Nine-tenths of the Law

Chapter Fifteen

Eventually, Nathan rolled onto his back and I turned on my side.

My speech was slurred as I said, “Aren’t you glad we didn’t waste time getting my car?”

“Anything to get us here and-what the?” My two cats suddenly appeared on the bed, one of them wandering up between us. The other leapt onto Nathan’s chest and eyed him suspiciously. Nathan stared back, looking simultaneously startled and amused. “Um, hi.”

“Homer, move, you little shit.” I shoved the cat off Nathan, pushing him toward our feet.

“Homer?” Nathan laughed and scratched the other cat’s ears. “So who is this? Marge?”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s Plato.”

“Plato,” he said. The cat in question glared at him as if to say what of it? Nathan laughed. “So I guess there’s no Bart running around, then?”

“No,” I chuckled. “There was a Socrates, but he’s gone the way of the real Socrates.”

“You fed him hemlock poison?” He shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Philistine.”

“Hardly.” I eyed the cats, then looked at Nathan. “Hope you don’t mind cats. They think they own the place, so…”

He smiled, scratching Plato’s chin. “Nah, I like them,” he said. “In fact, I’ve been meaning to get a couple ever since I bought the house. Just never did because-” His fingers stopped moving on the cat’s chin in the same instant his speech halted. I watched him, wondering if he’d continue. Plato glared at him, silently demanding to know why the chin-scratching had ceased.

“Nathan?”

He swallowed, then shook his head and absently resumed scratching the cat as he looked at me. “I was just going to say.” He paused again. “I’ve been meaning to get a couple of cats, but someone didn’t like them.”

“Oh, right.” I nodded. Jake had tolerated my cats, but there was no love lost between them. That was one reason we spent more nights at his place than mine.

Nathan cleared his throat. “There was some talk of him moving in,” he said quietly. “So it didn’t make sense to get a cat if he was going to be living there any time soon.”

“You guys were going to move in together?” I said.

He laughed bitterly. “Well, we talked about it. Never actually made any motions to go through with it.” Plato, evidently satisfied with Nathan’s attention, turned around and jumped to the floor with a dull thump. Homer followed, leaving us alone on the bed.

I moved closer to Nathan, resting my head on his chest as he put his arm around my shoulders.

Running his fingers up and down my arm, he said, “You know, I wondered for a while why he never wanted to move in. I thought he didn’t want to give up his bachelor pad.” He sighed. “Guess he just didn’t want to give up being a bachelor.”

“Do you think-” I hesitated, then looked up at him. “Do you think he cheated all along? Or was I the first?”

He pursed his lips and something like anger flickered across his face, but his gentle fingertips running through my hair told me it wasn’t meant for me. Taking a breath, he said, “I don’t know. I really don’t. You were the only one I knew about for certain.”

“Do you think there were others?” Jake was the last person in the world I wanted to talk about, but still I asked. On some level, I needed to know if there were more, as if it would somehow temper my guilt to know I wasn’t the only one.

He rubbed his forehead with his free hand and exhaled. “There may have been more,” he said. “But I didn’t suspect him until I suspected him with you. Were there others before you or at the same time? No idea.”

So much for settling my nerves, then.

“He’s in the past, though,” he went on. “We can’t change what he did, but at least it’s in the past.” He trailed his fingertips down the side of my face. “That’s why we’re here and he’s not.” It was his smile that finally calmed my nerves.

Running my hand across his shoulder and down his arm, I smiled back. “I could think of some better common ground to start on, but…” I gave a half-shrug. “I rather like where it’s gotten us.”

He shifted onto his side, facing me. “I can’t argue with that.” He kissed me gently, then pulled me closer. “Can’t argue with that at all.”