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“Yeah.” I get to my feet and abandon the idea of the rich asshole’s parking situation. “I need a new shirt.”
18
LILY
Jameson isn’t a veterinarian, but he knows one that’s open after-hours that can take the cat to be buried.
I’m not surprised.
Not after Snowball, and not after watching him run into moving traffic to make sure a cat he’s never seen before wasn’t alone in its last moments.
I’m notsurprised,but I am slightly shaken.
Because the things hesaidto the cat seemed—
They seemed real. And I’ve never heard him talk about an afterlife like that. He seems to think of God as an uncaring, almost malicious deity, so his sudden certainty about a path made of stones leading to a place he could describe in some detail with apersonwaiting for a cat…
I don’t think it’s weird, though it is objectively weird in the context of all the conversations we’ve had before.
I can’t actually name the feeling I have.
It’s sort of warm and awestricken and lucky.
It’s…like I’m in love with him.
Like, for real.
After he’s handed over the bundle wrapped in his shirt so carefully he almost seems reluctant to let it go, he drives back to his brother’s parking garage.
We park.
“I don’t want to go in yet,” he says. “Walk to the park with me?”
It’s a warm night, and Central Park is just across the street. Jameson waits for the walk signal and holds my arm as we go across. I play the situation cool until he turns onto the deserted running path.
I don’t know what we should talk about, but the farther we walk, the less I can keep it in.
“Are you Jesus?”
Jameson barks a laugh. “What?”
“You ran into traffic to—to take care of that cat. I know you’re the kind of person who would do that, generally, but seeing it in person is something else.”
He gives me a lopsided smile. One of the lamps along the path shines light down in his hair, and I can’t help but think it looks like a halo.
“Is this because I’m a vegetarian?”
“I didn’tknowyou were a vegetarian.” I flip through all my memories of Jameson eating. There are lots of them for how little time we’ve known each other. Jameson eating oatmeal in his cabin. Jameson eating pancakes at Mason’s penthouse. Jameson eating pudding on the couch in front of an episode of Downton Abbey.
“It means I don’t eat meat.”
“I know what it means. I just—I didn’t think about it. I didn’t notice.”
“You were too distracted by my hotness.”
“Yes.” A night breeze skims across the back of my neck. “No. Yeah? Obviously, your…physical attractiveness is hard to ignore, but…” He bumps my elbow with his. “Fine.Fine. I was distracted by how hot you are. And by being kidnapped. And it’s not like you took out a billboard.”
“I should take out a billboard.” Jameson sticks his hands in his pockets. “Just me, smiling with a big thumbs-up.Jameson Hill is a vegetarian. He might be Jesus.”
