You and I, Me and You (23 page)

But I wasn't relieved. I was fucking
pissed.
“So you're dumping me because my dog has three names and I've got a real job like a grown-up instead of making chocolate chip cookies and calling it a career?”

“
You
knew I was Aunt Jane before we moved in together! And speaking of careers, I don't want that goddamned George Pinkman in my house, how about that?”

“He's never been in your house!” How dare he disparage my real partner against real crime, George Pinkman, a devoted sociopath who was sworn to fight evil as a fake FBI agent as long as fake BOFFO kept paying the bills?

“I don't want him in my driveway, either!”

“I know he can be unpleasant—”

“Unpleasant?”

I tried to rein in my temper. “Look, this obviously isn't going to work.”

“What I've been saying.”

“Because you're right. If you can't handle three days of this, we're doomed. Because I'm always gonna have to leave at all times of the day and night and I'll never know exactly when I'll be back. And until one of George's one-night stands stabs him in the dick and he bleeds out, he's gonna be my partner, and while I don't exactly want him around, I can't let you forbid his presence in your house.”
His
house, and it always had been. “And I'm always gonna have a dog…” Uh, maybe. How long did dogs live? “… who's gonna have a relationship with all three of us, not just me. That's the real problem, isn't it? You thought you were fine with the three of us. But it's really just me you want.”

“Well.” He hesitated, as if gauging how much truth I wanted. Unlike Cathie, who would just give it to me whether she thought I was up for it or not. “Shiro, sometimes. But not Adrienne, no. I thought it was pretty cool at first, your other personalities. But Adrienne's gonna do something really bad. She could kill me by accident. She'd be sorry later—
you'd
be sorry later—but I'd still be dead.”

Unlikely. Adrienne wasn't around much anymore. But Patrick couldn't know that, because he didn't know me. And that wasn't his fault. The situation was our fault: I had moved in despite misgivings. Shiro had moved in despite misgivings. Adrienne had committed grand-theft auto, either in protest or celebration.

“I think maybe it's good we're figuring this out now,” I told him. The wash of relief over his face was so immediate, I had to grit my teeth not to say something bitchy. “I think it's better we finish tonight rather than limp along for another month or two or six or ten.” His shudder made me wonder if I could actually grit my teeth hard enough to crack a molar. “I'll go to a motel and come back and get my stuff over the next few days.” I realized I couldn't even commit to coming back and getting everything tomorrow. Later today, rather. I had no idea what tomorrow would bring. “I'm sorry. I know you are, too.”

His face sagged, and for a moment I wondered if some of what he had said had been for show. But no … George was right, sometimes my ego did get in the way. If anyone would recognize that quality, it was him. “Yeah. I'm sorry, too. You're being pretty nice about it—this was all my idea. And I pressured you into it. You didn't do one thing wrong. It's on me.”

I smiled and arched my eyebrows. “It's on us. All four of us.”

He smiled, too, and even laughed. After that it was a little better.

 

chapter fifty-seven

He wouldn't let
me go to the motel. He insisted I spend the night in my

(the guest?)

bedroom. “I know you're exhausted, and it's not like we were even sharing a bed.” To his great credit, he didn't sound miffed. “It's stupid to go back out into the dark and the cold for a motel room when there's a perfectly good Patrick-free bed just a few feet from here.” Okay, he sounded a
little
miffed. “You can gallop back into the chaos after a few hours of sleep. In fact, I hate the thought of you paying for motel rooms at all. You wouldn't have given up your apartment if I hadn't talked you into moving.” He was chewing his lower lip and looking through me, not at me, thinking while he talked. “Now you're homeless and it's my fault. That doesn't work for me.”

“It's
my
fault,” I corrected him sharply, then yawned so hard I almost fell down. We agreed to continue the “It's my fault”/“No, it's
my
fault” argument after some sleep.

“At least I can relax now that you're home. As much as I can around you,” he added with (I hoped) unconscious reproach.

I had a dim memory of sitting on my bed and starting to take off my shoes, and then about a second and a half went by and my room was filled with sunshine, I was lying across the bed with one shoe beside me on the mattress and the other still on my foot, and lo and behold, it was a new day.

I knew good solid sleep like that, so long and deep you have no sense of time passing, was the best kind for your body, but I always preferred the nights when I kept waking up.
Oh, good, it's only 1:30; I don't have to get up for six more hours! Oh, good, I still get four more hours. Three more hours.
Like that. That sort of sleep isn't nearly as good for you because you can't get too far into REM sleep. But the night seems to last forever, and when you're a multiple and know the next time you wake up you could be back on mainland China, it's great to wake up over and over in your own bed.

All that to say I knew I'd slept well and was grateful. There were many nights I was exhausted and couldn't get to sleep. Paul's trap for that poor woman, Ian Zimmerman, breaking up with Patrick … Like I said, glad I'd slept well.

I could hear plates clinking and conversation, so I cleaned up as best and as quickly as I could, took a ninety-second shower, pulled random clothes out of a box and got dressed, then stumbled into the kitchen more damp than dry.

And there was Cathie, methodically filling up each dimple in her waffle with exactly the same number of drops of syrup. “Waffles again?” I asked with faux annoyance. “That's how great it was living with him,” I told her so she'd know the deed was done. “Homemade waffles every day.”

Patrick handed me a plate and managed a small smile. I reminded myself that our breakup

(His, honey. You got dumped.)

could have gone much worse and kept the smile on my own face.

“Green jeans—the colored jeans trend is done, by the way—a traffic-cone-orange sweatshirt, and white athletic socks,” Cathie observed. “A bold choice.”

“Back off, it's—”

“Sunday,” Patrick prompted.

“Right. I was testing you. Congrats, you passed.”

“Don't feel bad,” she told her brother. “She ‘tests' me all the time. Listen, Cadence, we've been talking and we've got it.”

“Sorry, what?” Pearl got up from her beloved blanket, slipped over to me with a shyly wagging tail, and nipped a small piece of dry waffle from my fingers. A no-no per both Patrick and Shiro, but heck. I missed my dog and had barely seen her for two days. Three days.

Cathie winced when she saw how heedlessly I splashed maple syrup on my waffles. Not only did different numbers of drops go in each waffle dimple, I wasn't even counting them! Too much to bear.

“The living situation. Oh, God, how can you eat them that way?” She shook herself. “The house. Listen, you know I was gonna put mine on the market sometime next year anyway.”

I nodded, mouth full. Cathie was an artist, a wonderful, gifted, clever artist whose lovely two-bedroom house was too small for her art, some of which was the size of warehouse walls. She needed a proper studio; she needed more storage space; she needed south-facing windows; she needed kitchen grout she wasn't compelled to clean with a toothpick. (Your garden-variety OCD sufferer would be content to clean it with a toothbrush. Not my girl.) She had been talking about selling the place for over two years.

“Well, I like it here. And Patrick just moved here.”

I winced and glanced at him. “Sorry you had to uproot your life.”

He shrugged. “I was moving back to Minnesota anyway.” That, thank goodness, was true. He'd lived here as a boy, and always meant to return.

“Right, and now he has. Sure, he barely got here and your relationship went ker-smash—”

He and I groaned in unison.

“—so I figured, I'll move in here. It's plenty big, and he says I can have the whole living room for a studio if I want.” In her enthusiasm, her face brightened and her tone lightened. “Plenty of windows, lots of natural light, and he can make one of the bedrooms, or the den, or the backyard, I don't care, into a living room. And … you know.” She was now cutting her waffle on the dotted lines, so to speak, and then cutting them into their little individual squares. “We haven't seen much of each other for a decade. We've been talking about it, and we think it'd be nice to be roomies for a while. I'll keep my eye out for another house but will live here in the meantime.”

“That's great,” I said sincerely, “but what's that got to—”

“So I'll rent my house to you,” she explained as if to a dunce. Which is what I was; I probably should have seen where this was going. I couldn't blame the distraction of watching her “eat.” She'd been eating her breakfast like that for decades. “Or sell it to you, if you think you want to live there permanently. You've got somewhere to sleep tonight, you're not blowing your pathetic government salary on awful motel rooms, I've got space and light to work, and Patrick doesn't come home to an empty house. But you've gotta take the dog with you. Find a doggy day care or whatever. I can't be around her without wanting to mop her.” She began to eat the tiny individual waffle squares, chewing each one five times. “So how does that sound?”

I hugged her so hard I got syrup in my hair.

 

chapter fifty-eight

Cadence had gotten
syrup in our hair, which was annoying despite the circumstances. I will not deny I was somewhat irked at the thought of Patrick breaking up with us, but I was better at reading kinetics than she was. I think at least a third of his stance and reaction was a put-on. Whether he did it out of honest inability to tolerate the admitted stressors of living with a multiple, sensed the end was near and made a preemptive strike, or a little of both, I, like Cadence, was relieved. And I found Cathie's solution not only tactful, but elegant. Cadence had excellent taste in friends.

It also left me free to make a phone call, which is why I was at the Barnes and Noble in downtown Minneapolis on a Sunday morning when Dr. Gallo slouched in.

“Oh, good,” he said, spotting me in the small downstairs café, which could be difficult to find, what with all the books in the bookstore. He waved the small bakery bag at me. “I wanted a Rice Krispie bar. And maybe a book, I dunno. Stranger things have happened in bookstores.”

“You even slouch when you walk,” I observed as he sat across from me at a table so small our knees touched. I did not trouble to move mine, so he cleared his throat and moved his, looking uncomfortable. He was in clean, faded blue jeans, a red button-down shirt, and the ubiquitous leather jacket. His face was flushed from the cold—the wind had kissed roses into his cheeks, and his black eyes sparkled. “You have dreadful posture.”

“It works for me,” he said cheerfully. “Comes from cringing away from hits when you're a little kid, then growing into a big kid and adopting shitty posture to piss off the grown-ups.”

I couldn't help but smile. It was a distressing revelation, but he said it in such a cheery, matter-of-fact manner it was impossible to flinch away from it. “So it does. I shall never disparage your shitty posture again.” I cracked a knuckle and felt my eyes narrow. “Perhaps sometime we could visit your hometown. I should like to visit your family.”

“Said the armed FBI agent. Tempting, I'll admit. Never mind. I made my peace with those people a long time ago.” He took a bit of his Rice Krispie bar—ugh. A mound of sugary cereal held together with butter and marshmallows. My God. The humanity. “And hey! Thanks for the invite. I know you've gotta be busy. I didn't expect you to regale me less than twelve hours after you busted Sussudio. And put me on the list of people unsurprised you hauled his ass in. You should be running your division.”

“Thank you.”

“Seriously. You are incredible at your job. Do you know how safe I feel in this city knowing you're running around kicking ass?”

“I have ended my previous relationship because we were not truly in love. However, I
am
truly in love with you, Dr. Gallo.”

He froze in mid-chomp, then sucked in a breath. A wayward Krispie must have fluttered into his windpipe, because he began to cough. Before he cleared it I was on my feet, had pulled him to his, and was pounding his back. The Heimlich was no good; he was getting air.

“Kak—gak! Gah. Better.” He sucked in a deep breath. “That's … okay.” His face had gone so deep a red it was almost purple.

“Perhaps I should have found another way to share that with you,” I worried. “If you have a fragile constitution this may not work.”

He set down the Krispie bar (he had clutched it during his coughing spell), seized me around the waist, and yanked me forward. For a moment I thought lack of oxygen was making him pass out and he was clutching me in an attempt to save himself from collapsing to the floor. Then his warm mouth settled over mine with such possessiveness that
I
nearly collapsed to the floor.

It was like no other kiss. His hands pressed me to him; he was standing so close his knee was between mine. One hand was in the middle of my back, the other on the back of my neck. His tongue parted my lips and delved, stroked, tasted. It is embarrassing to admit: I did little but hold on.