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“I haven’t seen—” I started as I opened the door, only to find Holden standing in the hall outside my door with a large brown bag in one hand. The other hand was tucked carefully into the pocket of extremely fitted dark grey dress pants. Good gravy those thighs.
“...Mr. Tibbs.” I finished the sentence as one of Holden’s eyebrows winged upward in question. We stared at each other for a solid thirty seconds in surprised silence.
“I brought dinner,” Holden finally said, breaking the unintentional standoff. He lifted the brown bag. “I hope that’s okay. I was a little concerned about the ‘living in the back of the fridge’ comment.”
“How did you know where I lived?” I asked. Then I remembered my manners, and opened the door wider to let him in. “Sorry, I’m just surprised, come in.”
“Thanks,” he said, walking past me into the apartment, trailing the smell of garlic and butter in his wake. “Your dad gave me your address a while back.”
He moved to place the bag on the counter, right next to my wine and cheese, then stopped mid-motion. I dove to the other side of the counter, hoping that whatever was distracting him might by some miracle keep him from noticing my pajamas.
“I’m just going to go put something...else on,” I stammered, then made a beeline down the hall. Shutting my door louder than I had intended, I hustled to my dresser and pulled out a bralette and casual romper. Throwing them both on in record time, I emerged from my room to find Holden standing in front of the piglets’ cage.
“It’s not a guinea pig hoarding situation,” I rushed to explain, coming to stand beside him.
“The current evidence would suggest otherwise.”
“Save your lawyer speak for the courtroom, counselor. I started out with a very respectable two guinea pigs.”
“But...” Holden prompted, turning his body slightly to face me.
“Well, it all started with Philomena. This is my first apartment, and I really wanted a pet. But I was too busy with work at the time for a dog or cat, and this apartment building doesn’t allow cats or dogs anyway. So, I settled on a guinea pig after clearing it with the property management company. When I got to the pet store, they only had two guinea pigs left in the enclosure. What was I supposed to do? Separate them and leave one all alone? The associate assured me they were both males, so it would be fine to keep them in a cage together. That’s how I ended up with Phil and Douglas. Except one day I woke up to babies in their cage. It turns out that Phil was a Philomena,” I explained, pointing out Douglas and Philomena for him. They were both in the midst of their post-dinner nap.
“Everything seemed fine,” I continued, “but one day, I came home from work and found just one little baby — which is how I learned that guinea pigs sometimes eat their babies. After Philomena and/or Douglas ate their babies, I decided it would be best if I separated the two murderous lovebirds. Jin, one of my coworkers, made this amazing enclosure for them with his 3D printer. See all those little holes in the connecting wall? They’re sliding doors so they can have supervised visitation. But Douglas just spent all day staring at Philly and looking so lonely. He was getting depressed. And I know what you’re thinking —”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
I shot him some serious side eye.
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, you’re probably thinking he was just horny, but you didn’t see how sad his beady little eyes looked. So I went back to the pet store to get him a friend.”
“To the same pet store that misgendered the original rodents.”
I huffed indignantly. “No, of course not, and don’t call them rodents. It’s derogatory, and they find it offensive. The thing is — and I mean, when you think about it, the coincidence is too much to ignore — there were only two guinea pigs left at this store too.” Holden mumbled what sounded like “Jesus Christ” under his breath. “So if I had just gotten Rascal, his cellmate would have been left all alone. They were all cuddled up together sleeping under their plastic log, and I just couldn’t do it. That’s how I ended up with Scooter.”
“I assume the other one in the cage with Philomena is the one offspring who wasn’t eaten?”
I nodded. “Correct. The vet confirmed that Viola is a girl, so she stays with Philly. They get along really well. And that’s how I ended up with five guinea pigs. It was all just an accident.”
“It’s a health code violation is what it is.”
“They’re very clean animals! And it’s not like I let them just run around the apartment.” I walked the short distance to the kitchen. The smell of garlic was overwhelming my nervousness at Holden’s presence in my apartment. “This smells really great.”
Holden managed to tear himself away from the squeak squad and joined me in the kitchen, carefully unloading cartons from the bag.
“I hope you like Italian. I thought it would be the least controversial option.”
“Definitely the Switzerland of foods,” I agreed, eyeballing a bag of buttery breadsticks and hoping I wasn’t drooling. It was at this very moment that I learned I could be bought with a bag of warm breadsticks. I made a mental note to ask Max if I should add that factoid to my dating profiles. Yes, plural, because statistics. “I was just going to have some wine and cheese, but this is better. Would you like a glass of wine?”
Holden looked up from the bag, one corner of his mouth doing an imitation of a smile.
“Wine sounds good, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. This is a bottle of Publix’s finest, straight from the discount aisle. It tastes a little bit like if gasoline and dandelions had a baby, but it gets the job done. It pairs nicely with random refrigerator cheese.”
His baby grin morphed into a smile. I mentally catalogued all of our interactions while he unpacked cartons from the bag and came to the realization that I had never seen him smile before. Until right now, I hadn’t even caught the faintest hint of a grin curling those lips, the bottom of which was just a bit plumper than the top.Stop staring at his mouth, Sutton.
“Did you have a late day too?” I asked, trying to distract myself from that surprisingly kissable, grumpy mouth. “At work, I mean.”
