AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This amuses him. “No?”
It’s a bit obnoxious the way he asks. As if I’m just so fucking wrong, he finds it adorable. “No,” I say primly.
“Who knows where you are right now?”
My chin rises, but only because he knows the answer to that as well as I do.
No one knows where I am right now.
Not a single soul.
Even my digital footprints would never lead here because my cell phone is back at Kyle’s, and the only person who saw me get into this stranger’s car was his friend.
I know without needing to be told that he wouldn’t tell anyone.
Yet again, he doesn’t seem to need me to acknowledge his upper hand. Rather than acknowledge it at all, he asks, “What’s her name?”
“What? Who?”
“Your cat. I want to know what you named your cat.”
The way he says it feels… odd. Intimate.
Not I want to know your cat’s name.
I want to know what you named your cat.
My breath feels sticky inside my lungs. It won’t come out properly.
I almost lose the thread again, but I force myself to focus. “Toast.”
He blinks, then smiles. “You named your cat Toast.”
“Well, technically, it was already her name, I just let her keep it. She was one of a litter of kittens that got dropped off at a shelter. They all had breakfast names. Bacon, Pancake, Blueberry Muffin. Her name was Toast, and she was there the longest. All the other kittens in her litter got homes, but she didn’t, and… you know how shelters make posts on social media telling people things like that so some soft-hearted sucker will immediately make an appointment and hopefully adopt them?”
Smiling faintly, he nods.
I shrug. “That’s what happened.”
Still amused, he says, “So you’re a soft-hearted sucker?”
“Sometimes.”
“Most people wouldn’t admit a thing like that.”
“I’m not embarrassed about it.”
“Why not?”
“I think the alternative’s a lot worse.”
“The alternative being…?”
I think for a second, then shrug. “Being the kind of person who just… wouldn’t care.”
He cocks his head slightly, as if relating more to the other side. “Not caring’s a lot easier.”
“Well, I’m not lazy,” I quip.
