Page 44 of Bonus Daddy
“He’s a cat,” Cal said. “It’s what they do.” He said this as if he’d taken care of the cat a single day since he’d brought him home. Lo had asked me to chip in, and I’d been happy to do it, especially since I’d escaped both the plant and fish maintenance.
Cal had gone through several caretaking phases when Murphy first came to live with him. Lo had secretly gone behind him and taken care of his plants and fish to help in order to build up his parenting confidence. Murphy had even gotten in on it. And together he and Lohad stashed a couple of fish in bowls in Murphy’s room so they could replace the dead ones before Cal noticed. Bubbles the Ninth was still doing well so far. According to Madame E, ten was the lucky number, so before long, the charade would end.
After eating his weight in ice cream and ordering a milkshake to wash it down, Cal threw Jess a devious grin. “So, Jess. Now that we have you, I want all the dirt on College Brian. Tell us everything. Has he always been an uptight wanker?”
Sully barked a laugh, the loud sound startling Murphy, then ruffled his nephew’s hair.
I glared at my best friends. Traitors.
“Brian is not uptight,” Jess corrected in her mom voice. “But he was… intense. Focused. Didn’t matter what it was. We’d go to concerts as often as we could. Really, any live music we could find. Brian was always great at making the plans, remembering the tickets, and knowing the T schedule so we could all get home safely. That sort of thing.”
Her smile grew, her dark eyes warm with affection, or so I liked to think.
“And he was super helpful back then too.” She gave me a wink.
My face heated ridiculously.
“He tutored friends who were struggling. And, oh my God.” She put her hand over her mouth and giggled. “My junior year, my friends and I were living in the most horrid off-campus apartment. A basement with bars on the windows, no hot water, and lots of suspicious smells coming from the closets.”
I had an instant flashback to that place and shuddered, already knowing which story she was about to tell.
“We’d come back from a party or concert or something, and I was complaining about how the washing machine was broken and had eaten my quarters. So Brian decided he’d fix it.”
“Was he pissed?” Cal whispered, eyeing the kids to ensure they were distracted by their own conversation.
“Drunk?” Jess asked, brows lifted. “Tipsy, maybe. But my dad had sent me to college with a pink toolbox so I could take care of myself. So Brian got the pink tools, marched in there, and started taking it apart. But…” Her eyes flashed with amusement. “There was one problem. The door to the laundry room was this big steel thing, and it always got stuck, so we all kept it propped open with a large rock.”
“Oh no.” Cal ran his hands through his hair, grinning, not the least bit concerned for College Brian’s well-being.
Jess nodded. “When Brian pulled the washer out of the wall, he quickly discovered why it wasn’t working.”
Both guys were leaning forward on their elbows, their attention darting from Jess to me and back again.
She bit her lip, like that could stop her from smiling. “There was a raccoon back there.”
Cal straightened. “Bollocks.”
I nodded.
“And my sweet Brian, thinking he was saving us from a feral animal, kicked the rock and shut the door to contain it. Except he was still inside, and like it always did, the door stuck, and he couldn’t get out.”
“And that’s how Brian got rabies,” Sully deadpanned.
“Not quite,” Jess said, folding her napkin in half, then quarters. “We panicked. The windows were barred, so we couldn’t get him out that way, and I was convinced he was being mauled by a raccoon inside. One of my roommates called 911, but this was Boston at two a.m. on a Saturday night. They had bigger issues to deal with than rescuing a drunk college kid who was trapped in a laundry room with a raccoon.”
“They showed up eventually,” I chimed in. “And got the door off its hinges.”
“And?” Sully and Cal were still rapt, their blue eyes—Sully’s more gray; Cal’s more ocean-like—bright.
Jess’s smile was blinding now, her cheeks pink. “Brian tamed the raccoon with a protein bar he pulled out of his pocket. And once he was sure it wouldn’t bite him, he fixed the washing machine. Not only that, but he tampered with it so that when you put quarters in, you could start the cycle, but it would spit the money back out to you. We enjoyed free laundry for the rest of the year.”
“No way.”
“There wasn’t a scratch on him,” Jess said proudly. “It was so Brian. He didn’t waste time panicking. Instead, he gave the wild animal a snack and got back to work.”
“Man,” Cal said, shaking his head. “You really were born this way, weren’t you?”
“No wonder Fuzzy chose him,” Sully said with reverence. “He knew he was an animal whisperer.”
