Stray for You (Rainbow Rescue Cat Café #3)

Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

Cameron

I HOLD UP MY keychain and take a photo as the Space Needle continues its glacial rotation.

The picture is blurry as shit, with only the keychain remaining in focus, but you can kind of tell the vague mass of blue in the background is Seattle’s hazy skyline. It’s a typical gray fall day, and a weekday on top of that, so there’s no one around to notice me doing something as corny as taking photos of a keychain. Still, I stuff the keychain away swiftly and text the photo without bothering with a caption.

There. I did my part. I kept my promise. He can’t ask me for more.

I could leave, but I loiter instead, hanging out at one of the big clear windows to watch the city rotate into view. Thick gray clouds obscure anything farther away than the other end of the city, like someone ringed Seattle in dollops of whipped cream. The sun breaks through here and there, glittering on the sound or glinting off a skyscraper.

Okay, fine, it’s kind of worth it. It’s a little beautiful. Not that I’m going to admit that.

I have work today, so I leave after only a few more minutes of gawking and return to the ground. Bundled in my hoodie, I make my way to my car, praying I don’t have a ticket for stretching the definition of “one hour.” I’ve dodged rush hour, so I escape the city relatively easily and hit the highway so I can hurry back up to Tripp Lake and get to the café to relieve Henry at the end of his shift.

Henry hasn’t said anything to me about Julian. Why would he, I suppose? In Henry’s mind, giving Julian those tips about me was probably inconsequential. Julian asked about me; Henry answered. Simple as that. Sweet, unassuming Henry probably hasn’t ever paused to ponder what his information led to.

I’ve been trying not to ponder it either.

Life went back to normal as soon as Julian left. This little diversion to the Space Needle to make good on that stupid promise is the only time I’ve thought about him. Okay, it’s the only time I’ve let myself think about him. Every now and then, he’s snuck into my head. And there were the texts. And that one dream.

But overall I’ve dismissed whatever happened between us as a bout of temporary madness and done an admirable job of restoring normalcy. I’ve got plenty to do with the café and the band. I don’t need to wonder about a guy who lives on the other side of the country on top of that.

Henry is helping a customer fill out adoption paperwork when I reach the café. I set my stuff aside and head to the coffee bar, checking on supplies and cleaning mugs and frothers and coffee machines in anticipation of a caffeine rush later in the day. It’s usually the first task I have to deal with here, though if I get a lull I’ll check on the cats’ litter boxes in the back.

Henry finishes up with his customer and joins me at the coffee bar. He fills me in on the news from the morning, which is all the standard stuff. The cats got their breakfast. He did the morning cleaning. Coffee rush was intense but things have quieted down since then. There’s a yoga class later in the evening that I’ll need to contend with, but aside from that, all is quiet and calm at Rainbow Rescue Cat Café.

“There’s also a class finishing up now,” Henry says, “so you got here just in time.”

In truth, I’m a little late thanks to my random trip to downtown Seattle this morning, but Henry is too nice to say it that way.

His warning proves prescient. We have only a few minutes to catch up before River’s yoga class ends and a rush of customers heads our way. We fall into the swing of fulfilling coffee and snack orders, the two of us dodging around each other to get everything done. Henry and Sebastian have proven really easy to work with. When it’s any combination of the three of us, we can get everything done without a word passing between us. All in all, they’re fantastic co-workers. I can’t say the same for some of the part-timers, but the flakier members of the staff are the entire reason I got this job, so I can’t be too upset with them.

The flurry of orders passes in a blur. I’m grateful to stay busy and distracted throughout it. I sent that photo to Julian shortly after taking it, but I haven’t had a chance to check for a reply. Nor do I want to. He’ll probably say something corny and tooth-rotting, something that would be charming coming from anyone but him.

“Just in time,” Henry says when it looks like we’re in the clear. “I need to get going. Alex has some sort of surprise in store tonight.”

“No problem. I’ve got things covered here.”

I smile at him, but a tiny ache settles beside my heart. Henry and his fiancé are hopelessly cute with each other. Henry was always an upbeat guy, but I’ve never seen him quite as happy as he is with Alex. It’s like the final missing piece in his life slotted into place when he met that guy. I can’t imagine another person doing that for me. My life has always consisted of jagged edges. Even before Dad left, I wasn’t that great at dating or even making friends my own age. When I’ve dated, it’s been fun, but it hasn’t completed my life the way Alex seems to complete Henry’s. Anyone I felt that serious about would have to meet my mother anyway, and I can’t fathom introducing her to the type of people I’ve been with recently.

Least of all Julian.

Hell no. He’s not getting anywhere near my mom ever again. His thoughtless, careless, stupid actions when we were in college screwed up a good thing for her. If it weren’t for him making a move on me where she could see, she would probably still be dating Miss Brooks. She’d still be happy. She wouldn’t be alone. No one gets two chances to hurt my mother like that.

After Henry heads out, I try to keep myself busy, but there isn’t all that much to do. River’s class has left and it’s too early for the afternoon customers. After wiping down the whole coffee bar for a second time, I pop a sign on the counter saying I’ll be back in a few minutes and head for the staff room. Scooping out litter boxes isn’t the most glamorous work on the planet, but it’s a hell of a lot better than standing out there thinking about Julian.

I rise from the litter boxes holding a paper bag full of cat turd, meaning to throw it out in the dumpsters around the back, when I come face to face with River. The blue-haired yoga instructor is shirtless even though his class ended ages ago. This guy seems to live most of his life without clothes on, even when he’s chugging a smoothie in the café’s backroom.

Unfortunately, I can’t get around him without confronting him. The backroom is a tight space mostly taken up with litter boxes and supplies for the cats, which makes it a particularly weird spot to stop and enjoy a smoothie.

“Need to take this out,” I say, holding up the paper bag.

“Hey, man, you’re looking different today,” River says, completely ignoring my implication that he should move.

I roll my eyes. Not this again. He hasn’t stopped with this shit since that whole bit about me being yellow or orange or whatever color it was.

“Sure, whatever,” I say. “Just move so I can throw this out. You can drink that in the café, you know.”

“Bad vibes out there,” River says. “Too much residual energy all over the place. It needs time to dissipate back into the ether.”

“And drinking a smoothie next to five litter boxes is better?”

“Yes,” he answers simply, as though oblivious to my sarcasm. Maybe he is. I’ve never been able to read this guy. “Anyway, want to tell me what’s going on with that aura of yours?”

“No, I do not.”

“You can pretend it isn’t happening, but I know you feel it,” he persists. “Aura changes like that aren’t things we can ignore, even if we don’t believe.”

“As it so happens, I don’t believe. Now move unless you want cat turd in that smoothie.”

River glances down at his smoothie, finishes it in one big gulp, and sets his empty water bottle on a counter beside flea and tick medication.

“Something good happened,” he says. “I get it. You don’t believe. I’m just a wacko. You’re going to keep on living your gray life. It’s fine, man. You don’t have to believe. The energy is out there either way, and your energy is reading yellow, yellow, yellow. I’m happy for you.”

“Even if that’s true, which it’s not, you wouldn’t know what you’re happy about.”

“I’m happy you’re happy,” River says as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Whatever’s making you yellow, it’s the good stuff, that good life stuff. So congratulations.”

I roll my eyes again. “Fine. Whatever. Thank you,” I say.

I don’t mean it, but there doesn’t seem to be any other way to get him out of my way. The “thank you” works. River steps aside, gesturing to the staff door like a chauffeur showing me to a limo. Sadly, I’m not headed toward luxury, but straight out of the back of the shop to the smelly dumpsters in the alley behind it. I dump my paper bag of litter and return inside to wash my hands and get back to the coffee bar.

The counter with its mugs and pastries and coffee machines feels like safety after encountering River in the backroom. I wish he’d stop with the aura thing. My head is already a scrambled mess. I don’t need his woo-woo hippie nonsense messing me up even more.

Besides, what the hell does that even mean, “my aura is yellow?” It’s total nonsense. Even if auras were real, which they’re not, there is nothing that would make mine a happier color than it used to be. Nothing in my life has changed. I go to work. I go to band practice. I see Mom and Aunt Mary for dinner once in a while. Same old, same old.

The only thing that has disturbed my routine in a long, long time has been…

Julian.

I scrub a hand through my hair. There is absolutely no way I’m bringing auras into this mess with Julian. It wouldn’t matter anyway. Julian is back on the East Coast. I’m sure he’s got his next thrilling sales conference all lined up. He’ll fly to Houston or Sacramento or Cleveland and fuck every rep in a ten-mile radius.

Whatever. I don’t care. It’s not my life. I made questionable choices for one week, and now everything is back to normal. No auras. No Julian.

Except when I look at my phone, there’s a reply from Julian, and my heart skips at the sight.

We must be sharing a braincell today , the message says.

I open the text. A photo greets me. In the background sprawls the vague monochrome haze of New York City, a field of blocky gray like a talus field on a mountainside. And there in the foreground, the only thing in focus: A keychain of the Empire State Building with the words “I Love New York” written under it. I can just make out Julian’s fingers holding up the trinket.