I might have had some moral fortitude, but apparently not enough to not roll my eyes.
“Is it really that hard to keep track of your cat?”
“I was busy,” Holden said defensively. “And anyway, he’s not my cat.”
“Whose is he?”
“No one’s, really. But Daisy’s the one who found him and let him inside for the first time. Now we can’t get rid of him.”
Privately, I thought Holden was fonder of Frog than he wanted to let on. But since I didn’t want to get yelled at again, I kept that thought to myself.
“Is she the one who named him, too?”
Holden snorted. “Yeah.”
I tried to picture the terrifying woman I’d met last night naming an animal Sir Froggington McFluffybutt, or whatever Frog’s full name was, and couldn’t quite manage it. She’d looked like she was ready to take my head off last night. Probably would have given it to Frog to use for shredding practice.
Thinking about Daisy, and last night, made me feel like I was forgetting something important. But for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what. And since I’d forgotten pretty much everything else in my life, I supposed it didn’t matter, in the end.
“Weird,” I wrote, finally.
“Yeah.” Holden gave me a long look. “You need something?” It wasn’t unfriendly, exactly, but it wasn’t warm either.
I didn’t get him. He’d been so apologetic last night, and he’d left that note and the clean clothes this morning, and now he was staring at me like I was another one of Frog’s hairballs, and honestly, I kinda wished I were, so I could roll away wetly and hide in a corner.
“You gonna take a break for dinner? I was thinking I could cook.”
I felt stupid writing it, and even more stupid when Holden frowned.
“You can cook?” He cocked his head to the side. “And you can eat real food already?”
“No to the second one, yes to the first. I do know how a stove works. And I saw some chicken in your fridge. I could make something. As a thank you?”
Because I didn’t feel dumb enough, apparently. Lucky for me, Holden was there to really rub the point home.
He glanced over his shoulder at his computer, then gave me a look that I think he meant to be apologetic, but only really managed to look like he was sick to his stomach.
“I have some more work I need to get done. So, thanks. But I think I’m good.”
Feeling even more pathetic, I wrote, “I could wait. If you think you’ll be done soon. I could even follow a recipe if you want. I found a cookbook in your library.”
And I could tell him the rest of the stuff about his library too, if he’d let me. But Holden shook his head.
“Don’t bother. I’m gonna be a while.”
I knew I shouldn’t care. I didn’t know Holden. Certainly didn’t need to cook for him, especially if he didn’t want me to.
Maybe it was just because I was lonely, and the only person I knew didn’t even want to spend time with me.
“Anyway,” Holden said, “if that’s it…”
He let the sentence hang unfinished, but his body rotated back towards his screens. The dismissal was clear. Feeling shittier than I probably should have, I gave him a little salute and left. I closed the door behind me, since he’d made such a big deal about it.
Dumb to get my hopes up. Dumb to think Holden might actually want to spend time with the person who’d come in and made a mess of his life. I should have just counted my blessings he was letting me stay at all.
So, I ate a quiet little dinner of, what else, yogurt and fruit, by myself. Did a final search of some news sites. Went back to the library thinking I might read something, but couldn’t even bring myself to turn a page.
Feeling hopeless, I went back to my room—because fuck it, I could call it what I wanted in my own head—and stared at the ceiling, willing my brain to work, to give me something, some image or sound or snatch of memory from my past. But everything before yesterday morning was as gray and foggy as ever.
My thoughts started to drift, getting looser and less logical. I kept returning to the way Holden had looked at the foot of the stairs last night. Those eyes of his were deep pools in the dark, but they’d been concerned for me.