Page 55 of Accidentally Amy

“Is that right?” Someone on the TV was crying becausetheir pork belly was too dry, and Hole was weaving in between my feet, but all I could do was stare down at her smiling face.

Dear God, she was so fucking pretty.

It wasn’t about her looks, though, as asinine as that sounded. She was pretty because she was alive and chaotic and funny and smart. Her eyes fucking sparkled and her nose crinkled and her mouth slid into smiles as if that were its default.

I looked at her lips and remembered what it felt like to kiss her. How it felt to have her sigh into my mouth and hold on to me as if she, too, was fighting the battle of endless imaginings.

“When do you medicate the fluffy guy?” she asked, her voice breathy as her eyes traveled all over my face.

“Whenever I want,” I replied, telling myself to move back while leaning a bit closer and resting one palm on each side of her on the butcher-block counter.

“Do you think he’ll take it from me?” she asked, her voice even quieter.

“Fuck, yes,” I said, hypnotized by her mouth and her words and the way her eyes kept fluttering down.

“Good,” she said in a near whisper, and I could almost feel the softness of her breath against my lips.

“So, um,” she said, blinking fast before breaking eye contact to look up at the TV. “Shit.Um. Where do you keep the applesauce?”

Applesauce. Applesauce. What is applesauce again?I straightened, took a full step back, and felt like I was waking up from a dream.

“Applesauce,” I repeated, my brain scrambling to catch up. “Is in the fridge.”

What the hell had just happened? When had I dropped my slice of pizza on the fucking countertop?

I went over to the fridge, opened the door, and got out the jar of applesauce and Goodyear’s meds. Without looking back at her, I grabbed a plastic spoon and yogurt container from the drawer and went to find the cat.

“He’s in here,” I said, finding Goodyear on my chair. I took a deep breath.Nothing happened. Izzy probably didn’t even notice that you were a millisecond from kissing her.

I heard her feet as she jumped down from the island, and she looked totally normal and not freaked out as she came out of the kitchen and walked toward me. Yes, her cheeks were pink, but it was warm in there.

Really fucking hot, actually.

“Okay, show me how you slip the cat a mickey.” She shifted her weight to one leg and crossed her arms.

“Okay.” I showed her how to smash a pill in the bottom of the yogurt container and stir in applesauce.

When I picked up Goodyear and sat down on the chair, Izzy said, “Wait—you do this on an off-white chair?” She looked horrified. “What if you spill?”

“I don’t,” I said, wanting to laugh as she continued to look aghast.

“Note to Iz—sit on floor when you do this,” she muttered. “Continue, please.”

“Thank you.” I scooped up the medicated applesauce and held out the spoon, to which Goodyear immediately lifted his fuzzy little face and started taking it down. The guy had a thing for applesauce.

“Hereallylikes applesauce,” she said, dropping to a squat beside me and watching Goodyear go HAM on the spoon. She reached out a hand and petted his head, which made the cat give her a closed-mouth growl while he eyeballed her but kept licking.

Ididlaugh at that, and she looked up at me, grinning and crinkling her nose.

Shit.Suddenly I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

And when she took the spoon from me to try feeding him, I realized I’d made a terrible mistake.

A gross miscalculation.

Because having her in my house, surrounded by my things and sleeping in my bed and leaving her what-the-hell-is-that-amazing-fucking-smell smell all over the place—well, that had the potential to change everything, regardless of whether or not anything physical happened between us.

And there was a tiny part of me that didn’t hate the idea of that change.

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