The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,94
laid out in my room—his suitcase, his laptop—all on my bed.
I used my sternest, meanest voice to say, “Muriel! Enough!”
Muriel stopped struggling. She wheezed a little sigh, minced down the stairs, clicked through the kitchen, and waited by the back door like a house-trained pet. When I opened it, she looked up at me with those odd yellow eyes. I dug in my jacket pocket and unearthed a sugar cube. She crunched it daintily. I crouched down to scratch between her horns. She only wanted to be with us, after all. I thought I might cry, but when she’d finished her sugar, she lifted her stout little body onto her back legs, kicking out all her limbs like a spastic ballerina.
ONCE GABRIELLA HAD GONE TO BED, VIJAY AND I MADE out against the fridge like teenagers. I nibbled his lips and ran my fingers through his hair. “What you said in the kitchen earlier—” he asked. “Do you really think that? That I expect you to drop everything at my whim?”
He had his hands under my shirt. His earlobe was between my teeth. “Well . . . a little. But I don’t think you do it on purpose.”
“Who was that guy?” I heard the overly casual tone, the way he’d slipped it in among other questions, his nose buried in my hair. “The one who danced you to your door?”
“He was my dance partner tonight because Davy couldn’t go.” Why did I feel like I was lying? I had to actually remind myself that I wasn’t. “His name is Stuart. I treat his dog.”
I was still against the fridge. Vijay leaned on one arm beside me and with the other played with my hair. Looking at the strand I’d curled he said, “I don’t expect you to drop everything.”
“Okay,” I said. “I didn’t say it to hurt you. It just gets frustrating.”
His eyes widened. “Work interfered! Things came up.”
I laughed. “And did I ever, a single time, give you a hard time about that?”
He shook his head.
“Right. And I’ve been stood up by you how many times? Six? Seven?”
“Wait, not that many, that’s not—”
“It’s not important. The point is I never gave you any crap about it, and here you are, stood up one time. One time! Stood up for something I didn’t even know I was standing you up for!”
“I never said I wasn’t coming.”
“You never said you were.”
“I said I was coming to all of them, and I always told you if I wasn’t going to make it.”
“I was supposed to assume you’d show up if I didn’t hear otherwise? You’re not being fair.”
“But we could’ve—”
“Stop.” I pushed off from the fridge and moved away from him. “Was I supposed to wait, without a partner, to the last second? Was I truly supposed to believe that you were going to swoop in for the final class? Can we please drop this and concentrate on being here now?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. “Yes. We can.”
I smiled. “Good. Let’s start over, shall we? But we’ll skip the part where the goat ran in.”
We kissed. He whispered, “So, listen, I know I’ve been frustrating, with my—”
I wanted to kick his shin. “We’re starting over.”
“No, this is about something different. I wanted to apologize and make things better, even before we . . . even before I messed up this evening.” At least he said “I.”
I started a fire, then we sat on the couch, legs entwined. He played with that loose strand of my hair again. “What do you wish for . . . for us?”
“I wish you were more available. I wish I could see you more often.”
This seemed to please him. “What if I wanted that, too, and we took this to the next level?”
I turned my head, unsure what he meant.
“What if,” he said, an almost teasing tone to his rich voice, “you moved to New York and we saw each other every day?”
My breath stopped. His face glowed butterscotch in the firelight. “What if we got to wake up next to each other each morning? What if I came home to you every day?”
I was afraid to breathe. The slightest movement might tip the balance.
He swiveled his long legs from under mine and knelt. He took both of my hands in his and looked up at me with that face I’d known, counted on, and adored for so many decades. “Camden Anderson, would you marry me?”
I squeezed his hands. “Vijay. Vijay.” I cannot screw this