Until Tom, Finding Forever (Providence Book 5)

by Mary B. Moore

  A quick glance at Coleman who was back to tugging his hair, and I decided that having my feet ripped to shreds by my demonic feline was probably safer. So, I risked the chunder choo choo again and got in the back of the car next to Layla.

  The silence that followed on the short drive to the ranch was one of the most painful things I’d ever experienced. I could feel the simmering inferno coming from the crazy ball bag in the front, and with every second that passed, I braced myself for the explosion that never came.

  The area around us was pretty, and green. Lots of green! More green than I think I’d ever seen in my life, but then I was used to city living. Noise, pollution, shops everywhere, no privacy and this was the antithesis.

  “Uh, is there anyone living out here?” A sudden thought hit me as we turned off down a path that led to an area where huge beautiful houses sat. “Just so you know, if a guy starts playing the banjo, I don’t care if I’ve never run in my life – you won’t see me for dust!”

  Layla chuckled beside me, and then burst out laughing and pointed. Sure enough, there sat an old guy on a freaking rocking chair playing a mother humping banjo.

  “Gramps,” she snorted. I didn’t care if it was fucking Santa. We were in the middle of nowhere and a guy was playing the banjo - I’d seen this movie. In fact, I’d watched it on Sunday so how it ended was fresh in my mind.

  We passed a couple more houses and a group of women with babies who waved at us, and then stopped in front of a gorgeous bright white house.

  “How the hell do you keep this so clean?” I felt it was a good question, I couldn’t even keep a white t-shirt clean, and this house was practically glowing.

  “Long story,” Layla replied as she got out of the car.

  I was about to follow her out of her side of the vehicle just in case scary banjo man appeared on my side, when my door opened, and hands reached in and pulled me out. Obviously, I screamed my ass off.

  “Don’t let them take me!”

  “Hey, pretty girl,” a voice I recognized crooned in my ear, and I’m pretty certain that it was the only time that I’d ever feel complete relief to see Tom. “Glad you made it here safe…what the fuck happened to the car?”

  Coleman didn’t say one word, he just raised his hand and pointed at me. Wincing, I looked around us and saw that there were actually a lot more people than I’d thought there were initially, which was also kind of a relief. If they’d survived here long enough to reproduce the five million kids that they had with them, then the odds couldn’t be stacked that high against me being downed by a banjo playing old dude.

  “Yo - Cole.” A hand was thrust into my face by a guy who’d just walked up to us. He looked a bit like his brother, and a lot like Layla.

  “Sonya,” I replied, shaking his hand.

  “What the fuck happened to the car?” Tom repeated. He was holding my free hand and had moved us around to the front of the car to look at the damage. Low and behold, the little flag from the old mailbox that we’d hit was sticking out of the headlight. What made it worse was that the name Robinson had been carved into it somehow, so it’s not like we could have denied all knowledge of the incident. Then again, the asshole cellphone guy would have made that an impossibility too.

  “He woke Sonya up,” Layla explained as she lifted a big ass bag out of the trunk. “Dibs on not touching the psycho’s cage,” she added over her shoulder as she walked toward the door of the house. As she did, I caught sight of the deep scratches on her ankles that were bleeding little rivers of blood into her flip flops. I would have followed Layla and her bloody legs, but no matter how hard I tugged on my hand, Tom wasn’t letting go.

  “Hey, what’s that?” Cole asked, bringing my attention back to the guys to see him poking something in the open v of Coleman’s shirt neck. Apparently, today really wasn’t a lucky day for me because the tampon that I’d accidentally included in my handful of Band-Aids was still wedged in the space between the buttons of his shirt.

  “I’m so sorry,” I muttered, lunging for it before he noticed what it actually was.

  Again, proving that my luck was for shit, he looked down as my hand got there and my knuckles hit his nose hard. Pulling the tampon back, I yanked my hand, causing Tom to fall into me and the tampon to go flying and hit poor Cole in the head before landing on the floor in front of him.

  With his high-pitched squeal, I remembered that this was the Townsend who had Menophobia - a legitimate fear of periods.

  Maybe I’d take on the banjo player after all?

  Chapter Three

  Tom

  Today, I was taking her cat to the vet. My sister had told me that this species was meant to be huge, so when it had come out of its cage when they’d arrived, I’d innocently asked, “What the fuck is wrong with your cat?”

  Everyone had been thinking it, I was just the dickhead who’d actually asked it. The reaction from both hadn’t been pretty. Sonya had called me an insensitive twat and had told me to go fuck myself, and the cat had curled itself up into some sort of origami figure and had then sprung itself at me, cutting my shin to pieces with its nails that were like freaking Samurai swords.

  Dante she’d called it – shoulda been Uranus because that cat was a fucking asshole.

  She’d been here for two days now, and I’d hardly seen her. We’d had a family meal the first night she was here, and since then, neither her nor Layla had been around. It was starting to bug me. It wasn’t my fault that the cat’s legs were shorter than my pinky finger and it looked like a mutant that was walking on those tiny little sausage things that you get at parties.

  The vets appointment gave me a good excuse to woo her with my Townsend charm though, so I was going to give it my best.

  Walking through Layla’s open front door, I walked into a room full of my family. The hissing coming from the cage in the corner clued me into the fact that now that we were safe to come here because he was locked away, everyone had decided to come for coffee. Either that or from the big shit eating grin on Layla’s face she was fucking with me. I was going to go with the latter.

  Resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t be getting my Sonya time, I walked over to the cage where the strangest growls I’d ever heard were coming from. It was like a cross between a purr and a snarl and was accompanied by a nasty licking noise.

  “The fuck is it doing?” I asked Ren who was standing watching it in amusement and disgust.

  Looking down through the top of the cage, which had those bar things on the top of it, I could see the mutant with its leg wrapped around its head. Its front paws were kneading the shit out of the blanket underneath it as its head twisted under its ass. How it had gotten into the position that it was in was anyone’s guess.

  “Kissing his nuts goodbye,” Ren shrugged as we continued to stare down at it.

  Picking it up, I ignored the hisses that were now being added to the previous noises and walked out to get it over and done with.

  Hopefully, once he was nut free, he’d be a normal cat. If he wasn’t, and he was going to end up the size that Layla said he was, we were all screwed.

  ****

  Four hours later

  Driving back from the Vets office, I rehearsed how I was going to break the news to Sonya about her cat. I wasn’t sure that she was going to take it well at all. In my defense, I’d only gone with what Layla and Maya had told me to do. I wasn’t to know that it would end up like this!

  Making sure that she was sitting down when I did it would be a good idea. Doing it while she was around sharp objects would definitely be a bad idea. Maybe I could get one of the others to tell her?

  The veterinary surgery was on the opposite end of town to where our ranch was, so as I drove back, I saw the sign that might actually get me through this unharmed and turned off to go through the Starbucks drive-thru.

  Pulling up to the coffee chick, I ordered one of the largest coffees that they did and a normal sized one for me.

  “Oh, and
a chocolate chip cookie, a cinnamon roll and a muffin. Wait, make that a muffin with no nuts, please.” The snarling growl from the cat who was still doped up to the fur balls – or lack of in his case now - in the crate in the back of the car had me flinching, and coffee chick’s eyes opening wide like she expected a tiger to jump out. “Sorry, bud!” His hiss back at me was answer enough.

  Sonya

  All day, I’d been waiting for Tom to bring Dante home. The cat might be an asshole, but he was mine and I loved him. I also felt really guilty about sending him to have his balls cut off.

  Since we’d been here, he’d been great with the kids and had even let Maya’s daughter, Crystal, drag him around by his tail without even blinking. Shortly after it, I’d gone to give him a piece of ham from my sandwich, and he’d hooked himself around my hand, ignored the ham, and had tried to sever an artery or a tendon. We still weren’t sure exactly which one he’d been going for because it had been an attack of claws and teeth all over, but he’d given it one hundred per cent.

  Hearing footsteps, I leaned over the edge of my chair to look at the door and started to breathe a sigh of relief until I saw the huge coffee cup in Tom’s hand and the expression on his face.

  “Please tell me he’s not dead!”

  The pissed of yowl from the carrier answered for him.

  “I need to tell you something,” he started as he sat down. And then he explained it all to me.

  Five minutes later…

  “So, he’s pretty much going to stay the size he’s at now?” I asked in disbelief. How could the cat not grow past the size of my shoe?

  “That’s what the doc said,” he sounded so upset, I almost felt sorry for him.

  Watching Dante as he crawled with his ass in the air and face on the floor, I asked my next question. “And is he stuck like this?”

  “Hmm? Oh no. That’s because of the drugs from the surgery - I think?”

  “So, he’s a Munchkin, not a Maine Coon?” I hadn’t even heard of a Munchkin cat. It sounded almost cruel to call a breed of cat that, but then again, maybe the cretin in front of me had got that wrong too.

  A few taps on the screen of his phone and he was turning it to face me, showing me the information on this breed of cat.

  “I feel so bad,” he whispered sounding a bit broken. “I called him a mutant in my head, and it turns out, his stubby little appendages are caused by an actual genetic mutation. I mean, if anyone said anything about Wylie’s disability and his wheels, I’d be pissed as shit. Then I go and call Dante a psycho mutant.”

  Because I was so caught up in reading the information on Wikipedia about Dante’s breed, it took a while for what he’d said to sink in.

  “Who’s Wylie? Why does he have wheels?”

  His eyes lit up and he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door. Seeing as how my little kitty was asleep in the middle of the room with his back end now flat on the floor, legs akimbo, and his head in the air, I figured it was okay to leave him for a couple of minutes. I was too intrigued by what I was going to see.

  Not in all of my musings as we walked toward Tom’s house did I ever think that I’d see a sausage dog with wheels on its back end, though.

  “Holy shit, he can go at some speed,” I breathed as he sped past us. There were little ramps next to every couch so that he could run up them and sit down, and he took those things at speed. Unfortunately, he’d misjudged this one and ended up with his wheels hooked on the arm of the sofa, as his body hung off it with his nose just touching the floor.

  “He does this a lot,” Tom explained, gently picking up the excitable dog and hugging him to his chest.

  Doing my best to distract myself from the screaming of my ovaries, because holy shit that was a cute sight, I asked the question that had been eating away at me. “Why did you call him Wylie?”

  “After Wylie Coyote, of course.” Like that really explained it.

  “You named him Wylie Coyote?” I asked slowly. “As in, the coyote that chased Road Runner?”

  Shrugging, Tom put him back on the floor. Wylie took off at high velocity again, skidded around the corner and hit the edge of the wall with an almighty thud making us both wince. I guess that explained it.

  “Wait until you meet my turkey!”

  ****

  After meeting Tom’s dog, I’d gone back home to look after Dante. So far, the only thing bothering him was the drugs that he was trying to shake off. I’d gone to the bathroom and had come back out to find him asleep with his face in his water bowl so I’d had to dry him off and had then tucked him into his bed. It might be safer for him if he was protected by the padding.

  Now, we were outside having a barbeque with the rest of the Townsend family. There hadn’t been any hisses or screams from Layla’s house so I was hoping that maybe the operation had calmed him down.

  “Why does Tom have a turkey?” I asked Hurst, or Gramps as he’d told me to call him.

  Everyone sitting around us burst out laughing, as he explained. “At Thanksgiving, we told him to go pick up a turkey. He left it until two days before, and of course the store was sold out.” I nodded my head in understanding. Most people have done that and then had to travel miles to find one. “So, he went to a farm because he’d seen signs for fresh turkeys and it wasn’t that far away.” I swallowed my mouthful of chicken burger awkwardly. I had an inkling that I knew where this was going. “So, Jake over there,” Hurst nodded in Coleman’s direction, “took him to go and pick one up. When he got there, the farmer took him to choose which one he wanted. Unfortunately, what he didn’t know was that they were live turkeys.” Yup, I was right. I shouldn’t have asked, I just shouldn’t have asked. “So, there’s this poor turkey, shitting himself because he just knows what’s coming. Tom ended up telling the guy that we’d kill him at home, sneaking the turkey into his house, and driving forty-seven miles to find a damn frozen one.” Everyone around us burst out laughing. “We sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, and this big ass bird comes running through the room with a dirty diaper in its mouth. It had broken out of Tom’s house, followed him to Collette and Jack’s and had gone through the trash. It was disgusting!”

  “But damn if that bird doesn’t follow him around like a dog,” Ren muttered as he took a mouthful of his hot dog.

  Like we’d summoned him, Tom suddenly yelled from the porch of the house, “Hey, Jake gobbled my wiener!”

  The huge group of people who had all been talking at the same time went quiet, then all heads turned in Coleman’s direction who stood there looking like he’d been electrocuted. With heads turning to look between them, I whispered to Layla, “Who’s Jake? What did Coleman do?”

  Maya’s best friend Tony, whom I’d be introduced to minutes previously, stood up and held his hand out. “Pay the piper, folks! I told you he was gay. I didn’t know about Coleman, but Tom? Hell yes. Now pay up!”

  “Tom’s gay?” I hissed to Layla who was still sitting there with her mouth wide open.

  People started taking money out of their pockets and passing it to Tony, while Coleman broke out of his stupor and stormed up to Tom.

  “I fucking did not,” he roared. No one had gone back to talking, so it carried across the garden as if he was standing right beside us.

  At that moment, a turkey plodded out of the house and sat down next to Tom’s foot, followed closely by a still weaving Dante.

  “You did what?” Tom countered, looking confused.

  “I didn’t gobble your wiener! I don’t even want your wiener,” Coleman fumed.

  “Dude, gross! There are kids around,” Tom pointed over at the group of kids, sitting on a blanket on the grass giggling at the drama playing out just in front of them. One of them who had a twin sister held his chubby little fist up and waggled his own wiener in the air – thankfully a sausage one.

  “Then why are you saying I did?” Coleman was back to pulling at clumps of his hair - it seemed his go to when things got too much.

&n
bsp; “I didn’t. I said that Jake,” he pointed at the turkey who was sitting beside him while my cat did some sort of massage shit on his back, “did.”

  Then the ball dropped, and I buried my face in my hands as I burst out laughing. I’d already pissed Coleman off enough so maybe if he didn’t actually see me laughing, he’d be okay. I could always say that I was crying instead. I might be brave, but I wasn’t that brave - the guy was scary as hell.

  I missed what followed afterwards, but from the brief yelling match and the fact Coleman wasn’t around when I came back out of hiding, I figured he’d gone to sulk and be with his own wiener in peace. I wonder how much the guy was paid for the torture he went through every day?