Page 54 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

She rolls off of me and the bed and I watch her hips sway as she leaves the room.

I worry about whether or not I can even fall asleep with my worries about the fake name, plus the fact that she hasn’t mentioned it, but I do. I fall asleep so quickly I don’t even remember it happening.

When I wake up, I feel energized in that sort of languid, content way. Chappel Roan is playing on a Bluetooth speaker in the main room—“Kaleidoscope”, specifically—and Lillith is singing along with it. She must really love the song, because she’s really belting it and she’s doing it well. Her voice is angelic, and I find myself annoyed with Chappel for singing so much louder than the woman I’m rapidly falling in love with.

The whole apartment smells like olive oil and garlic and I realize I never got the answer when I’d asked Lillith what we were having for dinner.

I sit in a state somewhere between bliss and torture, because I want nothing more than to sidle up behind Lillith in the kitchen and wrap my arms around her. But I also want nothing more than to listen to her sing her entire playlist, and even though I’ve only known her for about a week, I can tell that she would never sing in front of me on purpose. She’s too modest for that. She’d act all mortified and shrink into herself.

I heave out a soft breath, closing my eyes and taking in every moment of her sweet voice that I can. The metronomic rhythm of the ballad catches me, and I start keeping time with the gentle sway of my foot. I get to lose myself to a few more blissful moments of peace before a weight lands on my leg and some demonic creature sinks their claws and teeth into the meat of my calf.

“OW. FUCK,” I shout before I can stop myself.

There’s a low growl from the void attached to my leg as I sit up, then the clatter of something loud in the kitchen. Lillith comes tearing into the room, turning on the light at the same time that the evil fucking cat starts bunny-kicking my foot and sinking its teeth into my leg again.

“What is going on?!” Lillith shouts.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” I ask as I lean forward to grasp the forepaws of the little fucker and painfully extricate its claws from my leg.

I hold it up and away from me like it’s a frothing changeling, it wiggles in my grasp and lets out a growl. “Lillith, you have a cat?”

“Yeah! She’s sort of indoor-outdoor,” she says, fighting a laugh.

“This is not funny,” I say sternly.

She sputters before outright guffawing. Laughing so hard she starts to genuinely snort.

“I’m so sorry,” she says through tears. “You just—your face—and Gloam looks like a little creature from hell.”

I catch a view of myself in the full-length mirror leant against the far wall. My hair is a nest of chaos. My shirt is askew. And my face is totally put out as this small terror wriggles in my arms. The cat looks like its straight out of one of those TikToks about black cats with orange cat energy.

She’s right. It’s hilarious.

I collect the cat closer to me. I apply enough pressure to stop the violent, demonic flailing, but not so much that it hurts. I press it close to my chest until it eventually calms down. Its pupils are still blown to hell—it probably saw my foot keeping time and went into hunter mode.

It looks at me like it’s just recognized that I’m a human being with feelings. Its ears flicker and its little pink tongue flashes before it swallows nothing.

“Oh my god, she lovess youuuu,” Lillith coos as she scritches the top of her head with a single, pointed nail. “Where have you been, silly little bean?”

There are zero thoughts in its little eyes. It’s completely devoid of neurological activity beyond the instincts it was born with. It starts to purr.

I loosen my grasp, and the cat immediately climbs up my shirt before perching on my shoulder. “You said her name is Gloam?”

Lillith nears and scritches underneath the cat’s chin. “Yep. She’s named after gloaming, that time of day that isn’t quite sundown.”

She dips into the kitchen, and when I follow, I see pasta spilled all over the floor. She steps over it to put a plug in the kitchen sink and start filling up the basin with water.

“Damn,” I say, kneeling to start cleaning up the mess.

She looks back at me and cringes. “I know. I was about to move it to a serving dish so we could eat at the table when the chaos erupted. I thought something horrible happened so I dropped the pasta and ran over. It was tortellini with pesto alfredo sauce.”

I look around the kitchen and spot the remnants of her dinner prep. Including the flour and rolling pin. “Was this... homemade pasta?”

“Unfortunately yes,” she says, squeezing a few drops of dish soap into the running water. “Anyway. How does Chinese delivery sound? Because I won’t be doing that again—at least not tonight. I’m sorry.”

My stomach drops. “Don’t be. I’m sorry I ruined it.” I can’t believe she went through so much effort to make dinner for me. I would have been happy with boxed mac and cheese or Hamburger Helper or something.

“You didn’t. Well, not exactly. Gloam is a little agent of chaos,” she says. It’s remarkable how unbothered she is by this. I’ve known girls who have cried over less. Hell, I would have cried over less.