Of all the things Izzy thought she would be doing on this day, apologizing to a cat wasn’t one of them. But it seemed the least she could do.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said. “This is horrible.”
His gray tail lashed back and forth, the crooked part thumping on the floor. His eyes were wide open, the pupils dilated into large black pools.
“It was a mistake. A big…no, a huge one.” Then she stopped. To be fair, even mistake was an understatement, given Sam’s current state.
The cat yowled again, this time with a full-throated rage that didn’t require translation. The receptionist on the other side of the glass door rose from her seat, mouth pursed, so Izzy grabbed the angry cat, holding him tight as she bolted for the elevator.
“We have to get you out of here.”
A hiss.
“I said I’m sorry. Really, really sorry.” The elevator pinged, and the door slid smoothly open. “I’ll take you back to my place until you’re…you know, yourself again.”
A second hiss. Louder this time.
Izzy punched the button for the lobby, looking at the backlit panel, the mirrored ceiling, the gold railings. Anywhere but directly at Sam. “You don’t have to yell at me,” she said. “I already feel bad enough.”
He squirmed, and she shifted his weight to hold him. He wasn’t making it easy.
“Just be quiet while I try and fix this.”
Instead, he continued the person vs. cat wrestling match until he stopped abruptly, staring at Izzy, his ears back, his expression startled. The elevator door pinged open and she realized her right hand was now on top of something soft but hard at the same time. She followed the cat’s gaze to see her hand firmly closed over the cat’s—um, Sam’s—furry penis.
Her eyes widened. She looked at him. He looked at her. She dropped him to the floor.
He landed on his feet with a thump and walked through the elevator door, alternately stalking and shaking. The one thing he didn’t do was turn around. It had to be an adjustment, she admitted, having your business on display like that for anyone to touch. Except that she wasn’t anyone; she was his best friend. And, truth be told, she’d been wanting to touch the human version of that for some time now.
Izzy squeezed her eyes shut then opened them and went through the door. Her dignity limped behind.
* * *
It was a good thing Sam followed her to her car, since she didn’t dare look until she reached it. She opened the door, and he hopped in to burrow into a spot on the floor in back where she couldn’t see him.
Izzy punched on her Bluetooth and tried the voodoo woman again, but the call went to voicemail. There was no way of telling how long this would last. Could be minutes or—Izzy gulped—years? Next, she called in to her office, letting them know she was headed home because she didn’t feel well. No shit.
When she opened the door to her apartment, Sam ran in ahead of her and leapt up to sit on the windowsill in her kitchen, eyes accusing, tail swishing.
Confession time. Izzy sat down.
“You might have already figured it out, but I did this.”
More swishing of his tail. A death stare, if she’d ever seen one. Which she hadn’t. From a cat, anyway.
“I didn’t mean to. Not at all. It was sort of, you know, a joke. Some magical powder I bought from a woman in New Orleans. I never thought it would actually do anything.” She drew a long breath. “You kept talking about Erica and it was getting really annoying and I…I…” The truth only had to go so far. “This wasn’t supposed to happen, but it turns out the stuff can’t go into a hot drink or…something else can happen.” She gestured toward him. “This kind of a something else.”
Sam tipped his head, listening. For one crazy moment she was tempted to tell him the truth about why she’d done what she had. But the moment passed.
He raised a paw to scratch behind his ear.
“I know,” Izzy said miserably. “I’m sorry. I really am. But it’s temporary, the woman said. We just have to get you through this until you’re back to your normal self.”
He’d probably never speak to her again after this. She couldn’t blame him. The ramifications of what she’d done weighed her shoulders down until she felt as though she could dissolve into a pool of guilt on the wooden floorboards. Instead, she sank into the sofa. What an idiot she was.
She dropped her chin, tears filling her eyes, and she heard a soft thud as Sam the cat landed on the floor and then padded his way over to her. He jumped up onto her lap. She put a tentative hand on his fur, and when he didn’t pull away, she wrapped both of her arms around him.
They stayed that way for a few minutes, Izzy’s head buried in the softness of his furry neck, until she felt a sandpaper tongue begin to lick the dampness from her cheeks.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I’ll fix this. I promise.”
He quit licking and meowed, a long wailing sound obviously meant to tell her something. Then he jumped from her lap.
“What is it?” Izzy asked.
Sam ran down the hallway, turning at the bathroom. Izzy followed.
“Oh! I didn’t even think about…that. I’ll go to the store. Get some…you know. A cat box. You wait here. I’ll be right back.”
An offended screech stopped her in her tracks. She turned back, venturing a look at Sam. He had jumped up on the toilet, trying to straddle what was, for a cat, a slippery seat.
“Oh,” Izzy said. “Of course you don’t want a box. You know how to…um…”
He glared at her.
“Right. Privacy.” She pulled the door shut. “Let me know when you’re done.”
She leaned against the closed door, letting her back slide against it until she landed on the floor. Things would never be the same between them again, now that she’d touched his business and taken him to the bathroom.
A few minutes later, she heard the toilet flush and a thump as Sam hit the floor. She wasn’t even going to think about how he’d managed. Instead, she reached up for the handle and opened the door. He brushed past.
“Are you hungry?” She rose to follow him to the kitchen. “I’ll go get cat food.”
He paused in his travel across her counters to throw her that death stare once more.
“Can’t blame you. I’m not sure what they put in that stuff.” She opened a cupboard where she’d lined the cans up in neat, alphabetic rows. “So, what appeals to you?”
Sam scrutinized them with a long, slow gaze. Finally, he stretched upward, resting his paws on the shelf. He batted at a can of tuna until it broke free from the others and clattered to the counter.
“O-kay! Tuna it is!”
But even as she tried to sound cheerful, she couldn’t manage. So instead she concentrated on finding him a plate and serving him the tuna on a pristine leaf of lettuce. Presentation, after all.
The cat ate hungrily while Izzy made herself a drink and went to sit on the sofa. After a few minutes, Sam jumped up to sit on the opposite end.
“I’d offer you one,” she said, indicating her glass, “but I don’t know what a Skinnygirl Cosmo would do to a cat.”
He answered with a look of disdain.
“Don’t judge me,” she muttered as she downed the drink and abandoned the glass in favor of drinking from the bottle.
The silence in her apartment was unsettling. She flipped the TV on to one of the reality shows she and Sam constantly made fun of, hoping it would relax him. And her. After a bit, he lay down on the couch and began licking the fur on his legs. Then he stopped abruptly, stared at her and back at the TV, laying his head down.
She’d never wanted to hear him laugh as much as she did right now. After trying to keep up a running commentary for first one reality show and then a second, she realized she was slurring her words. Sam probably realized it, too. He stared at her glass, now empty.
It was too much to take in one day. Way too much. And what if the spell or whatever it was didn’t fix itself? She laid her head down on the couch and shut her eyes, lulled into drowsiness by alcohol and the effort of pushing away a guilty conscience.
A meow woke her, and she stumbled to her feet. It was dark outside.
“Goodnight,” she said, and she staggered toward her bedroom.
At the doorway she stopped, hand on the frame. “I…” What could she say? Apologize again? As if that would do any good. “See you…see you in the morning.” She choked back a tear that caught in her throat. She didn’t look back to see if he’d moved.
When she reached the bed, she didn’t bother getting undressed, just kicked off her shoes and flopped onto the mattress, waiting for the mindless release of sleep. But her rest was fitful as she dreamt of the voodoo woman’s dire warning, of Sam going from cat to a furious leaping tiger, of Erica Vang in a judge’s robe sentencing her to prison for malicious mischief involving a lawyer.
In the midst of the last dream Izzy pulled her stuffed animal tighter then woke, disoriented when she realized she didn’t have a stuffed animal, especially one that was warm and made noise. She looked down to see Sam the cat sleeping beside her, purring softly, his body pressed into her chest. It felt good to have him there, even in this form.
Izzy stroked his fur, watching as her fingertips made soft lines in the gray. Brain still cloaked in the fog of alcohol, she murmured, “I never should have told you I loved you today, Sam. It’s a good thing you didn’t hear me or things would be even worse.”
One of his back legs stretched and Izzy’s heart raced, but he didn’t wake. She dropped a gentle kiss on his head and added, “If Erica’s the one you want, she’s the one you should have. Who would want a frizzy mess like me who can’t even follow the directions for a love potion?”
She sighed, her breath ruffling his whiskers. Good thing he wasn’t awake, she thought, or the alcohol fumes would knock him out.
“I’ll help you get a date with her. I’d do anything for you.” Her eyes grew heavier. “Anything,” she whispered. “I love you.” She let her eyes close, and the last of her words drifted in the air above them. “And I always will.”
* * *
Ow. Light—a flashlight or searchlight or something—shone on Izzy as her head pounded.
“What the—?”
She opened one eye and then the other, cringing at the pain. The sun. It was shining through the thin white shabby chic curtains across her front window. Her head. It hurt. Seriously. How much had she had to drink last night? Oh, right.
She groaned and tried to move, but something blocked her. Something big.
She forced her eyes open the rest of the way and realized the something-big was a man, a man curled up next to her on the bed, his warm back pressed into her chest.
Sam. Human Sam. With his face tucked into his arms and his feet pulled up, his once-crisp shirt stretched tight and his tie flipped over. She screeched as she realized who it was, and he jerked awake at the sound, his arms shooting up and his legs shooting down, to topple her off the bed and onto the carpet. After a long moment, his face peered over the side of the bed. He stared at her.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
“W-what?” was all she could manage in response.
He blinked. “Why am I at your place? What time is it?”
He didn’t know? Thank God. The voodoo gods had seen fit to give her that much, at least. Izzy propped herself up on her arms.
“Izzy. I’m not kidding. Tell me what happened.” He shook his head then licked his lips, confused. He reached a hand up to pull something off of his tongue and stared at what his fingers held. “Cat hair? I don’t have a cat. Do you?”
“Me?” Izzy shook her head. “Um…no.”
“We must have had one hell of a night.”
If only.
He tried to laugh and then broke off. “You’re on the floor.”
“You knocked me off the bed.”
His mouth twitched. “I…? Hold on.” He pointed at himself then Izzy, then the bed. “Did we…? You know.”
“Sleep together? Yes.”
His eyes widened.
“But nothing happened. We slept.”
Sam sucked in a breath and sat upright. So did Izzy, still watching him from the floor.
“Nothing?”
“I might have snored.”
Did he look disappointed that they’d only slept? Hope crept upward, wearing, as usual, clumsy shoes.
“Oh.” He stared at her closet where three of her bras hung over the knob in a riot of lace and color. “Because I wouldn’t want to not remember if it had been something…else.”
Hope tripped over her heart, stumbling in confused glee and sending instructions to throw her arms around Sam and take him right there, right then, on her bed. With her bras watching in approval.
Good thing hope wasn’t the boss of her, because she’d just realized he’d only said he wouldn’t want to not know. He hadn’t said why he wouldn’t want to know.
She shot to her feet with a quickness that would have impressed a pole-vaulter but greatly disappointed her head, which added dizziness to its pounding. “I’ll get breakfast,” she said, holding the wall for support. She must look a wreck, she realized, with mascara streaked down her face and yesterday’s clothes sticking to her. No wonder Sam would want to know. He’d want to know if he’d done something he’d regret.
“Izzy!”
She ignored him, leaving the room, grabbing her purse from the kitchen table and shoving her feet into some shoes. She got out the door of her apartment as fast as she could and then drove three miles to find jelly doughnuts. Also, she made sure her hair was combed and her makeup cleaned up, at least as much as she could manage by examining herself one quadrant at a time in the rearview mirror of her car.
By the time she returned, Sam was gone. Izzy set her purse on the table and her keys next to it. She laid the box of two jelly doughnuts on her kitchen counter. Then she went into her bedroom, flopped on the bed and cried.