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I frown up at the store as he and I walk under its awning along Hawthorne on the first sunny day in weeks. My phone buzzes with another text from my sister. We keep missing each other, but her message basically says it all.
EDIE: I’m sorry about Liza. She means well. You’re my maid of honor, she’s just… local :)
ME: And power hungry
EDIE: She won’t be a problem again.
“You could always be my personal assistant,” Zeke says, unhelpfully, as he polishes off the last Nutella-and-salted-honey-covered mini doughnut. I sip my pour over and dodge a man wearing a cat mask on a unicycle. God, I love Portland.
“And what exactly would I be assisting you with?” I ask.
He shrugs and tucks the tray into a garbage can as we approach an intersection.
“I imagine the things that I need assisting with.Personally.”
“I’m not taking care of your pig.”
“He basically takes care of himself,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. It makes his biceps flex and I look away, waiting for that damn man to switch to the hand so I can walk already.
“So, what does this nonexistent job pay?”
“I don’t know. I do know I can’t afford benefits. But at least you know that going in.”
“Lovely,” I say as we walk with the man across the street.
“What do you want to do?” he asks, slowing down to peer into a bike shop.
“Not be homeless.”
“High aspirations. I can see how you landed where you have.”
“Not all of us can be professional hockey players.”
“Right,” he says, wiping his hand over his mouth. His jaw tics and I see I’ve hit a nerve.
“How is Freddy?” I ask. The last time I’d talked to him, he had started physical therapy. But that was earlier this week.
“Fine, last I heard,” he says, avoiding my gaze as he stuffs his hands in his pockets. “He’s using a cane. He’s really embracing it. Even if it makes him look really old and pathetic.”
“That’s… weird—” But I stop talking when a sign ahead catches my eye. I snort-laugh at the pink sandwich board featuring a picture of a cat next to a crochet needle and two balls of yarn.
“What in the name of Punxsutawney Phil?” Zeke says, approaching the sign. We stop in front of the store and look in.
“The Knitty Kitty?” I read the gold and pink sign in the window. It appears to be a yarn shop, and a new one at that. But the signage is straight-up phallic.
“You think it’s a sex toy shop?” Zeke asks.
I’m not sure what sends the flutter between my legs: hearing his gravelly voice saysex toy, or his unabashed excitement.
“If so, they missed a real opportunity there. You know,Knotty Kitty. Get it? Knotty? Naughty?”
Before I can respond, Zeke’s pushing through the door. I follow him in and immediately sneeze. The shop is cozy, its walls lined with cubbies full of skeins in every color. But nothing is organized—not by color, texture, or any other discernible schematic. My right eye tics as I examine a cubby with yarns made of Angora, rayon, and wool, in a haphazard mix of warms, cools, and neutrals. I grab the skeins of red yarn, freeing them of their cool neutral prison.
“Hallo,” a strong, crisp voice calls from the back corner where a tall woman stands.
And when I say tall, I mean she’s taller than Zeke. She has white-blonde hair cut short, wide, glacial blue eyes that have an unusual tilt to them, and a delicate jaw.
“Hello there,” Zeke says, nudging me toward her with his hand on the small of my back. “We were just walking past and hadn’t noticed your shop before.”
