Chapter 2

I've had a long day,even before I got a call from my grandmother's doctor reminding me that I've missed the last three appointments to discuss her care. She's in a top-notch memory care center. I pay good money and lots of it so that I don't have to drop everything every time she needs any little thing. But the doctors definitely know how to lay on the guilt.

So, after a grueling day, I drive across town to the Precious Meadows Care Center where I am verbally whipped by every employee who knows me by sight. Yes, I've missed appointments. Yes, I feel like a horrible grandson.

Visiting a loved one in memory care is a particular kind of hell. Margaret rarely recognizes me. She usually mistakes me for my father, which is its own bag of emotional shit. I stopped correcting her on that front years ago. I don't want to relieve his death. Why should I make her go through that just so she can call me by the correct name for a half hour?

I'm so thankful I can afford to keep her here, where the care is top notch, but I can't visit as often as I'd like. The rest of my family, out in west Texas, complain that she's so far from them, but none of them are stepping up to take over. I'm always either not doing enough or using my money to force my ideas on everyone else.

When you have a family member with Alzheimer's, there are no good options. There are no easy choices. It's all just a series of progressively shittier situations.

By the time I make it back to her room, all I want to do is say a quick hello, confirm what I already know—she won't recognize or remember me—and then get out.

Five minutes, tops, in and out.

I know my hopes were misplaced the second I enter the private room and see the woman there with her.

It's the woman from the lobby—Hot Mess Princess Leia.

I have no idea who she is, but that's how I've been thinking of her ever since I saw her. Not that I've been thinking about her.

But she did make quite an impression.

She is, to use her own words, a hot mess.

She's younger than my thirty-four years by at least a decade. She's dressed in baggy cargo pants and a T-shirt that reads "May the flock be with you." The shirt is worn and just tight enough to show off a very perky pair of tits. Which makes me genuinely sad that I'm too tired to appreciate them.

She's not particularly short, but there is a delicacy to her frame and her heart-shaped face that gives the impression she's fragile. Her hair is brown and up in two messy buns on either side of her head, just like Princess Leia.

Which is even weirder since she yelped the words "Princess Leia" when she fell on her ass.

If I wasn't so damn tired, or in a better mood, and didn't feel like I had been tortured for the past hour, the incident in the lobby probably would've been amusing. I might have even noticed how undeniably attractive the woman is.

But today being what it is, I put her out of my mind until I walked into my grandmother's room and found her there.

"Who are you precisely?"

She seems to have trouble understanding my question, looking from me to my grandmother and back again over and over like she's stuck in a time loop.

She frowns and gives her head a little shake. "This can't…" she mutters before trailing off.

"Are you some kind of a candy striper?"

Do they even have those anymore? Did they ever have those or was that just something you saw on TV shows?

"No, I'm not a candy striper!" she blurts.

"Some kind of nurse's aidee?" I ask, since she was clearly offended by the suggestion that she's a candy striper. She's way too young to be a doctor. "Maybe a volunteer?"

She's still frowning. Still wearing that stunned and confused expression. Which is when a horrible thought occurs to me. Precious Meadows specializes in caring for Alzheimer's patients, but not exclusively. Some of their residents are younger people who aren't able to care for themselves. Given her obvious confusion …

Fuck.

No wonder she looks so distressed by my presence.

I'm not a small guy. And I have it on good authority that I'm a grumpy asshole even when I'm not physically and emotionally exhausted.

I uncross my arms and let my hands drop to my sides, purposefully letting my shoulders drop so that I look a little less scary. Then I say, in my most gentle, soothing voice, "You look worried. Can I help you with anything? Do you need someone to take you back to your room?"

"My … what?" Her features pinch in confusion before settling into a glare of indignation. "I don't have room here. I'm not a resident."

Which might well be what she would say if she was.

"Okay," I hold out my hands, palms out. "No worries. Let me just get one of the aides."

But before I can even take a step back towards the door, Hot Mess Princess Leia marches over to me and pokes me in the chest with her finger.

"I am not a resident." She punctuates each word with a jab. "I am a PhD student specializing in somatic therapy."

"A grad student?" I ask with what I hope is diplomacy. "You're what? Nineteen?"

Her ferocity would almost be cute if I wasn't starting to think this woman might actually be delusional. And if her fingers weren't so pokey.

She jabs me again. "And I'll have you know that I am twenty-four."

I grab her hand before she can jab me again. "Please stop that." My voice is no longer gentle and soothing. Maybe because this woman is really starting to piss me off. Maybe because her finger is pointier than it looks. Maybe because I've found myself holding her hand in mine, standing far closer to her than I should, when I haven't touched a woman—at least not sexually—in … fuck, it's probably been at least a year.

All of that combines to create a surge of emotion that I hardly have the capacity to unpack. More than a little irritation, a fuck-ton of frustration, and a solid dose of physical attraction.

I absolutely don't have time for this and she's probably too young for me. And it doesn't matter how old she is, because … Have I mentioned that I don't have time for this?

My best friend and most important client is in the middle of having his life implode. So no, I don't have the time or bandwidth to be attracted to a stranger right now.

Even one who's looking at me with the widest, brightest brown eyes I think I've ever seen. Don't think brown eyes can be bright? Hers are. They're ringed with ebony and lighten to the color of cinnamon. Hell, she even smells like cinnamon. That and vanilla and fresh baked cookies.

I don't have time for this, but damn it, I almost wish I did.

I'm about to drop her hand and put some distance between us—I swear I'm about to—when I hear the unexpected sound of?—

"Is that a chicken?" I ask.

"Oh." The woman pulls her hand from mine and takes a jerking step backwards. "Oh!" she exclaims a second time, looking frantically around the room. "Oh, Princess Leia! I completely forgot about her!"

"Princess Leia?" I repeat, because everything about this afternoon has taken a turn for the bizarre. I look around the room half expecting someone else in Star Wars themed clothing to pop out of nowhere.

Instead of answering me, Hot Mess Princess Leia drops to her hands and knees and makes to crawl under the bed. Perfect round ass up in the air, she wiggles her torso under the bed while murmuring, "It's okay, sweetie. Just give me a second and I'll get you... Ow! Damn it! I'm trying to help... Stop that!"

All the while a series of clucks and squawks emanate from under the bed. Punctuated with more exclamations of pain, from both the woman and the bird, if I was to guess.

Then the squawks increase, the muttering morphs into soothing murmuring and her butt starts to wiggle out from under the bed. A moment later she stands up. One of the hair knots is lopsided; the other is gone completely. Her shirt is crooked and her bare arms covered in red peck marks. And she's holding a small chicken, covered in ridiculous orange fluff, in the crook of her arm.

"Princess Leia?" I ask.

The woman tips her head in confusion as she strokes the bird with her closed fist, literally smoothing its ruffled feathers. "No. Princess Lay-ah." She says this like it should have been obvious to me. As though there should have been no room for confusion, despite the Star Wars themed T-shirt and the buns on the top of her head. "Like how player becomes playah. Layer, lay-ah. As in she lays eggs."

As she says the word eggs, she holds out her fisted hand and opens it to reveal a small egg. I take it automatically. It's still warm.

Apparently, that's what all the clucking was about just now.

The chicken makes another agitated squawk. My grandmother chooses that moment to say, "Oh, is Princess Lay-ah here?"

The woman arches an eyebrow, as if the question proves some kind of a point. Then she marches over to my grandmother, chicken still in her arms.

"Yes, but she and I were just about to leave. Can you hold her for me while I pack up?"

My grandmother takes the chicken and holds her close to her chest, gently stroking the birds feathers. Her expression is serene as she coos to the bird. The woman looks decidedly less serene as she packs up an iPad and phone, all get shoved into a messenger bag dotted with Millennium Falcons, that's then slung over her delicate shoulders. Finally, she opens the soft-sided pet carrier.

Only when she moves to my grandmother's side do her movements gentle. She extracts the bird from my grandmother's grasp, murmuring something barely louder than the chicken's coos. Then, she zips the bird into the pet carrier and marches out.

The door gives its familiar buzz to alert the staff at the station that someone is leaving the room. As I watch the woman walk away, I see one of the orderlies wave at her. Hot Mess Princess Leia is not a resident, obviously. Which means she really is some kind of therapist.

And not just a therapist. Not just a gorgeous woman, either. She's the person who has worked some kind of miracle with my grandmother. Whatever the woman and her somatic chickens did with my grandmother, Margaret recognized me as myself for the first time in … Jesus, it must be at least a year.

Once she rounds the corner and leaves my sight, I look back at my grandmother. "Who the hell was that?"

"Language, Marty. Please."

For a moment, my grandmother looks so much like her former self, it just about kills me. Suddenly, I'm fifteen again, in her kitchen, snapping beans for dinner while I complain about some imagined injustice at school.

My parents were never around much and never sober when they were. Margaret raised me. Put me through school. Loved me when no one else did. And God knows I wasn't easy to love.

I clear my throat. "Okay. Who was that woman?"

"That was Trinity." Then she tips her head to the side and adds, "You know, I think you and Trinity would be perfect together."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Like I said, in this situation, there are never easy answers.

Except right now, it's obvious that the easiest solution I've been presented with in months is Trinity.

I want more of her. Everything about her, from the way she lit up the room to her goofy chicken with its goofy name, warmed a part of me I hadn't even realized had gone cold.

But more than that, she's helping Margaret. More than anything else I've seen so far.

There may not be any easy answers, but anything that helps at all is worth holding on to tight.

And if I have to choose between wanting Trinity for myself and wanting her to help Margaret, I know what I'm going to choose.

So, yeah, I don't know if I want to laugh or cry. Or punch something.

Actually, yeah. Punching something would feel really good about now. Maybe I'd even do it, except I'm still holding the damn egg.