Stray for You (Rainbow Rescue Cat Café #3)

Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

Cameron

WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Even days later, I don’t know what possessed me to say yes to Julian coming back to Seattle for a visit. He was here a couple weeks ago. It doesn’t even make sense for him to fly all the way back so soon. Yet according to his texts, he’s booked his ticket and gotten his time off approved. The trip is happening — and this time he won’t have work to distract him.

I will, but I plan to take off about as many days as I can. Even now, I stand outside the office my boss Chloe uses occasionally. It’s more like a closet than a real office, but it has enough space for a desk so she can do some manager … boss … stuff when she’s here.

She rarely ever closes the door, so I knock on the frame to get her attention. She smiles when she sees me and beckons me inside.

I slink into her office, hands clenching and unclenching as I prepare to make my request. Seriously, what the hell am I doing? I don’t have some fancy job like Julian. I need this cash. Yet I’m going to miss out on it to … to spend time with him.

Oh God. I need to do this before I lose my nerve.

“So, I was wondering if I could have some time off next week,” I say. “I have a friend coming to town, and he doesn’t really have anywhere else to stay, so I was going to show him around and stuff, but if you need me to be here I can totally make it work, I just might need to do fewer hours or something or…”

My rambling trails off into silence as I run through the excuses and explanations I planned out in my head.

“That’s no problem,” Chloe says simply, completely unperturbed by the request.

“Are you sure?” I say. “Will Henry and Sebastian be okay?”

“Sebastian might take on a few more hours, but since it’s fall, that shouldn’t be too big of a problem. And I can cover a coffee bar shift if we’re really in trouble. It should be okay. Thanks for letting me know. Do you mind putting it on the calendar in the staff room?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. I’ll … I’ll go do that.”

I slink away, retreating to the staff-only area with the litter boxes and cat medication. A calendar hangs on the wall, and I shakily mark off the days when Julian will be here as “Cameron out.” At the last minute, I cross one of them out. I tell myself it’s because I’ll need the cash from the shift, but the self-deception falls flat. Really, I want an excuse to be away from Julian if the need arises.

Holy shit, I’m really doing this.

It was one thing to say yes when he texted me the idea, but taking days off from work gives the whole thing a tangibility I wasn’t prepared for. I keep replaying the sequence of events in my head for the rest of the day, and I’m still wondering how this happened when I head to Aunt Mary’s house after work for my weekly family dinner.

Aunt Mary lounges in the living room when I enter the cozy one-story house. The couch sags under her, the springs so old they barely bounce back anymore. I helped them upgrade to a flat screen TV at least, but everything else in the house feels like a relic that belongs in a museum, from the wooden coffee table with glass inserts to the cheesy landscape print framed on the wall.

I head through the living room to the kitchen in the back and find Mom stirring something bubbling in a big pot atop the stove.

“Hey, Mom,” I say, kissing her on the cheek.

“Cameron, you’re early. Or are you on time? Oh my goodness, I can’t believe it’s already almost six.”

“It’s fine, Mom,” I say. “We can eat whenever. What can I help with?”

She sets me to work chopping up vegetables that end up in the pot. I’m grateful to have a task to perform. It keeps my mind in the present and off of my phone. Julian has been texting non-stop since we made this insane plan to see each other again. I feel like I’ve given catnip to one of the café cats and set them loose sprinting and jumping all over the shop. Is that what I am to him? Catnip? I figured he had a bunch of hookups all over the country because of his job and all, so why would he bother flying all this way to see me in particular?

I shake my head at myself, and don’t realize I’m doing it until I catch Mom watching me.

“Everything alright?” she says.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You were shaking your head at the peppers.”

“I just … I think I cut them wrong. Is this okay?”

I display a cutting board worth of chopped up vegetables, but Mom keeps her eyes on me.

“You can’t mess up cutting them,” she says. “They’re just going in the pot. Cameron, is there something on your mind?”

For a crazy moment, I actually consider telling her, but I almost instantly think better of it. How could I possibly tell her that it’s Julian who has my head all twisted? Hey, Mom, remember that guy you found hitting on me while you were dating his mom? Remember the guy who fucked up the best relationship you ever had after Dad left? No way. I’m not going to openly admit that I’m doing something that will probably hurt her. Julian and I weren’t supposed to be into each other back in college when our moms dated, and we probably should have continued not being into each other now.

I put my head down and focus on an onion as guilt chews its way through me. I know how messed up this is, and I’m still doing it. This little trip of his has to be the end of it. I already said yes and took the time off of work. There’s no going back. I’ll get Julian out of my system and move on with my life, and hopefully Mom will never realize I betrayed her.

I help her get dinner ready. Aunt Mary pops in to retrieve cutlery and plates for the table. Mom dishes out huge portions of mac ‘n’ cheese with peppers, onions and even a bit of pulled pork worked in. It’s one of her homemade specialties, and I’m grateful to sit down and dig in once we’re all around the table for our weekly meal. I haven’t worked out how I’m going to dodge around this situation next week. Maybe I can leave Julian in my apartment. He’s an adult. He can find a way to occupy himself. I certainly can’t bring him here. I’d sooner die.

“Everything okay, Cameron?”

This time it’s Aunt Mary picking up on my anxiety.

I shake myself out of my head. “Sorry, yeah, I’m distracted today.”

My mother and her cousin share a look.

“You know you can always talk to us,” Aunt Mary says.

“You were so happy last week. Did something happen?” Mom asks.

Last week. Last week when Julian was here. I seemed happy to them? That’s… I’m not sure I’m ready to contemplate that, so I set it aside on the heap of other problems I’m doing my best to ignore.

“You know,” Mom says, pronouncing each word strangely slowly, “Miss Brooks gave me a call the other day.”

I freeze, my fork halfway to my mouth with a bite of mac ‘n’ cheese dripping off it. Miss Brooks, as in Julian’s mom.

“I thought you two hadn’t talked in a while,” I say.

“We haven’t,” Mom says.

“Is that … something you’re okay with?” I say. “Is she bothering you?”

Mom laughs. “She’s not bothering me. It’s been years, but it was nice hearing from her. We spent a long time catching up. It was good.”

I force myself to go through with my bite of mac ‘n’ cheese, buying myself some time by chewing. “That’s good,” I say mildly.

“She mentioned that Julian was in Seattle a couple weeks ago,” Mom says.

My blood goes cold. I nearly choke on my over-chewed mac ‘n’ cheese. I swallow so hard the meal goes down my throat like a stone.

“Oh,” I manage.

“Did you realize he was in town?” Mom says. “Apparently he travels a lot for work and just happened to get sent to Seattle. Isn’t that a crazy coincidence?”

Yeah. Crazy. Almost as crazy as me letting him fly right back out here next week.

“Weird,” I say. Apparently I’ve been reduced to single syllables. I’m not sure I could manage a whole sentence at the moment.

“Have you been in contact with him at all?”

“Why would you think that?” I say, a bit more sharply than I intend. “I mean, I just, we never really got along.”

Her lips stretch, half a smile, half a grimace. “I know. It was something Stacy and I discussed when things got more serious. We always worried about you boys having to get along.”

The guilt threatens to claw straight through me. I knew she worried about it. Of course I knew she worried about it. Back then Julian was relentless with how he pestered me. No matter my resolve, he would push and push until I finally snapped. Then he went and made it even worse by trying to make out with me right there in my Mom’s apartment.

I must be some sort of idiot for letting a guy like that back into my life. The pain from that time period is still written plainly all over my mother’s face, and here I am inviting the source of it into my apartment for a whole week. How can I betray the only person who’s ever really cared about me? I almost grab my phone right then and there and tell Julian to cancel his flight.

“We were stupid kids,” I say, trying to reassure her.

“I know,” Mom says, “but if things had gone differently…” She shrugs. “Well, we just didn’t want to upend your lives too much.”

“You wouldn’t have,” I say. “It was nothing. We were idiot teenage boys. I’m sure Julian is… Whatever he’s doing, I’m sure he’s different now.”

Am I? Am I sure about that? I convinced myself of it last week when I agreed to hop into bed with him, but maybe that was self-delusion. I saw a good-looking guy and justified hooking up with him any way I could, all while knowing it was the dumbest decision I could possibly make.

“It’s alright,” Mom says, and I must have a look on my face because she’s doing her soothing Mom voice. “It was just a funny coincidence.”

“Yeah,” I agree, trying to sound normal, “it’s weird.”

Weird doesn’t begin to describe the feeling of having Julian Brooks back in my life. I never wanted to see him again once I was finally free of him. Now I’m covertly spending entire weeks with him. And the worst part is that I know the second those bright blue eyes and that unfairly dashing smile settle on me, my resolve will crumble like wet sand. The second I have an opportunity to shove him against a wall and make him whine out my name again, I’ll do it. It’s getting me itchy and uncomfortable just thinking about it at the dinner table where I sit eating my mother’s food while lying to her face.

If she ever finds out that I’ve willingly brought Julian Brooks back into our lives, I’ll never live it down. But I know even that won’t stop me from getting my hands on him the moment he’s in reach.