Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Alex

I DON'T REALIZE I'M staring until Henry looks up at me, and brilliant baby blues hit me like a truck.

I don't even want to be here. I agreed so I could get out of my parents' house for an hour. I'm still wearing what I had on yesterday while mowing their law, and grass flecks my pants and smears my sneakers. A cat café seems entirely unsanitary. Everything smells like animal in here, yet people are sitting around drinking coffee and having snacks. It makes no sense, absolutely none at all. How did a health inspector approve this?

But none of that is the real problem. The real problem is that Henry is crouched on the floor petting a cat, and I can't stop looking.

I shake myself and back up a step.

Who even is this guy? I barely knew Henry in high school. We moved in completely different circles. Yet the moment our eyes met through the glass, a spark of recognition flashed between us. And I … I reacted to it. Maybe it's surprise at encountering a guy I haven't thought about in a good seven years. Maybe it's the way Henry greeted me like we were long lost friends and not distant acquaintances at best.

I remember him being smart and ambitious. What the hell is he doing back in this crappy small town? He should be on the East Coast doing something interesting or, at worst, in Seattle. Why come back here and work at a cat café?

Why do I care so much?

I swallow, trying to regain my balance. It's rare that I end up in a courtroom, and somehow none of them have made me as nervous as the skinny guy crouching on the floor to pet a cat. His red-brown hair shouldn't look so soft. His eyes shouldn't be so eerily bright. I shouldn't notice either of those things while I stand towering over him.

Henry climbs back to his feet when he catches me staring. I'm still taller than him when he's upright, but the disparity isn't as stark anymore, and for some reason, that helps.

"You really work here?" I say.

Very cool, Alex. A very cool thing to say.

Henry is unruffled. "Really really," he says cheerily.

"Why?"

I should stop talking. I should stop talking forever and walk out of this shop before I can make any of this worse. But again Henry is unfazed by my brusque question.

"Because I like it," he says. "I like the cats. I like the café part. It reminds me of my job back at the university."

"They had a cat café?"

He laughs, and my brain unhelpfully compares the noise to wind chimes dancing in a breeze.

"No, no," Henry says. "It was a Boyfriend Café."

Heat flashes into my face before I can stop it. "The hell is a Boyfriend Café?"

"It's like this, except imagine you're paying to hang out with a person instead of a cat. We would dress nice and make tea and listen to other students gossip and complain. It got really popular, and I found I enjoyed it. There was something nice about helping stressed out students relax."

"But you could…"

I cut myself off before I risk sounding like my father. "You could be doing more," I almost said. Henry was smart. That much I remember very clearly. We only ever had one class together, and it was AP History. The rest of my classes were normal, but not Henry's. He took a bunch of those college-level courses in high school, probably graduated with a handful of credits. It's some sort of cosmic joke that I ended up the lawyer and he ended up a barista at a cat café.

Or is that my father speaking again? Henry's the one who seems happier out of the two of us. I might have the fancy job and the nice apartment in San Francisco, but I've also got bags under my eyes and a gray hair that has arrived a decade early. So who's the one coming out ahead here?

Henry's head turns suddenly. Someone on the other side of the café is smiling awkwardly at him.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I need to go help them."

He bustles off, and I find that a little piece of me is disappointed to see him go. Alright, more than a "little" piece, but Henry is the first friendly thing I've found in this dump of a town. He's bright. He's nice. He makes Tripp Lake seem like a real place and not a series of ranch houses spaced out between towering Pacific Northwest pine and spruce trees.

Awkward and alone (my parents are trying to coax one of the cats off the top of a cat tree), I bend down to give some attention to the cat who wandered over to us. She's a skinny tortie with large, inquisitive eyes, and she purrs the moment I stroke her back. I probably look weird crouching on the floor to pet her, but it's better than the alternatives of standing around alone or hanging out with my parents. They'll ask why I haven't opened my own cat café or something. I've been kind of busy being a lawyer for the past year, but that won't stop them finding fault in my every life choice.

The cat bumps her forehead against my knee. She paws at my pants like she wants to climb into my lap, and it's been a long enough day that I don't bother denying her. I sit down right there on the floor and cross my legs, and sure enough the friendly little creature climbs in and settles down. Her purring rumbles through my legs, and soon my lap is pleasantly warm from her body curled up atop me. I go on petting her, nearly as content as her as we hide away in our little corner of the café.

I glance up, telling myself the whole time that I'm checking that my parents aren't scaring the cats or stomping toward me, but my eyes drift past them and land on Henry at the other side of the room. Sunlight cuts into the café through the front windows, and a shaft of it seems to follow Henry no matter where he moves as he helps customers. He laughs and smiles and nods as he answers questions he's probably fielded dozens of times, and it's obvious from the grins that linger on customers' faces that his sunshiney warmth remains with them long after he steps away to help someone else. Maybe the sun isn't filtering into this room at all, on second thought. Maybe that light and warmth is all Henry. It sounds ridiculous, but the effect he has on everyone he speaks with is clear. Even I'm following him, incapable of looking at anything else, like I'm a plant seeking his light.

I blink several times and force myself to focus on the cat in my lap instead. What was I thinking? Henry is a guy, a guy I barely know from a high school I hated in a town I couldn't wait to escape.

The cat stretches in my lap, blinking up at me. I notice I stopped petting her, distracted by my racing thoughts. I resume my task, and her eyes close with pleasure. She settles in like she means to sleep on me for the rest of the evening.

"Sorry, but I won't be here long," I say to her.

This will probably be my one and only trip to the cat café. I have no reason to return. The rest of my week will be an exercise in teeth-gritting patience. Maybe I can find a library or something and sneak away to get some work done away from my parents, but I'm supposed to be helping with Dad's recovery, so I won't be able to escape them entirely. I'll get through it, somehow, but part of me is already sad about leaving the serenity of this silly café. It'll probably end up being the bright spot in this ridiculous trip (I refuse to call it a vacation).

"She likes you."

I jerk my head up. Henry is standing over me, but he doesn't remain that way long. He crouches down, sitting on his heels and smiling at the cat purring in my lap.

"I'm not sure I've ever seen Poppy like this with a customer," he says.

"It's … it's probably because you were here," I say, fumbling.

Poppy's weight becomes an anchor pinning me to the floor. Henry leans in and pets her and that means his hand is … it's way too close for comfort, but there's nothing I can do about it. He seems completely oblivious to the fact that he's petting a cat that's sitting in my lap, near… Isn't he the gay one? He was in that LGBT club in high school and he's kind of, well, obvious even without that. So why isn't he more aware of how close he's getting? Why am I the one sweating through this interaction?

"Are you looking to adopt?"

It takes an extra second to process the words, and when I do I say, "Huh?"

"The cat," Henry says. "She really likes you. Are you looking to adopt a pet? Poppy is available if you are. Seems like she'd be pretty happy going home with you."

Again, my brain churns too long over words that should be familiar.

"I … can't," I finally say.

Henry looks up from the cat and at me. "That's a shame."

"I'm sorry," I say. "I'm not staying. I'm visiting. My father. I'll only be here for a week."

I've already explained that, but Henry's expression falls anyway. A cloud passes over the sun. The whole café is a little dimmer for a moment, and my chest goes cold and tight. I want to take the words back, but they're true. I'm not staying here. There is nothing in this entire damn town that could ever make me want to stay.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Henry says, "but maybe you can visit Poppy again before you go. I think she'd like that."

Would you like that?

No. Wait. That thought wasn't supposed to happen. I swallow it and move on.

"I'll see," I say. "I'm not sure where I'll be. My parents need some help around the house."

I dislodge Poppy from my lap. She goes, but she lets me know in no uncertain terms that she isn't happy about it. I brush cat hair from my pants as I stand, and Henry rises with me. He looks like he wants to say something more, and I linger awkwardly. Why do I linger so awkwardly? I should be going. The hour is almost up. It's time to move on and never see this random guy from my high school again.

Except … I kind of want to see this random guy from my high school again.

"Look, um," Henry says, "I know this meeting was pretty unexpected, but it was nice to see you. If you wanted, we could get a meal or something while you're in town. Catch up a little. I haven't run into that many people from our class."

My heart hammers way too hard. My mouth is dry. Henry shifts nervously from foot to foot, like he can't stand it if I decline, and my body reacts in all kinds of weird, inexplicable ways.

"Sure," is the word that eventually comes out of me.

Sure. Not a yes, but close enough, and before I know it I'm exchanging phone numbers with him. It'll mean an escape from my parents, I tell myself. An excuse to get out of the house for a night. But my heart is still pounding, and if I'm being honest, I don't think it's because I'm that eager to try the local cuisine.