“Okay, okay, you want a treat?” I asked. He looked at me as if to ask what the treat was. “I’ve got a salmon treat for you. Do you want it?”
Howard mewed loudly as he stood up and walked closer to me. He stood on my thigh with his paws pressing into my flesh as he mewed louder. I held out the treat. “Do you want this treat?” Howard strained his neck toward the salmon treat and mewed again. I held it close enough for him to have to work a little harder to get it, knowing from experience that doing this would cause him to gobble down the treat before he knew there was a pill hidden in it. It worked as I’d planned, and soon Howard was sitting next to me licking his paw and cleaning his ears.
“You’re such a pig sometimes,” I laughed. He stopped cleaning for a moment to give me a dirty look before hopping off the couch and continuing his exploration.
Once I’d eaten, and Howard understood that we were safe, we snuggled up together in the spare bedroom and slept soundly.
I woke up unsure of where I was to the sound of the phone ringing. When it stopped and then insistently started again, I got out of bed and went to answer it.
“Jesus H. Christ, Em!” KO shouted on the other end of the line. “I’ve been calling for a half hour! Why didn’t you pick up?”
“Maybe because I was dead asleep?” I yawned into the phone.
“I was worried as hell about you!” she scolded. “What did you do yesterday? Are you okay? How’s my boy?”
“We’re fine. Fat man has meds to take for the next few days, but he doesn’t seem to have suffered any major damage,” I said, as I took the phone into the kitchen and began making coffee.
“So, how was Christmas at the hot fireman’s house?” she asked excitedly.
“You mean besides the uncomfortable fact that one of my students was there and earlier in the day I’d slept with her dad?” I replied, as cheekily as I could.
“You had sex with the firefighter?” KO yelled. “Oh my God! Are you sure you don’t have a head injury?”
“I’m positive,” I laughed. “If I hadn’t slept with him, I’d have asked that same question.”
“Good point,” she replied. “So? How was it?”
“Hot as hell, my friend,” I said, recalling the feel of Blake’s body pressed against mine. “It was almost worth having my house burn down for it.”
“You’re really hardcore sometimes, Em,” KO said quietly. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I’m teasing, KO!” I laughed. “It was not worth having my house burn down, but it was an incredibly good consolation prize.”
“You going to see him again?” she asked.
“He’s taking me on a date on Wednesday,” I affirmed.
“You can totally have sex in my bed if you want to,” she offered. “Just change the sheets when you’re done.”
“KO, you’re so weird! I’m staying in the guest room; why would I want to have sex in your room?”
“I’ve got mood lighting in there!” she boasted. I laughed out loud as she went on to describe the various levels of lighting and how I could control them all with the remote she had stashed in the bedside drawer. We spent the next hour laughing and catching up on what Kendra had been doing while at home.
“When do you think you’ll come back?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, Em,” she said, hesitating. “Pop needs an extra set of hands to keep things going here, and my brother isn’t up to the task right now. I’m going to stay a while and see what happens.”
“What about your job?” I asked, as I tried to hide how lonely I was without my best friend, but I also knew that KO loved her fami
ly.
“Eh, they don’t need me to keep things going,” she scoffed. “The guys can pick up a shift or two and cover it for a while, and Arnie said that he’d keep the job open as long as he could.”
“I see,” I said softly.
“Hey, buck up buttercup,” KO urged. “This won’t be forever, and I’ll be back before you know it! Besides, it’s better for you to have the house to yourself right now so you can sneak off and have a roll in the hay with the fireman!”
“Oh God, KO!” I groaned, as I thought about my date with Blake. “I can’t do this!”