Page 69 of Kitten

“So, what helps?”

“Nothing. Melatonin, weed, ashwagandha, Ambien, I have tried everything.”

He turned off the heat, poured the contents of the saucepan into a ceramic bowl. A creamy smell filled the room. “Sometimes only a bowl of warm milk helps.” Warm milk! I immediately liked him more.

The bowl looked toylike in Nicolo’s big hands. He’d overfilled it, causing milk to wobble over the rim. I half expected him to set the bowl down and stick his tongue into it, but he brought it to his lips and finished the milk in threebig gulps. I thought of Silver’s delicate lapping. Nicolo’s savage chugging gave me the desire to yank the bowl from his mouth. “You are looking at me weirdly,” he said.

“Am I?”

“Yes. You look like you want to kill me.”

I apologized. Staying up late gave me violent thoughts.

“Maybe drink milk.”

When I didn’t move, he poured a bowl for me. “Honey?” he asked. I nodded.

“You can just drink it normally,” he said when I dipped my tongue in the bowl.

“I’ll drink it how I like,” I said. But I didn’t have a delicate tongue and lapping soon proved inefficient. I drank it normally. When I was done, Nicolo took my bowl and the saucepan and set them down in the sink, then turned on the faucet. The sound of rushing water and the warmth in my belly nearly put me to sleep right there.

Nicolo drizzled soap over the dishes. Clearing his throat, he said, “You know you could just move in, right?”

“What?”

“The living room is big. We can get a divider. And you do not seem to have many possessions.”

“Oh.” It hadn’t occurred to me that we could all live together. “How much would I pay?”

“I don’t know. We can agree on that later. But probably not too much.”

“Lou would never agree to that. The living room’s like her second room.”

“She would complain that I’m still here,” he said. “But she is always complaining.”

“Okay,” I said. I felt a tug of anticipation. “Well, I’ll think about it.”

Nicolo put the dishes on the drying rack, then dabbed his hands on his shirt. As he moved past me and out of the kitchen, I blurted: “Wait.”

“What?”

I hesitated. Why was it so hard to say? “Thank you. It’s a very nice offer.”

He gave me a funny look. “You don’t need to thank me,” he said. “It is the most obvious solution.”

—

I wasn’t lying when Itold Nicolo that I was having trouble sleeping. In my first two weeks here, I wondered if I was simply unused to the weight of Lou’s body next to mine, cold and prone to random spasms like a sea creature caught on land. My insomnia wasn’t so bad back then. I woke every few hours, always after dreaming of Silver. The dreams were so exciting that I wondered if dream Silver was jerking me awake to remind me that she was really dead.

Then it became impossible to fall asleep at all. I usually sank into a watery and terrifying half sleep, the blare of the neighborhood’s sirens mixing with other headless voices: my mother declaring that her clothes had outgrown her, Isabelle singing softly to the gardeners. Sometimes I felt Silver’s downy fur beneath my palm and woke up stroking Lou’s arm.

But Nicolo’s remedy was already proving to be effective. With my legs curled to my chest and my belly swirling withmilk and alcohol, I felt very tired and vulnerable, like an abandoned animal. I texted James.

Thinking of you.

To my surprise, he replied within three seconds.

Thinking of you, too.