privy to what his skin and muscles felt like (soft and not soft, respectively) when they grazed against her, so some things about this were not a laughing matter.
She had not, in fact, laughed until they’d gotten here, a sort of spontaneous, half-stifled giggle that came out every time Will tried to explain something to a veterinary professional about finding two kittens inside a secret compartment in the closet of his not-apartment. Before, she’d managed to maintain at least a veneer of seriousness as they dealt with the practicalities—donning latex gloves Will had in his car before handling the kittens, setting them gently inside a plastic hamper they’d borrowed from Marian and stuffed with some of Donny’s shirts. Nora had called the vet while Will had dealt with some of the most immediate cleaning-related tasks associated with finding live animals in one’s closet, and then—without ever really addressing the weirdness of it—they’d gotten into Will’s car and driven to the vet’s office together.
“How’d they get in there?”
“Now, don’t start this again,” Nora said, rolling her eyes.
“I believe you. I’m saying, how?”
This was really taxing Will’s man brain. She took a sidelong glance at him and he was staring into the middle distance like he’d gotten punched in the face by those kittens.
“My guess is, they came in through the back door you seem to be leaving open while you work.” She didn’t want to talk about her additional guess, which was that they had probably been led there by one of the strays who’d come looking for Donny’s regular handouts.
He turned to look at her, blinking. He didn’t have his glasses on but it didn’t really matter, not when he was up close like this. She thought he might’ve been the most attractive man she’d ever sat next to. Along the strong, stubbled line of his jaw, he had a hair-thin pink scratch from where one of the kittens had caught him during hamper transport. That was a version of getting punched in the face, she supposed.
And because she was still in the habit of forgetting herself, it took everything she had in her not to reach up and touch it.
“Right,” he said, but honestly he still seemed a little dazed. Was he . . . looking at her mouth? Or did she also have kitten scratches somewhere on her face? “That’s probably it.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Keep the door shut, I guess,” he said automatically, and this time, she didn’t bother stifling her laughter. It came out in a surprised burst, the moment—the entire situation—so ludicrous and unexpected, and Will’s answer so bland and matter-of-fact and unsuited to the moment. She laughed so hard she had to tip her head back against the wall behind them; she had to reach up to wipe tears from the corners of her eyes. She laughed so hard that she had to sigh when she was done, to catch her breath, and the best part was, Will laughed along with her—a quieter, more constrained version of her own, but enough that it made the ends of his messy hair tremble.
When they’d finished—when they both seemed to remember that laughing wasn’t really something they did together—an awkward silence fell, the muffled sounds of ringing phones and barking dogs coming from the lobby outside their treatment room. Nora shifted on the bench, trying not to notice the way their thighs had come to press against each other during their shared outburst.
“I meant about the kittens,” she finally said, because now, after the laughter, the quiet between them was killing her.
“Oh. Well. I—I don’t know. I can’t keep them.”
She looked over at him, saw that his face had gone all serious again.
“Cats are very self-sufficient. Probably great pets for a workaholic doctor to have.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Probably even better for someone who works from home.”
“Oh, I can’t keep them,” she said cheerfully. “Pets are against the bylaws. I’m sure you know that!” Truthfully, getting rid of the no-pets clause was something else she could’ve done after Nonna had passed; the main reason it was there was because Nonna had always had terrible allergies, and asthma, to boot. But she didn’t need Will to know that.
“Listen, Nora—”
The door to the treatment room opened, and there was Dr. Taylor again, holding two wide-eyed, freshly washed black-and-white kittens in the crook of each arm.
Nora did the sensible thing, which was to make an unintelligible noise in a high octave range. Will stood from the bench, and