Page 37 of A Wolf After My Own Heart
Garsea got up, too, and so did Ox. Garsea’s boyfriend didn’t move.
“Thank you for the profiteroles,” Garsea said with finishing school politeness.
“You’re welcome. Thank you for not beating me to death over a random fox. Next time, call first.”
Chapter 15
Baking soda. Birdseed. Dish soap. Gummy worms. Bird feeder. Half a dozen lip balms. Baking soda? No, she’d already put that in her basket.
So she was finished. List complete, again—just like when she’d gone to the drugstore before the decoy lunch. She hadn’t bought anything, just left. And why not? It’s not like she was enduring a birdseed crisis. Or a chapped lip crisis. She had chapped lips, but it wasn’t acrisis.And did she even need baking soda? Because as a weirdo repellant, it had failed. So maybe she wouldn’t buy anything this time, either. She didn’t have to. No one could force her to buy drugstore items and associated sundries, dammit!
Anyway.
List, complete. Basket, full.
Time to go up to the cashier.
Time to pay for her things and go home. Because she had finished shopping. Her list had nothing but cross-outs. All done. No further need to remain.
So she dropped the ovulation kit (Baby4U!) in her basket and turned and marched up to the clerk and paid for all of it and headed for the parking lot and what was happening to her?
Just…just go home and relax and try to get more than four hours of sleep. Have you considered the idea that a lot of this might be simple fatigue? Or dark sorcery?
“It’snotdark sorcery,” she announced, ignoring the puzzled expressions of her fellow Walgreens shoppers. “I’m pretty sure.”
* * *
The clock struck 1:00 a.m. (not literally; Lila hadn’t unpacked it yet) just as there was a tentative knock on her front door.
Let the wild rumpus start, she thought, and went to the door. As if the person on the other side could hear her approach (unlikely; it was an old house with a thick front door), there was more knocking, followed by a pleasant treble piping up, “Hello? I’m a hapless minor standing on your porch in the middle of the night. Won’t you please take me in? It’s starting to rain.”
It’s barely sprinkling.
“Plus I’m cold and frightened.”
At least one of those is a lie.
“Match? Anyone in there want to buy a match from an orphan? Well, half an orphan? My mom’s still alive. I think.”
He’ll stay out there and stay out there and talk and talk because nobody ever goes away and other people might notice and I shouldn’t let him in but it IS cold and it IS late and I should just go to bed FUCK.
She flipped on the porch light as she opened the door, temporarily blinding whomever-it-was so she had a few seconds to size him up. And there wasn’t much to him: a preteen boy bundled into a bulky navy jacket, jeans, tennis shoes. The porch light illuminated his freckles, the spiky dark blond hair, his tentative smile. But his most striking feature was a pair of bright green eyes, exactly like those of the fox cub she’d picked up earlier.
“I don’t need any matches,” she said.
Grin. Shrug. “Worth a try. C’n I come in anyway?”
She sighed and stood aside. Shoulders hunched, he passed her, then glanced around as she closed and locked the door. He didn’t seem tense or frightened.Shy, she wanted to say, except he’d hammered on her door in the wee hours and had no qualms about walking into a stranger’s house. Embarrassed? No, too strong. Abashed? No, that was a synonym for embarrassed…
“Sorry to wake you,” he mumbled to the floor, reinforcing abashed.
“I was awake. I’m a short sleeper.”
His head jerked up; bright eyes gleamed. “Four hours or less a night, huh? Bet that’s nice.”
She smiled. “You’re the first non-doctor I haven’t had to explain that to.”
“I read a lot of books. Lots,mucho, beaucoup.”
