the sudden motion, and his office chairs toppled backward. He grabbed for the edge of his desk, but he was too late.
I have the last and final handful of muffin.
As the muffin flew toward his face, he raised his hand to block it. I knew how seriously that man takes his face-washing-and-moisturizing-routine, he wouldn’t want to ruin his work. He told me all about his routine during the most boring hour of my life at the office Christmas party.
Without his grip on the edge of the table, his chair tipped all the way over, dumping him ass over head. His expensive shoes slammed into the filing cabinet behind him.
“Next time you’re going to fire someone for your nephew, get your own damn coffee,” I snarled. I grabbed his coffee cup and my iced coffee and strode for the door back to the lobby.
For the first time, as I saw the shocked faces of my former co-workers, I realized I left the door to his office open to the cubicle farm.
Rob and Debbie rose. Rob glanced toward the office, where Jonathan was still trying to divest himself of muffin crumbs, and gave me a sly salute.
“We’re going to miss you,” Debbie murmured as I passed. “Even if we do need to find a new place for our happy hours now.”
I waved goodbye to them all before I collected my purse and quickly boxed up my stuff, then headed out the door into the sunshine.
The adrenaline rush of a good muffin fight almost salved some of my pain, but as I walked home toward the apartment I shared with Brad, reality hit me.
I left Silver Springs because I needed three things: a job and a boy and someplace no one thought they knew everything about me.
Now I was down a job.
2
Sometimes when I was upset, I wanted to be alone. The one problem with living in Scarborough was, unlike when I lived in Silver Springs, there was no place to go when I wanted to tiger out.
Sometimes, it was unbearable being human. I didn’t understand how people coped with being stuck in their human skins all the time.
Being human might come with opposable thumbs, music, and toaster pastries—all things I really appreciate—but it was also kind of a mess.
But there was nowhere for me to go. Brad would be home, though, because he worked out of our apartment, and maybe he’d make me feel better. Maybe.
When we first met in college, Brad was the cute boy who sat next to me in Shakespeare and Love. Unlike the handsome-but-exasperating best guy friends I grew up with in Silver Springs, he didn’t annoy me. He seemed to ignore me, in fact. Until one day I couldn’t find a pencil as I rummaged through my backpack. He’d silently handed me his own pen.
I’d asked him on our first date. On our third date, when I fell and skinned my knee at the roller blading rink, he’d kissed my knee, and when he looked up at me and smiled as he knelt in front of me, that kiss felt like magic.
Unfortunately, that magic had worn off like glitter.
We lived on a third-floor walk-up. I knocked on the door with my elbow, hoping he would hear me over his headphones so I didn’t have to put down my purse and the box with my belongings and these two coffees that I didn’t even want but had juggled home, I didn’t even know why now.
No answer. I managed to set it all down so I could reach my keys, and I only spilled half an iced coffee down the front of my shirt in the process.
As a big cat shifter, I should be full of grace, but I’m only agile when I’ve shifted. I was pretty sure the cat had all the grace, and my human form got zilch. My grandfather used to call me Bella. That’s how bad it was.
It was also how I knew that man loved me enough to watch any movie I requested. Over and over again.
When I finally stumbled into the apartment and dropped the box on the kitchen counter, Brad wasn’t at his desk in the corner of our living room. His laptop was closed, his headphones resting neatly on top of them. I frowned around the white living room and the tidy little kitchen beyond. I even glanced out onto the balcony where my plants were, but that was my territory. He was already out of bed when I left. Maybe