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I press a hand to my chest under the covers, pretty sure I can feel the shriveling getting worse with every passing second.
But then a soft whump sounds from the end of the bed. I feel the covers sink by my feet and open my eyes to see eyes shining in the darkness.
“Clyde?” I murmur. “Are you okay?”
Clyde answers with a meow-belch that makes me smile as he curls up on top of the comforter beside my hip. My smile widens as I whisper, “Yeah, you can sleep with me. Sweet dreams, buddy.”
Maybe growing old as a single human won’t be so bad, after all. Now that I’ve conquered my fear of cats—or at least of Clyde, who is surely representative of many cats who share his sweet temperament—I can become an eccentric cat lady. I’ll live alone with my cats in a tower in the woods and throw radishes out the window at any man who dares step foot on my property.
Why radishes?
It just feels like the right thing to throw at unwanted suitors, and I’m not about to cry about skipping radish in my salad. Radishes are very aggressive on the palate, and that’s the last thing you want when you’re trying not to think about kissing or other fun, sexy things you can do with your tongue.
I fall asleep, hoping for dreams of my charming, witchy tower.
Instead, I dream of Matty’s treehouse.
Specifically, of me naked in Matty’s treehouse…
And Matty doing wicked things to me with his tongue between my thighs while he tells me how much he wants to fuck me. I reach for him, pressing his talented mouth tighter to where I ache as I get closer, closer…
So very close…
“Nora!”
I wake with a gasp and a hand pressed to my heart. “I’m awake. I’m awake, Gram, I won’t miss the bus, I promise.” I blink, pulling the man standing in the doorway into focus.
Damn, Matty looks even better with dark scruff shadowing his jaw.
“Hey. Hi,” I mumble, pushing my hair from my face. “Sorry, did I sleep through my alarm?”
“No,” he says, watching me with concern. “You just sounded like you were having a nightmare. There was a lot of moaning.”
Moaning? Oh, God…
“Yeah, nightmare.” I nod so hard it summons a disgruntled meow from Clyde, who moved up to sleep on the pillow next to my head at some point during the night. “Really bad. There were so many…zombies.”
“Zombies?” His brows lift.
“Yeah. And I was a zombie, too, and I couldn’t stop moaning for brains. It was pretty wild.” I sit up, forcing a bright smile. “But I’m awake now. All’s well that ends well. How about you? How did you sleep?”
“Pretty good. I thought Clyde was going to keep me awake fighting with my socks for a while, but then he decided to find a prettier sleeping partner.” He motions toward the entrance to the bathroom. “I was going to jump in the shower. Do you need the bathroom first?”
I shake my head. “No, I’m good, thanks.”
As soon as he steps into the bathroom, and I hear the water start to spray, I turn to Clyde, drawing his drowsy body onto my lap. “I’m not good,” I whisper as I stroke his rounded belly and his first belch of the morning turns into a purr. “I need a muzzle or something. Or a sound machine.” Making a mental note to ask the front desk if they have white noise machines—the better to sleep tonight without worrying about Matty overhearing my sexy dream sounds—I carry Clyde into the front room and fetch some of the white rice and cat food mixture we brought along from the treehouse from the fridge.
I put it into a small dish, refresh his water, and start a pot of coffee, reading up on the morning retreat activities as I wait for it to brew.
First up, is a breakfast buffet and keynote speaker, featuring a psychiatrist talking about internal family systems that actually sounds kind of cool. Then, the love languages test and discussion are next, before we split into small groups to “accept our mutual marital trauma.”
I’m seriously rethinking our backstory—do I really want to act like I find my husband sexually repulsive in front of a bunch of strangers?—when I get a text.
Glancing down at the counter, I unlock my cell to see a string of messages popping through from my brother, who is never awake before eight a.m. unless it has something to do with hockey.
But he’s not worried about hockey today.
Today, he’s worried about me.
