“I’ll just go check, you know.” Ian nodded toward the front of the house. “Make sure the load is balanced in the back of the pickup.”
It’s not a mule. But Dalton kept that to himself and returned to his room to assess what was left. He really didn’t need Ian—he barely needed Sam’s help—to move so little stuff. There were only three boxes in there still, plus Blue, who he’d carry out last and who would ride in his lap. When he checked the crate, the cat was washing himself, and there wasn’t a shred of chicken liver left. Blue had even licked the container clean. He blinked at Dalton, meowed, and then went back to tonguing his paw and swiping at his ears with it.
“You’re going to like our new place, baby cat,” Dalton told him. Blue started cleaning his stomach.
“He’s probably going out to make sure I didn’t put any marks on his truck,” Sam said, walking into the room behind Dalton.
“Why did you let him get away with that?” Dalton got up off the floor and turned to his friend.
Sam shrugged. “He’s so cute when he lies to spare my feelings. Besides, he’ll be racked with guilt for days and try to make it up to me over and over.”
“Got it.” Dalton picked up a box, heading toward the door with it. He didn’t want to spend any more time pondering the inner workings of someone else’s happy relationship. We’re in a mood today, aren’t we?
He passed Ian in the hall. “Just a couple more boxes, then we can go.”
Ian nodded.
At the truck, Dalton found Sam right behind him once again. “Do you feel any better?” Sam frowned and hefted his box onto the tailgate next to Dalton’s.
Sigh. “Not really. I think the stress of moving is getting to me.”
Sam tilted his head, studying Dalton. “You’ve been looking forward to this.”
“But there’s still a lot to do.”
“We’re almost done with this part.” Sam eyed him a few seconds, then opened his mouth—
“Shit!” Ian yelled, just as Dalton heard Blue’s enraged yowl.
Oh no. He started running for the open front door, but he didn’t make it before an orange streak of fur, claws, and fangs ran through it. “Blue!”
The cat hurtled around the side of the house, out of sight for the few seconds it took Dalton to skid around the corner. He just barely caught a flash of Blue’s tail disappearing behind the overgrown hydrangea.
“Will he come back?” Sam called.
Dalton didn’t answer, saving his energy for catching his pet. It could take everything he had, he knew that from experience. Blue would come back, eventually, but Dalton didn’t want to wait around all day for him to wander home. He wanted to move into his new apartment with his cat and get domestic now. Nest. Just the two of them.
Hours later, finally alone in his own place, Dalton watched Blue exploring. Sniffing boxes and then rubbing against them, occasionally taking a galloping trip around the kitchen, skidding to a halt on the linoleum with wild eyes and hair standing up. Just playing at being scared, though. Not really scared, as he’d been this morning when Ian had decided to carry the last box out to the pickup with Blue’s carrier on top of it. Of course it fell off, and of course the door sprang open when Ian tried to pick it up. But his fatal mistake had been trying to stop the cat from running away.
After the drama of the escape, catching Blue had been almost anticlimactic. Dalton had found him next to the garage, growling but amenable to being picked up.
Ian, however, would have a scratch down his cheek for days, and his hands were a mass of scabbed-over claw marks. “He doesn’t really like to be touched,” Dalton had tried to explain when he got back to the driveway.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” Ian snarked. Dalton let it go.
God, what an exhausting day. Not just the move, but losing Blue had worn on him, even if it had only been for a few minutes.
“Want some dinner?” he asked the cat, getting up from his new chair. He should be unpacking, but he’d set up his new bed and did it really matter if all he had for a few days were a place to sit and a place to sleep? He’d managed to find the dishes, and he’d gone shopping. They were set. Just the two of them. Ready to begin life as mature, self-reliant adults.
Well, Dalton was. He couldn’t swear Blue gave a damn.
“It’s so fucking obvious, now,” Tierney whined to Marty, the counselor he had his one-on-one sessions with. The revelations that had followed his watershed group session gave them lots of material to pick over. Therapy was weird—sort of like wandering through the woods and trying to follow a trail of bread crumbs to enlightenment or whatever. Damn things were hard to find, and he kept losing his way. Fortunately, he had a shrink trail guide.
Marty pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully, epitomizing “psychologist” for a moment. Most of the time, the only thing that made him seem like a mental health professional was the notepad he occasionally scribbled in. His hair was long and scraggly on the sides and nonexistent on top. It matched his bug eyes well, and his extreme thinness. He looked like a crazy medieval monk who’d traded his robes for khakis, a plaid button-down, and a doctorate in psychology. “Why don’t you say more about that?” Marty sounded like a therapist all the time, though.
“About Ian?” Did he have to? Yes. “Just . . .” Shrugging, he slouched further into the couch cushions, studying the hand he’d rested on his thigh. Palm up, fingers curled inward, like a creature that had starved to death. “I was fooling myself. I don’t think I was ever in love with him. If I was, how come I waited all that time for him to come to me? If it was so fucking painful, why didn’t I blurt it out and end the anguish? I don’t like pain. I think years of anesthetizing myself with alcohol proves that.”
Marty leaped right in and pointed out the next trail marker in Tierney’s path. “So, you think you used your friend as a crutch?” He always did it that way, asking questions so it could almost seem like Tierney was finding the bread crumbs and figuring shit out on his own, if he wanted to believe it.
“Yeah, I used him.” Tierney sighed, closing his eyes for a few seconds. “I used him as an excuse not to face myself.”
“But you’ve done that, now,” Marty said, prodding him. Bread crumbs don’t find themselves, boy. “Faced yourself.”
Jerking upright, he asked the only question that mattered. The one with the answer he couldn’t find on his own. “But how the fuck do I keep doing that?”