Page 22 of Love Walked In

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Leo

It was one thing to invite a colleague over for Friday-night dinner, particularly one who was visiting from abroad. That was being warm and welcoming, that was being hospitable.

It was another to invite over the colleague whose raucous laugh I’d found myself listening for over the last week, whose gentle hand on mine in the Ralston Gallery café had made me want to take it and kiss it.

I paced the floor of my bedroom, counting the seconds until Mari arrived, not knowing whether I wanted to stop time or speed it up.

Bex had always said she was never quite sure what I was thinking because of how quick I was to agree with her about everything.

Toward the end, we’d grown so far apart that trying to say something meaningful would have been like trying to shout from miles away.

But now, whenever I saw Mari, I felt like some mischievous higher power had taken a Sharpie and scribbled my dreams and longings all over my face.

If I didn’t want her to notice I fancied her, I was doing an absolutely brilliant job.

As I turned for another pass across the room, Mog meowed grumpily at me from her perch at the end of my bed.

I pulled my fingers out of my hair and sighed. “Yes, Your Majesty, I know you don’t like it when I stomp around. Especially when I could be petting you.”

I sat down next to the little loaf and dug my fingers into her favorite spot behind her ears, telling her how good and sweet she was. She shut her eyes in feline bliss, purring like a moped engine.

My door opened, and Mari slipped through the gap. “Hello, Leo, and hello, precious little void.”

At the sound of her cheerful voice, my hands involuntarily went to my hair to smooth it down, my cheeks flushing.

Mog narrowed her eyes at the intruder, but Mari turned to me, politely ignoring the cat in the way all cat people know to do. “Your mom sent me up here,” she said, miraculously not noticing my stricken face. “Dinner in ten minutes, she says.”

I inhaled the scent of frying onions and herbs, my stomach torn between hunger and trepidation. “Did you make it here all right?” I asked, trying to keep the stress out of my voice. “Hard to find your way to a new place in the dark.” Well done, Leo, that wasn’t asinine at all.

But Mari nodded. “Oh yeah, fine. I’m glad I left on time, it started to rain when I turned onto your street. But it’s pretty here. Villagey.” She paused, and her mouth turned down slightly.

I sat upright. I didn’t mean for my unhappiness to ruin her evening. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said too quickly. I waited for the lie to dissipate, and she shoved her hands in her jeans pockets. For a moment she looked almost… shy. “I don’t think your mom liked my hostess gift.”

I blinked at the old-fashioned phrase. “You brought a hostess gift?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course I did. Suzanne would fly here and kick my butt if I didn’t.”

I shook my head. Just because Mari dressed casually and didn’t stand on ceremony 95 percent of the time didn’t mean she didn’t know something about manners. “So what did you bring?”

“Some pink gerbera daisies? The big, cartoony-looking ones?” She half smiled. “I can see from downstairs where you inherited your dislike of color from. I’ve never seen so many different shades of beige. Or would you say it’s greige?”

I winced. My mother redecorated every few years, but always with the same neutral palette. “Yes, it’s greige. But I like color.”

“To draw with, sure. But nowhere else,” she argued back.

“I like it when you wear it,” I blurted, barely resisting the urge to slap my hand over my mouth after saying it, like I had when I’d made that idiotic comment about blackcurrant lube.

Astonishment widened Mari’s eyes.

I’d gone so long without being embarrassed, but this pretty American woman had blasted a gaping hole in my filter. Now I flailed my hand at her jumper, fuzzy wool the color of a tropical sea. “It suits you. You’re a colorful person.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

I just barely stopped myself from mussing my hair again.

For fuck’s sake, I could use my words better than that.

But I couldn’t use just any words, because revealing to my coworker that I’d developed a schoolboy crush on her would be disastrous on multiple levels.

“You know what it’s like when you see a rainbow?

” I said carefully, like I was walking along a narrow, high wall, resisting the urge to put my arms out for balance.

“Yeah?” she answered just as slowly.

“Like everyone stops to look at it, to appreciate it, because you can’t help but take in all those colors? That’s what it’s been like, having you at the shop. You walk into a room and everything gets more vivid, and people can’t help but feel… joyful.”

My unspoken words floated in the air between us.

You make me smile. You make me laugh. When you open your mouth and say something saucy, all I can think about is the curve of your lips.

“Joyful?” Mari’s face was uncertain, her fingers knotted together. “I…” she started, her sweet face blushing daisy pink.

As subtly as I could, I gripped my duvet. I couldn’t reach for her, couldn’t untangle those fingers and kiss each one.

But now she shook her head, putting her easy smile back on. “Never mind. Thank you. What’s Mog’s story? When did you get her?”

I exhaled, reached over to scratch Mog’s head until she closed her eyes in pleasure.

“I didn’t so much get her as she got me.

I’d just turned nineteen, and I was taking out the rubbish at the shop on Fireworks Night and heard this tiny little squeak from under one of the bins.

When I looked underneath, I found this ball of black fluff with yellow eyes, who hissed at me like a little angry panther.

I managed to lure her out with some cheese and took her to the vet near here.

” I held up my right hand so she could see the fine scars from baby Mog’s claws across my knuckles.

“Got these for my pains. But the vet said the local RSPCA was full up of stray cats, and deep down I knew I wanted to be the one who looked after her. So I took her home.”

“Why did you want that, when she’d scratched the shit out of you? Because you felt responsible?”

I didn’t fully understand why Mari’s brow was furrowed, but all at once I wanted her to know this, know me.

“No. I wanted to care for her because I liked her from the first moment I saw her. She was adorable and ferocious at the same time, and I wanted…” I swallowed as the truth of Mog and the truth of Mari hit me at the same time. “I wanted to win her trust.”

It was like some higher power had pressed pause on the moment, leaving my heartfelt words floating between us. Mari’s mouth gaped slightly.

“And she does trust me, most of the time,” I said, forcing lightness into my voice. “As long as I do what she wants. Which I do, often.”

Mari paused for a long second, indecision on her face, until she smiled at Mog. “Well, I can’t totally blame you, because she’s gorgeous, aren’t you, sweet girl?”

Mog looked over at Mari, then reached out her long legs in a luxurious stretch, maintaining eye contact. In a classic move, she lazily flopped over to show her stomach for admiration and pets.

But Mari’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, no. That’s the Belly of Deception. If I pet you there, you’ll shred the meat from my bones.”

I snorted. “Belly of Deception. Very good.” I reached out and ran my hand down the especially soft fur, and Mog arched to give me more to touch. “But she’s weirdly all right with it, honestly.”

Mari hesitated for a moment, then sat down on the mattress on Mog’s other side and trailed her hand down the cat’s belly. “Aren’t you a fuzzy little weirdo,” she said as Mog thrummed. “Where’s your sense of danger, huh?”

Mog closed her eyes and purred louder in response.

“She likes you,” I said softly.

“I don’t know why.” Mari’s mouth turned up in a gentle smile. “But I’m honored.”

“Dinner!” my mother called up the stairs, and all at once Mog rolled over, hopped off the bed, and trotted out the door.

Mari and I got up to follow. She chuckled a little and said, “I should have asked you. About the hostess gift. I could have gotten a box of chocolates or something.”

I smiled involuntarily and shook my head.

Mari barked out a laugh. “Your mother doesn’t eat chocolate either, huh? I guess some people just don’t like pleasure.”

She turned for the door, and a flush crept up my neck. Pleasure . That word was in my vocabulary for tiny, furtive things. Pink marshmallows melting on my tongue, the scratch of a sharp colored pencil across a fresh sheet of paper.

It wasn’t a word I associated with Mari Cole. I couldn’t, for the sake of the shop, for the sake of my sanity. It was no use, hoping for impossible things.