Page 81 of Always Salty

I sent him a text after he’d left that read: coward.

He hadn’t responded, but I hadn’t needed him to.

Instead, I’d called some movers and then pulled Dima’s credit card out of the kitchen drawer and used it to pay for them.

All of my shit would be packed up and moved for me by the end of the week.

All in all, by the time I hit the pet store, I was feeling accomplished.

I left the cats in the car with it running as I headed inside, my gaze instantly finding all the cat toys and collars.

I thought about getting them a collar, but then decided against it since I’d watched a video on social media last week on cats that pretty much pronounced that cats hated to be ‘heard’ when they were going places. And it was annoying to them to have bells and jingling collars around their throats.

Skipping the collars, I headed for the wet food and found a huge box of it on sale for an “Easter special.”

I grabbed one in each hand and headed for the checkout, startling slightly when I saw the same man from the sleep center that’d given me the creeps not too long ago.

I dropped my gaze and kept walking, heading straight for the checkout.

When I got there, I placed both boxes on the counter and called out, “Hello.”

The bored looking teen smiled at me, but didn’t otherwise comment as she checked me out.

I used my phone to pay, then surreptitiously glanced behind me to see if the weirdo from the sleep center was still there.

He was.

Right behind me, looking at the engraving machine.

I got a weird sense of unease and asked, “Hey, do you mind if I leave these boxes here? I want to keep looking.”

The teen nodded and pulled both boxes behind the counter and stacked them on the ground by her feet.

I headed back to the cat aisle and pulled out my phone.

Me:

Hey, where are you?

Dima:

I clicked on it and it pulled up my Find My app on my phone.

It went straight to Dima’s location and I breathed a sigh of relief.

He was close.

Me:

Will you come to the pet store on Newton? I see that you’re about ten minutes away.

Dima:

I’m in a meeting…but yeah. You’re gonna have to tell Shasha why I left, though. He’s glaring hard at me right now.

I grinned and switched text messages to the thread that I’ d been added to just this morning between Maven, Nastya, Dima, Shasha and all of their significant others.

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