Page 84 of The Auction
“Of course she hates it,” I admonished him. “She’s a cat. But she needs it.”
I dunked her a few more times, right up to her neck line. Then with my nail I gently picked away the few fleas that had scampered up her cheeks and near her eyes. Luckily, beyond the dirt and lack of nourishment, there didn’t appear to be any other injuries. No eye infections, no cuts where some other animal or bird might have tried to eat her.
I could see now her fur wasn’t just gray from dirt. Clean, she looked like a gray and white tuxedo with a white patch around her left eye.
“Okay, I’m going to pull her out. Pull the pot and dump it.”
The second her little legs cleared the pot of water, Creed took it out. Then I turned on the faucet, testing the water temp first with my arm, and rinsed her thoroughly, as she howled all the while.
No hissing though, so she didn’t perceive me as a threat.
Creed came back with a hand towel draped over his arms and I dropped her into the center of it, pulling up the sides around her, carefully patting the water away from her fur. I didn’t want to pull it, in case there were any more tangles I couldn’t see.
When I could see the fur start to dry, I got out another towel and wrapped her up so she was fully covered.
“I’ll hold her,” Creed said, when I attempted to take her from his arms. “More body heat.”
“Of course. Very scientific.”
He carried his bundle back into the living room and stretched out on the couch with AP planted again in that divot where his elbow bent.
I was pretty sure my uterus contracted around my unborn child in that moment. Which of course, was impossible on two fronts. One, we hadn’t actually had sex yet, and two, the IUD. I had this thought to tell him now, about the contraceptive device, but he’d probably wonder why I was bringing it up.
Then again, if he was thinking about having sex with me, I didn’t know if he planned to wear a condom or not.
There were other reasons for condoms besides pregnancy, after all.
“If we do have sex, are you going to wear a condom?”
It was a question that might have been as out of the blue as asking him if he wanted to make out.
His head jerked in my direction. Then, as if he was nervous he’d disturbed the bundle by his sudden motion, he secured the blanket around AP’s body and confirmed she was breathing.
“You want me to?”
“You need to because of all the sex you had before me,” I told him.
He huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, I’m probably not the player you think I am. But, Jules, I had all my tests done before we got married. I wasn’t bringing a fucking STD to our marriage. I’m clean.”
I crossed my feet under my legs and thought about how that was further confirmation on his part nothing had happened with Angie. Not that I thought he’d lied, he wasn’t a liar unless he was lying to my dad. But also, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. If he had fucked around with Angie he would have gotten tested again.
“Cool.”
Tell him. You can trust him with this.
“Uh…you should probably know something. About me. Something I didn’t tell you before because…I didn’t.”
“Shit,” he scowled. “I just got done being mad at you, are you about to piss me off again?”
“Probably. You should become accustomed to me disappointing you. I always failed Herb in that way.”
“Tell me.”
My heart started to beat against my chest.
What if he asks me to take it out? What if he got mad I did it in the first place?
Years of Herb’s teaching of what constituted sin filled me with what I imagined was shame. I’d always thought my intellect had overridden all his bullshit teachings, but it was hard when it was in your face every day.
