Not today.
I hear her whispering in the other room, speaking to her kitten in hushed tones. As though it understands her, little Echo meows in reply. Cute. I shouldn’t think something like that is totally adorable, yet I do.
Fuck me silly.
When she finally returns, she’s carrying two bottles of soda.
“Is that glass bottle Coke?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. Is it horrible that my mouth starts to water a little?
“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t know if you still like Coke, but I…you know, I just always keep some around.”
“Thank you. I’d love one.”
She pops the tops off with a bottle opener I didn’t see her holding, and then she hands me one. I take a sip and damn, if that’s not the best thing I’ve ever had. Before I know it, the bottle is gone, and she’s laughing at me.
“Sorry,” I’m suddenly embarrassed. I don’t like to admit that it’s a little weird just how much I’ve missed out on.
“It’s totally okay,” she says, and she reaches for my empty bottle. She sets it on the end table beside her and then she just sort of looks at me.
Again, it’s not with any sort of judgment, and I totally love that about her.
“So,” she says.
“So.”
“Why are you here, Neil?”
“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”
“I’m very surprised. It’s not every day your convicted pen pal shows up inside of your house,” she looks at me pointedly.
“Sorry about that. I figured it would be in bad form to wait on the porch. I didn’t want your neighbors to see me and freak out.”
“You mean you didn’t want them to call the cops.”
“That too.”
She looks at me carefully, like she’s not quite buying what I’m selling, and I don’t blame her. She doesn’t need to know that I’ve come back for revenge or that it’s my goal to right the wrongs that have been done to me. I wasted five years of my life sitting in a cell, but I made the most of them. I worked out, I made connections, and I kept my damn head down.
I also learned that when you know the right people, sometimes it can help you find the information you’ve been craving.
“You need a place to stay,” she finally says, and her voice softens.
Shit.
If I don’t feel like a stray cat she dragged in off the street. Yes. I need a place to stay. I have nowhere else to go. I have no one to turn to. I don’t want to tell Finley exactly what her letters meant to me. Sometimes they were the only thing that kept me going.
Sometimes they were the only reason I didn’t try to kill myself while I was locked away.
Prison is an entirely different world. It’s easy to think that when you’re locked away, you’re isolated from everything else. In some ways, you are, but you’re never isolated from the reality that people don’t really care about you as much as you think they do.
I have no friends left over from high school. Nobody cared to hear my side of the story. Nobody bothered to take my side when everything went down. I was an easy scapegoat. I was easy to pin the blame on.
“Yeah,” I finally say. I may have been locked away, and I may be labeled a felon for the rest of my life, but damn if it’s hard to admit that I need some help.
“Do you like cats?”
“What?”