“Yeah, I had a sandwich before I came here. I could use a snack or something, though.” She looked around. “Oh, it’s one of those frozen yogurt places that has a zillion flavors. Let’s go there.”
Caleb laughed. “Okay.”
“Unless you don’t like frozen yogurt.”
“Who doesn’t like frozen yogurt?”
“Monsters. All right, let’s go.”
The yogurt place was self-serve, with twenty-one flavors to choose from and an extensive toppings bar. Caleb looked at all the options, sampled a few, and settled on a bit of strawberry and a bit of vanilla yogurt, with fresh berries on top. When he convened with Lauren at the checkout, she had a cup with at least five different flavors and a flurry of toppings: crushed cookies, chocolate chips, rainbow sprinkles, marshmallows, and a dab of whipped cream.
“That’s some sundae you’ve got there,” Caleb said.
Lauren peered into his cup. “Fresh fruit? Do you know how to let loose at all?”
“Just put your cup on the counter.” He pulled out his wallet. “Dessert’s on me.”
“All right.”
“You’re not going to fight me? Protest that this isn’t a date? That you are a modern woman who can pay for her own frozen yogurt?”
Lauren grinned and put her cup next to his on the scale next to the register. “All those things are true. But also, you offered, and you make more money than I do.”
Caleb handed the cashier his credit card. “Fair enough.”
They settled into a booth with bright red seats, sitting across from each other. Lauren dug in. Caleb watched her eat for a moment before taking his first bite.
He said, “So what’s a dame like you doing in a place like that?”
“Huh?”
“What brought you to the symposium?”
“Oh. Diane encourages me to do professional development, so she’s got me on every mailing list for every organization in the city relating to pets or animal rescues or veterinary anything. When I got the invitation to this thing in the mail, Diane encouraged me to go. She thought maybe learning more about feline behavior would help me better manage the cats at the café.”
“Did you learn anything useful?”
“Yeah, the discussion of observed behaviors in feral colonies was especially interesting. I didn’t know that cat tails could tell you anything, but I’ve seen the cats at the café greet each other with their tails up all the time. If that really means they are approaching in a friendly way, that seems like good news.”
“Also that purring could be a way to lure prey into a false sense of security.”
Lauren laughed. “That I knew. And I totally believe it. I’ve been attacked by enough cats at the café to know that purring is not always a sign of contentment.”
“Attacked?”
“Nothing major. Scratches, mostly.” She held out her arm. There were a few red slashes across it, all minor.
“You ever get bitten?”
“Every now and then. Not often. We’ve got a procedure in place for when that happens, at Olivia’s suggestion. There are several full first aid kits and antibacterial ointment in the staff restroom.”
“Okay. Just curious. I get bitten every now and then, too. Usually when I’m giving cats shots.”
“Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way. I brought one of the first café cats to the clinic to get her shots, and as soon as the needle hit her skin, she turned her head and sank her teeth into my hand. My whole hand was red and puffy for week. I had to get prescription-strength antibiotic ointment.”
“Fun.”
“Yeah, not so much.”
They both laughed.
“I guess it was good you were there tonight,” Lauren said.
“You guess?”
“Something about that guy Mike rubbed me the wrong way. And I’m not sad to see you.”
“I’m not sad to see you, either.” In fact, he’d had a whole cycle of emotions once he’d spotted her. He’d been surprised to see her, but happy about it. He’d considered maybe just ducking out of the auditorium until he saw Mike, at which point his feet carried him right to her. Because he wanted her to himself. Which was not at all a fair way to view the situation.
As they ate and chatted about some of the finer points of the symposium, it occurred to Caleb that they’d crossed some other threshold, and now they were the sort of people who had casual dates to eat frozen yogurt like they were in some fantasy of the fifties. He also much preferred this to trying to hear each other in a noisy bar if they’d gone for that drink, because he quite liked listening to her.
But was that enough? He didn’t want a long-term relationship. He wasn’t sure he could trust love to last longer than a dog’s attention span. And he wasn’t sure that he and Lauren even had enough in common to sustain anything worthwhile.
He just liked her.
So they ate yogurt. And when they were finished, they sat in the booth with their empty cups and kept laughing and talking. And when the staff kicked them out because the store was closing, they walked back outside, and Caleb wanted to take Lauren’s hand. Except, no, they weren’t in that kind of relationship.
“What train do you take home?” Lauren asked.
“I can take almost anything. The 4/5 or the 2/3 or anything that goes to Jay Street.”
“Let’s get the F, then. That’s the train that stops nearest my building.”
“All right. Lead the way.”
Lauren’s knowledge of the city streets was clearly much better than Caleb’s. She confidently led him south toward Bryant Park. On the way, they chatted about new building developments—Lauren pointed at a skyscraper a few blocks away that hadn’t existed a couple of years before—and how the city changed. Caleb found the amount of construction in Manhattan and Brooklyn to be puzzling at times, wondering where there was even room for new developments, but New York was a forward-facing city, constantly sloughing off the old to replace it with the new.
Then he said, “Oh, that Randolph guy you mentioned stopped by the clinic the other day. He seems like a scumbag.”
Lauren laughed. “Yeah, he’s pretty slick. Diane told him she wasn’t selling in no uncertain terms, but I guess he’s not taking no for an answer.”
“He assured us he’d keep the vet clinic in the short-term, at least until he rips down all the buildings on the block to put in some phallic high-rise.”
Lauren scrunched up her nose. “That wormy little assistant of his asks a lot of questions about health department regulations. The law is clear that I can serve food as long as the animals are kept in a separate room. I’m worried he still might file a complaint in an attempt to shut us down and give Diane an incentive to sell.”
“Really? Not much of an incentive. Diane could just rent the space to someone else.”
“Diane is both the owner of the space and the business, so maybe they think the financial hit if the business goes under will persuade her to sell. Maybe that fear is irrational, but I asked Diane to talk to her lawyer. Apparently, we’re in the clear, but… I don’t know. Randolph could cause a lot of trouble for us.”
“Or Diane will turn him down a few more times and he’ll give up. There are plenty of other blocks in Brooklyn for him to conquer. Hell, he already owns that one building across the street.”
“True. Evan and I have been speculating about what he’ll build there. But honestly, I’d be pretty angry if he shut down the Italian restaurant or the thrift store. Or if he changed anything. I don’t know. Since I live there, I feel a sense of ownership for that block.”
“I get it. When I lived in Boston, they tore out this charming row of little shops near our house to put in a weird little mall. It totally upended the neighborhood. And for what? So some real estate developer could make a fortune building a thing that nobody sho
pped in. It took them forever to get tenants. I hope he lost money. My favorite pet food store was in that row of shops.”
Lauren laughed. “You’re not bitter or anything.”
When they got to the park, they found it full of people. A massive movie screen was set up on one end. It took Caleb a moment to recognize the movie was Big.
“Aw, I love this movie,” said Lauren. “Too bad it’s almost over.”
Caleb laughed. “You don’t want to watch it, do you? There’s no room in the park.” It looked like people were sitting on every conceivable bit of available space.
“No, it’s fine. I own it on DVD, actually.” Lauren sighed. “Okay, so is it strange I find it romantic? Like, Tom Hanks and Elizabeth Perkins have this sweet romance, but it’s not meant to be because, you know, he’s actually thirteen.”
“Romantic and not creepy?”
“The way it’s acted, it’s not creepy. Elizabeth Perkins isn’t, like, a pedophile. She thinks Tom Hanks is a normal thirty-year-old man. And you kind of get the feeling she doesn’t meet a lot of good men, so it’s really sad when it turns out they can’t be together.” She paused. “What?”
“What?”
“You’re doing a thing with your face.”
“What am I doing?”
“Like… I don’t know. You think I’m silly, but you’re indulging me.”
“Maybe I am a little.” Caleb felt the grin pull at his mouth.
“Would I be wrong to guess you find my silliness charming instead of frustrating now?”
“You’re not wrong,” he said.
“It’s a star-crossed romance. The movie, I mean.” She stepped closer to Caleb. “Two people who really like each other, but the timing is terrible, so it won’t work out.”
Caleb met her gaze. She looked at him with an earnestness he’d never seen on her face before. Was she implying that, had the timing been different, she and Caleb could have been a good match?
Maybe they would have been. But all he had was right now. And right now, he wanted to kiss her.
So he did. First, he said, “Timing’s a bitch.” Then he leaned in and met her lips. She put her hands around his shoulders and pressed into him. He’d intended it to be a sweet indulgence, like all the toppings she put on her frozen yogurt. But instead, it became charged.
He really liked her.
But the timing was impossible, so he pulled away.
She smiled. “What as that for?”
“You’re cute.”
“You just kissed me in public.”
“No one was watching.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Right. Well, let’s go, lover boy. Your place or mine?”
“Mine. I gotta take Hank out.”
“I’m not presumptuous in inviting myself over, am I?”
“Nope. I want you to come home with me. Will Molly be okay?”
“I fed her before I left for the symposium.”
“Then let’s go.”
They rode the subway back to Brooklyn across from a couple that was apparently very into each other. Lauren was talking about some customer at the Cat Café, and Caleb wasn’t really listening, but he was satisfied when she faltered in her speech as he put his arm around her.
“I thought we weren’t a couple.”
“Let’s pretend for a few hours.”
She looked at him with a furrowed brow as if this confused her, but then she shrugged and said, “Okay.”
Chapter 21
Caleb liked to sleep late on his days off. Often he felt like he needed it, especially after an overnight shift. The last overnight had been particularly harrowing. A dog had been hit by a car. The dog, miraculously, hadn’t sustained any life-threatening injuries, just a broken leg, but the stress of having to test for internal bleeding coupled with the frantic owner who blamed herself for the dog bolting out into the street had left Caleb feeling wrecked when he finally got home.
So the doorbell pulled him out of a deep sleep. He was a little startled to see it was nearly noon. He hastily threw on a robe and went to the door, expecting it to be a package, probably some clothes he’d ordered a few days before.
But, no, it was Lauren.
Caleb rubbed his eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry. I’m on a Diane-mandated day off and I got bored so I thought I’d come over to say hi. So, hi.”
“Hi. Um. Come in?”
Caleb stepped out of the way to let her in. As wakefulness came over him in waves, he realized he was somewhat uncomfortable to have her here. They weren’t the sort of couple who just popped over to each other’s apartments. They weren’t even really a couple. Well, okay, they were, it was hard to deny that now, but he did not like her showing up unannounced.
“I brought lunch,” she said. “Sandwiches from that Italian deli on Joralemon.”
“Oh. Um. Let me just put on a pot of coffee.”
He went to the kitchen and tried to shake off the sleepiness as he got the coffee maker going, mostly through muscle memory. He was curious what Lauren had brought, mostly because he was hungry, but he wondered how she knew what to get him.
Well, they had eaten a lot of meals together, hadn’t they?
When he returned to the table, there were two heroes wrapped in white deli paper. “Meatball parm,” Lauren said pointing to one, “and prosciutto, mozzarella, and roasted red peppers. Pick one, or we can each have half of each.”
Both sounded good. But Caleb was still uncomfortable with Lauren in his space. He decided to keep the peace while he got some food and caffeine into his bloodstream. They wound up sharing both sandwiches, and the meatball was particularly delicious. Lauren pulled some of the prosciutto off her half of the other sub, declaring it too salty.
He liked this woman. A lot. But this was not the sort of relationship they had.
As if reading his thoughts, Lauren said, “What is it?”
“What?”
“Something is clearly bothering you. You’ve been fidgety and looked uncomfortable since you sat down.”
He should really just tell her. No sense in putting himself through this anytime she got a notion to see him. “You’re gonna think I’m a dick.”
“Just tell me.”
He sighed. “Okay, I don’t love that you just showed up without calling or texting first.”
“Oh. All right. I’ll text next time.”
“Well, no, that’s not precisely the issue. It’s just that… This is not the relationship we have.”
She sat back in her chair. “Oh.”
“We had fun the other night, but nothing has really changed for me. I don’t want to get married again, not that we’re anywhere near that, but still, I wouldn’t want to mislead you. Nothing has changed.”
Lauren swallowed and nodded slowly. “I’m not… I’m not asking you to marry me. I don’t even need some big commitment. But I like you. I just want a chance to see where this goes, and I feel like you’ve basically made a fort out of your baggage and you will not be budged.”
Caleb put a hand over his mouth so as not to laugh at the image, which was apt. “I do have some baggage. My divorce was… Well, if not traumatic, it was awful, all the way through. Not just the fact that Kara cheated on me and left me, but the fact that this thing I had put so much faith and work into turned out to be flimsy instead of solid. And it’s not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t trust…life.”
And that was basically true. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to piss off the universe, but this whole year had been shitty. And the worst of it had been, when he’d been fighting with Kara over every last penny in their clinic, he’d felt like the biggest idiot. Why hadn’t he seen how doomed their relationship was? Why hadn’t he seen Kara was unhappy? Had he really been so committed to his life plan that he hadn’
t seen the ways it could be turned upside down?
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Lauren. He did. But he didn’t trust himself. He didn’t trust his own judgment.
“That’s kind of fucked up,” Lauren said softly. “How do you even function if you don’t trust life?”
Caleb looked away because his chest hurt with…weakness? Embarrassment? He wasn’t really sure, but he didn’t like it. He didn’t want to feel this way in front of Lauren. He wanted to live in the magical bubble where he was just ill-tempered and they had good sex and talked about TV over takeout food and took long walks where she pointed out interesting things about the city. He didn’t want her to know how deeply fucked up he was, how he felt.
“It’s a challenge,” he said.
“Right. So this is your nice way of saying, ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’”
“I don’t…this isn’t a breakup. I don’t want to stop seeing you.”
Lauren frowned. “But you also don’t want anything to change.”
“I’m sorry. I like you, too, but this…” He gestured between them. “Some of this, anyway, makes me uncomfortable. I don’t have my sea legs yet where dating is concerned. So this cutesy, spontaneous thing makes me nervous.”
“No, I get it. You got burned, you don’t want to try again, that’s natural. I don’t think any human can get to their thirties without accumulating some baggage. But to just cut this off—”
“You knew what this was, too. We talked about it.”
“Fine. You don’t have to tell me twice. I’ll go.”
“No, Lauren, that’s not what I—”
“You can’t have it both ways, Caleb.”
***
Lauren didn’t like the idea of ultimatums. Often they were unfair or set up impossible choices. But “take me or leave me” was starting to feel like something she should say aloud.
Instead, she said, “All right, I’m sorry for barging in here. I thought after the other night, something had changed between us, but I’m clearly wrong.”
“Lauren, don’t—”
Like Cats and Dogs Page 20