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Holy shit, dude. Relax.
“Yes!” she shouts, pulling out a castle she likes and damn near making my head explode with the unlikely crossover between fantasy and reality.
I shake my head quickly to clear it before she stands up, a decent-sized castle with a pink bottom of cliffs and varying shades of blue making up the stone walls and roof.
“Cute. Frank’s a fancy little fella, huh?”
“Oh my God. I just realized how long I’ve been away from him. I hope he doesn’t think I abandoned him.”
“Or got scooped up by somebody else,” I add unhelpfully.
Her panic knob dials up accordingly. I regret my blunder almost immediately.
“Holy hell, do you think someone bought him?”
“No—” is the only word I can get out before she dumps her castle in my cart and takes off at a jog, back toward the tanks along the wall of the store.
I follow, of course, the squeaky wheel on the Michaels cart someone obviously stole from the other end of the shopping center bleating my location the entire way.
“Oh, thank God,” she celebrates upon arrival at Frank’s tank.
I’m glad to see he’s still there because if he weren’t, I’m not sure what I’d do. It’s more than apparent that Lauren’s attachment level has grown somewhat exponentially over the last thirty minutes.
It’s a little strange, I suppose, but I’m not really feeling anything other than endeared.
I’d hate if Fat Frank disappeared and broke her heart.
I’d probably have to launch some Liam Neeson-style investigation to get him back.
I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill whoever stole you, Fat Frank.
Bryan Mills is practically a Station 18 mascot, though, so my subconscious may be prone to taking the unexpected sale of a goldfish a little too far.
“I guess I better go get an employee to help us get him out, huh?”
“Please. I can’t leave him again.”
Goddamn, she’s cute.
I smile. “No problem at all. I’ll leave his haul here with you and be back in just a minute.”
She nods, curving the corner of her mouth upward while turning back to the tank and putting her hand to the glass.
Fat Frank swims over immediately. His companion doesn’t even flinch.
Hmm. Maybe they do have a soul connection?
As I stand there staring at Lauren’s back, feeling a pang of unexpected anxiety that if I don’t seal the deal soon, someone just might snatch her up the way another customer could have snatched up Frank, I have to wonder if there might just be some type of cosmic connection going on tonight between Lauren Carroll and someone other than a fish.
Lauren turns the key in the lock of her front door and pushes inside. I juggle Frank in his big bag of water in one hand and the bags that contain the makings of his “crib” and his tank in the other.
She moves quickly to step aside, reaching for Frank so I can carry the rest of it in a way that’s a little more secure and less likely to end in disaster.
I make my way through the little entry hallway, straight into the living room, and set the boxed tank down on top of the coffee table.
With my arms finally free, my eyes come back to full function.
You wouldn’t think one should affect the other—but it did.
“So, this is your place.”
She freezes as I turn around in a circle to take in the living room and kitchen that are open to each other and peek down the hallway that leads toward the back of the first floor.
“It’s nice.”
Her face suggests her body is only a scant moment from rocketing toward the moon, just to get away from the embarrassment. “Okay, so how did I miss the fact that I was bringing you into my apartment for the first time?”
“Something to do with the conversation you were having with Fat Frank, I presume.”
“Oh my God. You think I’m crazy. You think I’m crazy, and I might be, and now I’m nervous that you’re in my apartment.”
I laugh. “Relax. I don’t think you’re crazy. And your apartment is nice. Clean. Almost freakishly clean.”
She blushes a little. “I keep a pretty regular cleaning schedule. Break it up throughout the week. It makes it easy.”
“You’re a neat freak, aren’t you?”
“Maybe…” She holds her index finger and thumb closely together. “A little bit.”
“Is it going to scare you if you come into my house and there are things in places?”
“Things in places?” She pretends to consider it for a minute. “Nope, usually doesn’t scare me.”
“You know what I mean. I have two kids. And a busy schedule. Things aren’t always…tidy.”
“I deal with blood and urine and all manner of bodily fluids for a living. Pretty sure I can manage a little mess.”
We look at each other for a couple seconds, the silence nearly as loud as the bass from her neighbors’ episode of Real Housewives playing from the apartment next door.
