up his back. His tensed muscles relaxed, though his voice was still tight.
“Why are there people dressed up in costumes and shooting each other on your lawn?”
“This is the Battle of Spencer’s Ordinary. Fascinating battle. Are you familiar? Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe was on the road for Williamsburg, when—”
“Amory!” I heard the residual irritation in his voice. “I don’t need to hear about that battle right now.”
I sighed, and opened my eyes. Clearly William was not going to be mollified by anything less than an actual explanation, even though it was too early for anything but sleeping, cuddling, or being half woken briefly for a dreamy blowjob. None of which were the direction this line of questioning seemed to be going. I pulled myself up on my knees next to him and looked out the window, where we watched as fifty or so reenactors ran out of the woods in period garb, yelling. Will flinched when a volley of shots rang out.
He turned on me, eyes narrowed, nostrils flared, mouth grim. Not amused, then.
“They film things here sometimes,” I said, and put a hand on his shoulder. “These are scenes for a historical reenactment. For a PBS show.”
He turned back toward the window and peered out. A horse trotted out from the tree line and Will shook his head. “Your life is ridiculous.”
“Barry will be thrilled to hear how accurate it was, I’m sure.” I tried to compose my face but William was too adorable, too grumpy.
“This isn’t funny.”
“You’ll think it’s funny after breakfast,” I told him.
“We are going to have a long talk about home security,” Will hissed. But he let me coax him back into bed, muttering until I drifted off to sleep.
* * *
After the rather explosive start to the day, William soothed himself by lecturing me on emergency evacuation routes and musket safety protocol and I soothed myself by shutting him up with my tongue in his ass.
Clearly, he still needed to burn off some energy, so I lured him out for a walk with the promise that he could pick up any spent shells the reenactors had left behind, which could possibly pose a danger to the neighborhood children. Who would never dare set foot on my property without invitation.
It was a gorgeous November day, cold and sunny, with a snap in the air that made the promise of a post-perambulation hot toddy in front of a fire—and hopefully wrapped in a shared blanket, beneath which I could grope my grumpy boyfriend—feel like heaven. After pocketing two cartridges and a granola bar wrapper with obligatory muttering, even William wasn’t immune to the bright sun, chilly air, and earth-scented breeze that ruffled our hair.
I followed Will through the trees and allowed my thoughts to settle into the fantasy that I’d been spinning more and more often recently. In it, the Falls Church house was our home and we walked these paths nightly, arm in arm, swapping tidbits about our days and making plans for the future. The walks terminated in dinner, and then in the kind of sex that you can have if you know you are both staying. The kind of sex that says, You don’t need to leave in the morning so it’s okay if you can hardly walk, and There will always be more time.
Of course, that fantasy didn’t take into account the fact that William wouldn’t want to live here during the week any more than I did, given that work was in D.C. The commute was hairy enough even without winter weather and traffic. But someday, perhaps. After all, it was just a fantasy. In the meantime, there was always the chance that the D.C. apartment could be our home base. That wasn’t unrealistic. William’s apartment was horrible—cramped, and dark, with furniture more befitting a college student than the beautiful, strong man I knew. But William didn’t care about things like that, not really.
For someone who appreciated art as much as he did, he didn’t consider his own environment an aesthetic opportunity. Maybe he’d been trained not to, through years of scrimping and brutal practicality. But I thought it was more likely that he simply never thought he was worth it. Never found his desire for beauty weighted more heavily than the impulse that the aesthetic was unnecessary.
I wanted to live with William because I found myself rather helplessly in love with him, of course. But I also wanted to live with him so that I could give him an excuse to have all the comforts and delights that he’d never let himself acknowledge he desired. He’d grumble and mock me for how much my armchair must have cost. But then he’d sit in it while he read the paper and sipped his morning coffee, and he’d be comfortable. All day, he’d carry the comfort of those few minutes with him.
I wanted to make comfort and beauty and joy the baseline of William’s life, not the exceptions to it. I wanted my life and William’s life to be our life. But he wasn’t ready. He felt things were unbalanced between us, and not just in terms of money. He was so used to being the capable one, the unflappable one, the dependable one, that he didn’t yet know how to share burdens without feeling that he was obviating responsibility.
But the moments when he did…the moments when he allowed himself to loose his hold on the person he thought he had to be, and give himself over to what he wanted, what he needed…they leveled me. In those moments, his desire was pure and needy and he was desperate to fall apart, secure that he wouldn’t be punished for it.
And I had made it my mission in life to create a whole world where he could feel that way.
To our left, just off the path, came the rustle of underbrush and a tiny mewl of urgency. Will dropped into a crouch and peered intently.
“Oh, aw.” He rocked back on his heels and looked up at me. “Kitten,” he said, as if making an identification at work. “Seen any female cats around the property lately?”
I smiled. William was the only person who could say “female cats” and actually mean female cats.
“I’m afraid I haven’t noticed any cats. Nor would I be likely to check their sex if I did.”
I crouched next to him as he made a kissing sound, and quelled any disappointment that it wasn’t directed at me.
From the underbrush slunk a kitten. I had always operated under the assumption that “kitten” described an unerringly cute category of creatures, if one were into that sort of thing. This kitten forced me to revise that assumption. It was painfully skinny, with a torn ear crusted in dried blood, wild orange eyes, and matted brown-black fur. As it moved toward Will, the knobs of its hips stuck up through the fur, and its mouth hung open. Then it mewled again, and my heart gave an involuntary twinge for the pathetic thing.
“C’mere,” William said, his voice low and soothing. Clearly the kitten found him as irresistible as I did, because after a minute’s wariness, it bumped its head against his outstretched hand and allowed itself to be pet. I made a mental note to disinfect every part of William that had touched it when we got home.
Will looked up at me, one hand scratching under the kitten’s chin, the other cupping its skinny ribs, and the twinge in my heart became a flutter.
“It got in a fight, or got attacked,” he said, fingers curling protectively around it. “But mostly it’s just hungry.” He trailed off, eyes on mine.
“Okay,” I said, resigned. “Bring it along. I’m sure there’s some tuna in the pantry.”
William’s smile turned the flutter to a palpitation.
He scooped the kitten up and cradled it. It fit in his open palm and he held it gently, until it started to squirm. Then he pinched its nape and it went docile in his hand.
Back inside, I rummaged around the pantry until I found a can of tuna, and tipped it into a shallow soup bowl so the kitten wouldn’t cut its tongue on the rough edge of the can.
“Did you just serve a stray cat tuna on fine china?” William asked, gaping at me as I set the bowl on the floor.
I shook my head at the notion that he could consider this old set of Wedgwood “fine china.”
He set the kitten down next to the bowl and it immediately shoved its tiny face into the food.
“It’s like a damn Fancy Feast commercial,” he muttered, and I snorted. The matted, starving kitten with its face covered in tuna was far from the delicate-nosed white fluffballs those commercials featured, china plate or no.
After the kitten finished its food, it practically sagged in exhausted relief, and William was able to scoop it up and give it a bath in the kitchen sink, massaging suds into its matted fur, and gently cleaning its torn ear. He wrapped it up in a dish towel and it closed its eyes immediately. At Will’s raised eyebrow, I sighed long-sufferingly and waved him into the living room.
“Just until it wakes up. Then it can go back outside. Cats are a menace,” I said sternly, picturing its needle claws snagging my upholstery and its fur all over my cashmere.
William nodded stoically.
An hour later, he obligingly set the kitten down outside the kitchen door, where it shivered in the cold, then straightened its spine. He didn’t even pout about it.
“Bye,” he told it, and “Be careful.” Then he flushed as if he hoped I hadn’t heard.
Two hours after that, we were ensconced in amicably rooting for opponents in the finale of a cooking competition, William trotting out culinary trash talk that proved he did listen to Charlotte when she told him about her catering decisions. When I muted the show at the commercial break, there was a scratch at the kitchen door.
William was immediately at attention, but with a glance at me, he said, “I’m sure it’s fine.” But he kept one ear on the kitchen door for the remainder of the program. When we went into the kitchen to heat up leftovers for dinner, a meow came from just outside the door. Instead of the pathetic, plaintive mewl of earlier, this sounded questioning. Will bit his lip and concentrated very hard on the chicken warming in the oven.
When the meow came again, along with a scratch at the door, William clenched his jaw and didn’t look at me. The meow grew in volume and then turned plaintive. Will’s mouth turned down at the corners. I slid my arms around his waist from behind and kissed his ear. He turned in my arms and kissed me, but I could feel his concern, his distraction.
The meow came again, and it sounded sad. Lonely. William tensed.
I brushed his hair back and looked into his eyes. “Fine,” I said. “Let it in.”
His face immediately brightened.
“Really?”
“Just in the kitchen.”
He kissed me sweetly, grinning, and I wondered when I had turned into a complete pushover when I had never been in danger of it before.
When he opened the door, the kitten bounded in, sliding across the tile in its excitement and butting its head up against William’s ankle. When it made contact, it started purring so loudly I couldn’t help but smile. Its fur looked softer and its torn ear wasn’t so grisly without the crust of dried blood. Even the one meal had seemed to fill it out a little—or perhaps that was just the fluff of its fur.
It was clear that further dinner preparation would be mine, as Will and the kitten had eyes only for each other.
When the food was ready, I moved to carry our plates to the small table in the living room that looked out over the back garden and Will’s face fell. He recovered quickly, but once I’d seen it, I put the plates on the kitchen table instead, and pulled out a chair for Will. As we talked, the kitten inched closer and closer to his leg. Then suddenly it pounced onto his lap and then onto the table, sniffing at the chicken.
“Um.”
Wide eyes met mine. William’s. The cat didn’t even know I was in the room.
And that’s how it went for the rest of the weekend. The kitten scratched at the kitchen door when it got hungry, and we spent hours in the kitchen. By the time I kissed William goodbye on Sunday evening, the creature seemed to have doubled in size. Which seemed especially unfair, since my sex life seemed to have been inversely affected.
I went up to read in bed soon after, and had forgotten about the kitten by the time I wandered blearily into the kitchen the next morning, ready to make coffee and head into D.C. myself. But as I flipped the percolator on, a small meow came from outside. I ignored it, gathering my things for the week while the coffee brewed. I didn’t need much—for convenience’s sake, I had most everything I needed in the D.C. apartment as well. But there was always errant paperwork that I shuttled back and forth.
But when I went back into the kitchen to collect my travel mug, the meow came again.
I opened the kitchen door and the kitten pranced in as if it had lived here its whole life. It sniffed around for a moment before it realized William wasn’t there, and then it drooped slightly.
I knew exactly how it felt.
I knelt and extended a hand to it. When it approached and rubbed its face against my fingertips, I realized I’d somehow avoided touching it before. Its fur was downy and I could feel the heat from its little body close to the surface, despite the cold outside. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d pet a cat.
I opened another can of tuna into the cat’s bowl, and set it just outside the door, and closed the door behind it. Then I added tuna to the grocery list and shook my head at myself all the way to the car.
* * *
On Tuesday, my meeting finished early and Will had to work late, so I decided to go to Falls Church for the night. The fact that I had seen a stray black cat outside the restaurant where I’d had a lunch meeting had absolutely nothing to do with my decision. The kitten wasn’t mine. It had lived this long outside on its own, and it had to keep its survival skills intact so it could continue to live outside.
And if I found myself in the kitchen as soon as I got home, that was just because I was hungry.
As I seared a filet of salmon and steamed green beans, my mind wandered to the look on William’s face as he’d fed the kitten a morsel of chicken from his hand. He’d cut his gaze to me as if doing something he knew he shouldn’t and wondering if he’d get called on it. I’d raised an eyebrow at him. Watching him care for the kitten had inflated something just behind my sternum. A warm balloon of…something, that had prevented me from saying a word.
I added a buttered hunk of bread to my plate, and poured myself a glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc. Before I could grab my plate, a familiar meow came from outside the door.
“Don’t let it in,” I muttered. “It’ll never leave.” But even as I spoke, I was opening the door. The kitten was sitting on its haunches just outside the door, like a dinner guest who’d rung the bell.
“Come in,” I found myself saying.
And it did.
I ate in the kitchen, feeding the kitten bits of salmon with my fingers and resolutely not texting William to inform him that his cat was ruining my life.
After dinner, I picked it up and set it down gently outside. It was cold. The kitten nuzzled my hand as I let it go.
The next morning when I opened the door for it, the kitten barreled inside mewling. It had a scratch on its cheek and it whimpered when I tried to touch it. I googled “How to clean a scratched cat,” and reasoned that I could do all the work I needed to do from the Falls Church house. All my meetings for the day were phone meetings anyway.
* * *
Friday evening, when the crunch of tires on gravel meant William had arrived, I poured him a glass of wine and met him at the door.
His arms came around me and he tucked his chin into the crook of my neck. The warmth of satisfaction—of rightness—settled over me like a blanket.
“Welcome home,” I murmured, wishing it truly were his home, and he squeezed me. After a kiss, and a grateful smile in exchange for the wine, we settled on the couch in the living room and Will finally satisfied my curiosity about the case he’d closed that week. When he’d finished and his stomach started growling, we made our way into the kitchen.
“Um, have you happened to—” Will began, but he was interrupted by the now-predictable meow and scratching at the door.
I cleared my throat and opened the door. The kitten bounded inside and rubbed itself against my ankles.
“Aww, has it been coming back?” he asked. Then he seemed to catch himself, and amended, “It really should learn to hunt for itself. If you’re not going to keep it, that is.”
I said nothing, and he bent down and offered his knuckles to the kitten. It seemed overjoyed to have another playmate, and bounced between Will’s knuckles and my ankles for the next few minutes. I served it tuna and William and I ate in the kitchen without discussing it. I loaded the dishwasher as Will went upstairs to change out of his work clothes, and brought the bottle of wine into the living room, where he met me.
He threw his legs up over my thighs and sighed happily, clicking on a show he knew I didn’t mind as background noise, and I grabbed my book from the table, resting a hand on his leg.
I was just losing myself in the book when a small weight plopped up on the couch next to us.
The kitten.
William looked at me, horrified.
“Shit, sorry,” he said. “I forgot.” He grabbed the kitten and petted it, walking back to the kitchen. I bit my lip so I couldn’t tell him to let it stay.
“Sorry,” he said again as he settled back beside me.
“No harm done,” I said, running a hand up his thigh.
Suddenly, with the feel of hard muscle beneath soft flannel, reading didn’t seem all that appealing. I stood and held out a hand to William, eyes on him in a way that had him scrambling up off the couch and into my arms.
* * *
I woke with my arms full of solid, sexy man. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what had woken me, since William was still asleep, his leg flung over mine, his head heavy on my shoulder, the smell of sex all over us.
Then lightning ripped through the sky and a crack of thunder followed. I tightened my arms around Will a moment before he woke harshly, and held him to me. We both peered out the window as the storm blew in.
I loved to watch the lightning illumine the sky, trees flashing in relief, skeletal black branches reaching toward the clouds. Wind whipped the branches, and blew gusts of leaves in whorls on the ground. Rain lashed the windows.
“Probably the last storm before the first snow,” William said, voice sleep-creaky in the darkness. He spoke about the weather this way sometimes, as if it were something knowable.
An errant branch scraped the window with a screech.
“Do you think…” I began, then muffled my mouth with Will’s shoulder.
“What?”
“Oh. Well. What do you think the kitten does in the event of a storm?” I pulled away slightly, so Will wouldn’t feel my heart pounding.
“Amory.”
“Hmm.”
Will grasped my chin and pulled me so he could look at me in the moonlight. “Have you been letting the cat in?”
“Hmm?”
“Have you been letting the cat come in farther than the kitchen? Is that why it jumped up on the couch? Have you been letting it sleep inside at night?”
Busted.
I cleared my throat. I supposed I should’ve expected such dot-connecting from a federal agent. I cleared my throat again, then felt the press of Will’s lips to my jaw.
“Softy,” he murmured.
I sighed.
Will’s lips met mine and he pulled me back down beside him on the bed. I felt his breathing start to slow again, but I was suddenly wide awake. “William?”
“Mmm.”
“She’s so little.”
Will pushed himself up on an elbow and looked at me for a minute. Then he slid out of bed and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. I scrambled to follow suit, then followed him downstairs.
We pulled on coats and shoved our feet into boots, then Will wrestled the kitchen door open. Rain blew inside, along with a damp spattering of leaves, but there was no sign of the kitten.
“C’mere,” Will called into the shrieking rain, but the sound was swallowed up and nothing came. A lightning strike split the sky, and I couldn’t see anything kitten-shaped. “Okay, let’s go,” he said, pointing and yelling over the storm. “Check under things. It’s probably hiding.” I nodded.
We were soaked and freezing within seconds of being outside, and the wind whipped my hair around my face and shoulders.
“Cat!” Will called, and grabbed at my elbow as I slid on wet leaves. He shook his head. “I feel like an idiot calling it cat.”
“It’s very Audrey Hepburn of you, William.”
He cocked his head and went back to searching. I tried to look under bushes and behind terra cotta pots, but my hair kept getting in my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing.
When I caught up with Will, he was shivering in the cold.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Thank you for trying.”
But he had that look on his face. That stubborn look that usually thwarted my attempts to buy him things, or telemarketers’ attempts to get him to upgrade his cable service. He walked to the tree line and called out again, louder this time. The wind tossed his voice into the trees. He stood for a while, a black shape silhouetted against taller, slimmer black shapes. Then he crouched.
When he rose and made his way back to me, he was cradling something against his chest. I opened the kitchen door and it wasn’t until I shut the storm out that I could hear it. The whimpering mewl from inside Will’s coat.
I grabbed at his hand, peeling the coat away.
And there was the kitten, a bedraggled, shivering mess, its fur plastered to its body and its little face just huge eyes. William didn’t look much better. I helped him strip off his coat, did the same with my own, and left them with our boots on the floor, tugging Will upstairs. I turned on the shower and closed the bathroom door, then dried the cat with a towel, until its fur spiked damply and it was purring in my hands. Then I pushed Will under the hot water, and made a nest of the towel for the kitten on the floor.
I stepped under the spray with William, sighing in relief as the icy fall of my hair was warmed. When I opened my eyes, Will’s were on mine. He looked amused, and he put his hands on either side of my neck tenderly.
“We should take it to the vet and get it checked out,” he murmured in my ear.
“Her,” I said, shutting off the water and drying William off. He didn’t take to it as easily as the kitten.
I scooped her up and took them both into the bedroom. My hair would be a mess come morning, but something told me Will wouldn’t care, so I slid beneath the covers without braiding it.
“She needs a name too,” Will said. “If you’re going to keep her.” He shot me a wry look. “Which you obviously are.”
“We are,” I corrected. He opened his mouth like he might quarrel, then dropped his eyes to the kitten, who had snuck out of her towel and curled between us on top of the coverlet.
He settled himself into my arms as he usually did, leg thrown over mine, head on my shoulder, but this time he moved slowly, so as not to dislodge the kitten, now curled on his hip.
“Thank you, love,” I said, running a hand up and down his back.
“Softy,” he teased, but he cuddled closer and kissed my neck.
“My hero,” I said.