“What’s New Pussycat?”
Camille
“Good morning, pretty baby,” I crooned to my beautiful boy. “How’s Mommy’s precious this lovely day?” Solomon regarded me balefully from his perch on the embroidered pillow sham. I reached for my reluctant companion from the nest of down and fine cotton sheets.
Fine. Now you know my darkest secret. I’m a linen whore. Not a rich one, mind you, so I habitually scoured ads from high-end department stores and frequented Tuesday Morning. The Queen of England could happily snuggle up in my bed and feel at home. As a nurse, I’d never been wealthy, but I damn sure slept in the finest bed in Tucson.
And last night I’d not been there alone—at least not figuratively. I’d clutched my down pillow like a schoolgirl, imagining Nathan’s long, hard body pressing mine into the mattress. I marveled at how long it had been since I’d entertained hot, imaginary male company between my superior sheets. Samanthe said I had cobwebs in my vagina. Not that my well-meaning coworkers hadn’t tried tirelessly to relieve me of those. Not the girls themselves, of course, but there had been endless efforts at setups—blind dates, group dates, you name it. I had become a relationship Houdini, preferring hard work and professional advancement to the dark unknown of male companionship. At first, the avoidance tactics were a way of letting myself heal. Now they were just habit.
And until I encountered the beautiful Colonel Morgan, I’d convinced myself that the habit would work well for a lifetime. I’d had enough pain to mark me forever, and the risk was too dangerous to take.
But last night was a thing entirely to itself. He wanted to date.
In the “before Amos” era of my life, I’d dated on occasion, but never seriously. And frankly, I couldn’t see the grand attraction. I never seemed to get the butterflies or fireworks other girls discussed incessantly before they chucked their dreams to follow love. It saddened me to see so many of them later, alone or disillusioned, sometimes even bitter. I couldn’t afford the emotional expense.
My parents hadn’t planned to have children, so my arrival was unexpected and unwelcome. They had little to do with me from my earliest memory and made it crystal clear that I was expected to leave after high school and make my way. Looking back, it was apparent that I handled their disinterest differently than many children would have. Mother and Father didn’t like me and viewed me as an inconvenience, a waste of their time and money. But my self-worth somehow didn’t suffer in conventional ways. I always knew I was smart and had something to offer. From a tender age, I realized there was only one shot at succeeding in making my life satisfying, worthwhile. I was never abused, at least not physically. What I didn’t realize until much later was the bone-deep wound left by neglect at the hands of those who were supposed to cherish me most. That laid the foundation for how I reacted to the heartbreak that would come and the woman who would eventually emerge.
Of course, Solomon already knew all of this. There could be no doubt about that, because Solomon, my magnificent blue Maine Coon cat, knew everything. My elderly neighbor gave me the tiny, impossibly fluffy kitten about six years ago when she became partially incapacitated following a stroke and had to go live with her daughter. Her daughter didn’t apparently possess the intestinal fortitude to cohabitate with a clairvoyant cat who was both more beautiful and smarter than herself. I suffered no such misgivings. My gorgeous boy and I were a match made in heaven.
He commenced his rumbly purr as I set him on my belly before cocooning us both in the duvet, and his eyes stared deeply into mine. I knew Solomon could read my mind, so it wasn’t necessary to detail what was going on.
I was losing my ever-loving fucking mind.
Staying out of the relationship game and focusing my efforts on being a great nurse garnered me a good life, if a little narrow. I had an excellent job, the respect of my coworkers and managers, and a small stable of the best friends a girl could ever want. Luckie and I had been fast friends since nursing school, both of us orphans of sorts. My parents were living, but we had only the barest of contact—usually a card on birthdays and occasionally Christmas.
Luckie came from money, and her parents vigorously disapproved of her career choice, feeling and frequently voicing their opinion that such pedestrian work was far beneath her. One glance at the glamorous bitch would have you throwing your lot in with her parents, no doubt. She had breathtaking model looks, but there was so much more to that girl than met the eye. For our purposes, we both worked our respective ways through school and pledged to find jobs in the same hospital. Samanthe, Grace, and Vivvie rounded out our inner circle. We were a great team in the trenches of the busy ER and even managed to find some fun and trouble, from time to time.
Oh, Nathan was fun and trouble all right. And I couldn’t mount a reasonable defense against the earnest charm oozing from every pore of his commanding body. When he touched me and silenced my thoughts with his persuasive mouth, I was well and truly fucked. “Not fucked in the literal sense,” I informed Solomon, “but I think that may be in the cards.” That possibility brought a thrill as well as some very real anxiety. There had been no one since the terrible night in the club five years ago. I made an absolute point of avoiding anything that might lead down that path. I knew logically that my friends were right. I was too young to exclude the prospect of a real, healthy relationship, but I couldn’t lure myself from behind the wall that had protected me over these past years. As it turned out, the answer was not in persuading myself but in finding the one who had me peering over and around that damn wall with uncontrollable curiosity. And now he’d gone and found me.
The insistent ringing of my phone interrupted my morning communion with Solomon. Vivvie’s enthusiastic shriek met my groggy hello. “Girl, word on the street is you and the new commander hit it off last night, in the biblical sense. I just got off the phone with Jake; he caught a minute of the show on the patio, so I’m going to need details.”
“Okay, look, Viv, your peeping Tom of a brother is going to have to lock that gossip down. We did absolutely not do the nasty, just a little kissy face.”
“I’ll tell him, but I need further info. Are there follow-up plans?” Vivvie continued her interrogation good-naturedly.
“Abner’s for dinner tonight,” I informed her. Abner’s was a rustic steakhouse in the desert outside of town that served food from an open grill, cowboy-style under the stars. Quiet, old-time western music often accompanied the meals. It had the potential to be intimate, even romantic, and something told me Nathan would know exactly the way to make it just that. My voice took a more serious tone. “I’m nervous, Viv. Really nervous. You know how long it’s been. What if I forgot everything? What if I never had a fucking clue in the first place?”
She was shushing me before I finished the last of my speech. “Camille Elizabeth Sullivan. I’ll not listen to one more word of this rubbish. Enough, right this minute. We are all thrilled to pieces about this, and may I add, it’s about fucking time. You’re a prime piece of ass that’s been sitting on the shelf too long. It’s time to get in the game, girl.” She was only pompoms and a pleated mini from being the perfect cheerleader.
Wait.
“Who exactly comprises the ‘all’ who are thrilled?” I demanded. “Has the hearsay chat line been activated already this morning? Good God, woman. What time did you bitches get out of bed to start slandering me?”
“Early,” she admitted without a hint of remorse. “Jake woke me up with the news. Such a good brother, always looking after his sweet little sis. We’re more like twins than sibs, you know.”
That brought a hearty round of laughter from me, and she had to join in. Jacob, aka Bashful, was indeed older than Vivian, but that’s where the truth in what she said ended. Although he did love and dote on her, Viv was far from sweet. She was loud, opinionated and possessed an acerbic wit. She was also loyal, honest to a fault, and generous. She was adopted and looked nothing like her blond, blue-eyed brother. Viv was tall with silky black hair swinging above her shoulders and piercing green eyes. They loved to pose as twins to confuse the shit out of anyone gullible enough to believe them.
There was a loud knock at my door, followed by several impatient rings of the doorbell. Solomon jumped from the bed with a solid thump and a peeved meow. I tugged on a football jersey over jammies and jogged toward the door. “Anyway,” Viv continued, “the ‘all who are thrilled’ I mentioned before?” I peered through the sidelight of my front door to see the girls assembled in shorts, tees, and ponytails, sans makeup, on my front porch. “We come bearing caffeine and carbs to assist in wardrobe decisions.” They all grinned through the glass and held up bags from Dunkin’ Donuts. “Open the door, bitch.”
So much for a quiet return to the dating game.