Page 87 of Hate Me Like You Mean It

Gampy said nothing, gaping at Dom’s back like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. I’d stopped breathing altogether.

“Miss you, buddy. Be a good boy.”

I frowned at that. I didn’t think I’d ever heard him say it before.

“Love you, Fruitloop.I’ll miss you, buddy. Be a good boy.” Maxwell leaned further forward and gave a questioning little hop. When that didn’t work, the poor thing made a small, heartbroken noise. It was tipped with a question mark, so confused and unsure, it made my throat feel altogether too tight.

Dominic lasted another five seconds before he cursed, shut his eyes, and slowly turned around. “Come here, Maxi.”

Maxwell took off immediately, while Gampy continued to gawk at Dom like he was an apparition he couldn’t make sense of.

After a long stretch of stunned silence, Dom finally braved a glance away from the bird. “Robert.”

Gampy took one unsteady step forward. Then another. I really thought he was going to cry and throw his arms around Dom; everything about his body language implied that was the intent.

He even raised his arms a few inches… only to then grip his cane with both hands, roll his lips back in a mustached snarl, and whack Dom in the shin.

“ROBERT?ROBERT?! THAT’S ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY TO ME AFTER EIGHT YEARS OF IGNORING MY CALLS, YOU ROTTEN, UNGRATEFUL LITTLE SCAB?”Whack.

Dominic didn’t put up a fight. He simply attempted to block each blow as he was backed up into a corner while Gampy yelled and whacked.

And yelled and whacked.

And yelled. And whacked.

Until Maxwell—who’d misinterpreted Dominic’s jerky blocking movements as indicators for playtime—got so riled up while flying and bouncing around all the chaos that he pooped on Dom’s head out of sheer excitement.

It slid down to his temple, his cheek, making Gampy finally stop and point at it with winded satisfaction. “And that, you little shit, is what they call karma.”

28

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Gampy caught me trying to train Maxwell to poop in Alice’s cereal and now I’m grounded til I’m eighty two.

Gampy was huffingas he paced back and forth in front of the couch Dominic and I had been assigned for our time-out. We weren’t allowed to talk, move, or breathe in any manner deemed “audible” by his supersonic hearing aids until he calmed down.

It was going to be a while.

Meanwhile, Maxwell was having the time of his life. He was perched on Dom’s shoulder and busying himself with grooming my hair. We’d originally sat on opposite ends of the couch, but the sheer volume of the complaining squawks we’d received had corrected that decision very quickly.

I was practically pressed right up to Dom, my head leaning lightly against his shoulder per Maxwell’s strict and extremely specific direction. And every time I tried to stealthily put enough distance between us so that at least we weren’t touching, Maxwell reached over, grabbed my ear with his beak, and tugged me right back.

But other than the swarm of fireflies nipping at every point of contact, it wasn’t so bad. Dom was warm and comfortable enough that, eventually, my eyelids grew droopy. I jolted when Gampy tapped the hardwood with his cane.

Dominic made the mistake of trying to turn this into an opportunity to explain himself. “Can I just say?—”

“Shut up,” Gampy snarled, his mustache curved into an unhappy frown. “You’ve had plenty of opportunity to say your piece. It’s my turn.” He had to pause again, lips pursed tight. “Eight years, Dominic. Three hundred or so phone calls. A hundred emails. A few dozen letters. And neither you nor your mother could be bothered to respond to a single one.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not entirely sure how much there was left to say, Robert.”

Maxwell slowed his preening. I scratched his chest, hoping to distract him as Gampy pointed a shaky finger at Dom. “You keep digging yourself into this hole, Dominic, and the day you finally realize there’s nothing down there for you, you’ll look up, and there’ll be no one left to help you climb back out.”

Dom’s jaw worked, but he chose to swallow his retort as Gampy gestured between the two of us. “Tell me what’s going on here. With this.”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Dom tried.