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I didn’t.
She was right.
But I was happy that her first inclination was to answer and not evade.
I clenched my hands into tight fists, but otherwise showed no signs outwardly that I was upset at the thought of her sleeping out of her van.
“Promise me that you will not take a shower out here all alone,” I said through clenched teeth. “You will come to my place, or go to Diana’s place, to shower.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to Diana’s place. I don’t want her to know that I’m living out of my van for now. She’ll freak out, and insist that I stay with her. But I won’t be able to. I’m sorry, but I can’t. Then she’ll get mad at me, and that’s not the way to start our new practice together.”
“Why can’t you live with her?” I asked.
I knew why Bain wouldn’t want her living with them. They were too fuckin’ crazy for each other to have anyone else living with them right now, cramping their style. But I had a feeling that wasn’t where Matilda’s mind had gone.
How I knew where her mind had gone, in any direction at that, was beyond me. I was just able to read her well at this point, and her thinking about cramping Bain and Diana’s style wasn’t what I read on her face.
“If I tell you, you’re just going to think I’m crazy. And I’m not.” She shrugged.
I gestured toward her camp chair that she had set up near the camp stove that she was cooking baked beans and weenies on.
I eyed the food.
It looked good. Even if it was sort of childish for an adult to eat.
My belly growled its frustration.
I’d intended to go home and eat, yet all I’d done was work.
Now my stomach was reminding me that I was regretting my choices now.
“Come on,” I pushed. “Just tell me. I don’t think you’re weird or crazy.”
She snorted. Then sighed after I gave her a long, blank stare.
One that clearly said that I wouldn’t judge her.
“Fine,” she grumbled. “Okay, well I don’t really like to live with animals.”
I blinked.
Then blinked some more.
“What?” I asked.
Surely I hadn’t heard her correctly.
She was opening a vet clinic for Christ’s sake. She couldn’t live with an animal?
“The hair… I’m slightly allergic,” she admitted. “I love animals… my body just doesn’t love them. If I stay around them too long in a confined space… my skin breaks out and I start to sneeze.”
That wasn’t ‘slightly allergic.’ That sounded full-blown allergic to me.
“That’s not slightly allergic,” I mirrored my thoughts.
“It is what it is,” she grumbled. “Anyway, I can’t live anywhere where there are animals that have hair. Or stay. And I can’t tell her that I’m allergic, because then she’ll be looking at me like you are right now, and that’ll bother me coming from her.”
“What?” I asked in confusion. “Why?”
“Because Diana is literally the only person in my life that doesn’t look at me like I’m a freak, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Why did her words feel like she’d just stuck a sharp instrument straight through my heart?
I sighed and pulled up a seat.
Well, a stack of lumber, anyway.
Once I was seated, I said, “Do you have extra of that food? Or are you gonna be stingy?”
“That is the extra,” she said. “I already ate.”
She held up a small bowl, then handed it to me when I reached for it.
I looked at it, then at her. “This is the size of a child’s bowl.”
She shrugged. “It’s easier to conceal a small bowl going into the gas station bathroom than a large one.”
I reached forward and used the small spoon to get a heaping bowlful, then set it down by my side and waited for it to cool.
“I’ll buy you a few more cans tomorrow.” I indicated the bowl. “I’ll be finishing it. Sorry.”
She offered me a grimace.
I leaned forward, elbows to my knees, and said, “Then you’ll come to my place to get showered. And you can use my spare bedroom if you want it. You have about eight more weeks before this is ready,” I indicated with my hand at the building behind me. “And that’s on the conservative side.”
She eyed me then, for so long that I decided to eat my beans instead of breaking her silence.
“I couldn’t live with you,” she finally said. “I imagine that I’d be seeing Ellen more and more, and I can’t handle her when she’s here. Let alone for any more time than I have to. Plus, don’t you think that your girlfriend would hate me being there?”
I blinked owlishly at her.
Then burst out laughing. “Honey, Ellen and I aren’t a thing. She’s a pain in my ass, and my employee, but we’re definitely not a thing. And she’s never been to my house. She works out of her home.”
