Page 5 of Hold Him Like Gravity

I’d learned at that same pet store that I really wasn’t supposed to give cats milk. But Evander really didn’t give a single shit what the lady at the pet store had to say about his unhealthy milk habit. So, yeah, he got his damn milk each night.

“What should I have?” I asked as I pulled open my mostly-empty fridge. “I only have enough cheese slices for one sandwich,” I told him, as if he gave a damn about what I ate. He’d probably be totally fine with me starving to death then feasting on me afterward. Cats were heartless little assholes that way. I liked that about them.

With a sigh, I went into the freezer to pull out one of those frozen single serving pizzas, tossing it into the microwave. Nope, not even a toaster oven. I had a gummy crust ahead of me. Real fine dining over in my dingy little apartment.

What can I say?

I’d left the Bronx with almost no money in my pocket and only the shit I could grab in a mad rush to get the fuck out of there.

Starting over never got easy.

It was harder when you left two-thirds of everything you owned behind.

I’d been lucky to nab the job at the meat shop. Honestly, I’d walked in to get an application out of sheer desperation, not thinking they’d actually hire me since everyone who worked there was a guy.

But, thank God, the manager had taken pity on me and given me a job. Despite my not being able to tell you the difference between a cheap skirt steak and a hundred-dollar tenderloin.

It was even good pay. And benefits. So, hey, I was doing alright, considering having to cut and run with no planning or a nest egg to make the transition easier.

My first month working at Lombardi Premium Meats, I’d managed to get myself enough clothes to last a week without washing, some basic self-care items, towels, pillows, a coffee maker, that kind of thing.

The second month, I got to move out of a short-term rental and into an actual apartment.

Which was where Evander found me. On my second night. Waking me out of a restless sleep, heart hammering, no freaking idea what could be making a noise like that.

Having no cat food that night, he ate my last can of tuna, drank my coffee creamer, and took a nap right on my pillow.

Since then, I’d been… working on building my life back up. The microwave was a splurge. A toaster oven was a stupid luxury when I had a full-sized one. I was just too impatient to wait for it to warm up.

I didn’t usually work such long shifts.

But the store was about to be closed for a week for those renovations. That meant I would be getting paid, sure, but not getting any tips for that time. So I wanted to get as much extra as I could and offered to help with the deep cleaning.

I honestly didn’t remember the last time I had a week off from work, save for when I’d been job hunting after leaving the Bronx in the dead of night. I’d been busting my ass since I was fifteen.

What the hell was I supposed to do with my time?

Watch TV?

I had exactly one streaming service and I was pretty sure I’d watched just about everything on it that didn’t require subtitles. And I just wasn’t interested in reading and watching at the same time.

Maybe I could do some cheap sprucing up around the apartment. I wasn’t exactly a craft chick. But poverty could make you pick up all sorts of new talents when you set your mind to it.

You could learn to do anything on YouTube these days.

Or I could actually get to know more about Brooklyn, my new home.

I’d moved because it was as far from the Bronx as I could get while still having somewhat reasonable rent prices. But I hadn’t really known shit about the area. To be real, I still didn’t. I knew the route to work and home, then to the laundromat, pet store, and market.

That was about it.

I didn’t have the money to be going any other places, but I could at least learn where things were for the day when things loosened up a bit.

I was getting there. Another few months and I would even be having some of my paycheck left at the end of the month.

So long as Evander didn’t go out spreading his seed and bringing a baby mama and kittens over to mooch off of me too.

“You hear that, buddy?” I asked as I slipped the soft pizza onto one of those cheap melamine plates I’d picked up for like fifty cents on summer clearance. “No babies. Actually, can you make babies?” I asked, never having really looked at his whole… situation. Actually, I didn’t know for a fact if he was a dude or not.

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