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“Your apartment?”
“Yeah.” I shook my head. “Why did you say ‘your apartment’ like it’s infested with bed bugs?”
“No!” she denied vehemently in surprise. “No, it’s nice. It’s just…”
Silence lingered where words should have been.
“It’s…” I prompted. “What?”
Her cheeks puffed out slightly with the sour taste of her thoughts, and I could see her run the scenario of saying it out loud through her head more than once.
“Georgie. It’s what?”
“Normal.”
A laugh slipped out. “Yeah, well. So am I.”
And it wasn’t that normal, I thought a little bitterly. It had a doorman, for fuck’s sake. I was a single guy. What the fuck did I need a penthouse with six bedrooms for?
I didn’t want Georgia to think I needed some big apartment. I wanted her to get it.
“No,” she disagreed. “You’re Kline Brooks.”
I just shook my head, trying to find the right words to describe how much nothing my fucking name meant to me—and how very little it should mean to everyone else.
“Trust me, that name doesn’t mean nearly the same thing to me, my relatives, or any of my friends as it does to other people.”
She untucked her knees from my shirt, stretching her long, tan legs out on the couch toward me and crossing them at the ankles. Unable to resist, I reached down and rested the palm of my hand on her bare shin.
She watched it happen and paused for just a few seconds before looking back up and into my eyes. She forced serenity over her features, but discomfort lived just under the surface. It wasn’t that she didn’t want it; she just felt awkward because it had been unexpected.
“What’s it mean to your family?”
“I don’t know.” I searched my mind for the best way to put it, ignoring her minor discomfort and running a thumb along the skin of her calf casually. “A guy who eats way more pizza than he should and has sweaty feet and a grumpy cat who hates him.”
“Meowwww,” Walter said on cue, hopping up onto the arm of the couch and startling her.
“Oh!”
“Speak of the devil.”
“Hi?” she prompted.
“Walter.”
“Hi, Walter,” she cooed, turning her upper body and rubbing his back from head to tail.
He purred and nudged into her. “Meowwwww.”
“Sure,” I scoffed. “Bond with the pretty girl. How fucking predictable.”
“Was he here last night?” she asked haltingly.
I bit my lips to stave off the urge to go into detail. “Uh…yeah. The two of you had quite the lengthy conversation.” They had. Georgia and Walter had bonded over pepperoni pizza and reruns of Friends. She sang “Smelly Cat” to him no less than fifteen times.
The snooty motherfucker purred for every single one of them.
She nodded as if that made sense. “He seems like the friendly sort.”
I scoffed audibly.
“Maybe that’s your problem,” she suggested simply, scratching behind his ears like they were old lawyer friends there to co-prosecute my trial. “You’re being kind of an asshole to Walter. He responds to kind words and soft touches.”
“Are you kidding me?!” I nearly yelled, pointing to myself and then back at my grumpy old cat wildly. “I’m not the asshole! He’s the asshole! I tried to bring that cat around to me for weeks. I’m just treating him how he treats me now.”
Walter leaned into her as if scared. That fucking cat con-artist!
“Aw, it’s okay, Walter,” Georgie swore sweetly, tucking his kitty face between her hands and rubbing their noses together. “I’ll protect you from the bad, scary man.” Her face turned conspiratorial, an eyebrow arching up menacingly to match the traitor-cat, as she looked me in the eye again. “I know how you feel. He tried to poison me last night!”
“I didn’t poison her,” I told him calmly, going along with this crazy conversation for some reason. “I ordered the same drink I’ve been ordering for ten years, and then I gave her the best kiss of her life.”
Georgie’s playful eyes jumped to mine and turned serious. Panicked even.
“It was not the best kiss of my—”
“Uh-uh-uh.” I tsked with a wave of my finger. “Don’t lie now, Benny. I know it was the best kiss of your life for a fact.”
“And how do you claim to know that?”
“Because last night you told me so yourself.”
She gasped. Walter hissed in camaraderie.
“Right before you kissed me again—”
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment, and everything about her posture said she was two seconds away from sprinting straight out the door.
