Eight

“Come on, Cheddar!” Jasmine was on her knees, pleading with the cat who had wedged himself under the couch in the front window of the cafe. She had already finished closing up for the evening, feeling good about being ahead of schedule and having enough time to freshen up and maybe even throw on some mascara before Burak arrived at her apartment to pick her up.

That was, of course, until Cheddar staged a silent protest, his eyes reflecting wide pupils back at her as she shined her cell phone’s flashlight under the piece of furniture.

There was no good reason for him to be under the couch, nothing that Jasmine could wrap her mind around anyway. There hadn’t been any loud noises or bigger cats coming down with a case of the zoomies and chasing him around.

No, everything had been business as usual while she had finished washing up and wiping down the tables. It was only when she had unzipped the cat backpack and crouched down on her knees that Cheddar had made a beeline for the furthest corner of the couch.

“Oh, duh. Of course.” Jasmine smacked her forehead lightly with her open palm. Was this the worst possible moment for Cheddar to develop an aversion to the backpack? Or would any moment actually be inconvenient and annoying?

“This isn’t going to work, buddy,” she called under the couch, willing the cat to understand the full weight of her words. “The backpack is a necessary evil. The alternative is staying at the apartment all day, and we all know you don’t want that.” It went without saying that after his last stunt with the curtains, staying at the cafe overnight wasn’t even an option. 

She tried everything. With the enticement of a tasty treat, Cheddar edged closer to the front of the couch, but scooted back as soon as she moved the treat a few inches closer to herself. When she dangled his favorite toy, a paw darted out from under the couch, but disappeared just as quickly.

Jasmine checked the time, dismayed to see that she was going to be late. Burak was due to pick her up at her apartment in five minutes, and even if Cheddar leaped out from the couch and straight into her backpack, there was no way she would be there in time.

She texted him.

“I’m still at the cafe, trying to get Cheddar out from under the couch. Can you pick me up there instead?” 

“And if you happen to be able to coax a kitten out of his hiding place, then that would be great, too,” she muttered to herself as she got to her feet. She certainly hoped Burak would prove able to work a kitten-wrangling miracle, or else the future prospects of the curtains weren’t looking good.

Just a few moments later, there was a gentle knock on the door and Jasmine hurried over to unlock it as Burak’s eyes found hers when he leaned in, shielding his face with his hand to cut the glare.

“I heard there was an emergency?” he said with a smile, holding up a plastic bag. 

She studied the bag for a second with a raised eyebrow before nodding at him. “Emergency might be a strong word, but there’s definitely an unmanageable situation. I’ve never quite figured out how to get Cheddar to do something he doesn’t want to do before, and I think he’s finally clued in to what happens at this time of day, specifically that it’s when he gets unceremoniously scooped into the cat backpack and has to make the bumpy journey home, and even though he really likes being at home, I don’t exactly think he likes getting there—”

“Breathe, Jasmine.” Burak’s hands were on her upper arms, a thrill of electricity coursing between the two points of contact as he leaned down to look into her eyes. “I realize this seems like a very serious problem right now, but I promise it isn’t fatal. Cheddar isn’t stuck under the couch, right? Pinned underneath it somehow?”

Jasmine recoiled. “No, of course not.”

“Right. Good.” Burak nodded. “I figured if that were the case, you would have lifted the couch off him, like an adrenaline-fueled mother lifting a car to save a child. So the way I see it, as long as he isn’t stuck, he’s got to come out at some point. He’ll get hungry or thirsty or bored or need to use the litter box.”

Jasmine grimaced. “Right, but we don’t have the time to wait it out.” She checked the time again. “We’re supposed to leave, well…now if we’re going to meet Celia and Enes on time.”

He raised one eyebrow at her. “And you don’t think they would understand if you pushed our meeting back or even rescheduled it for a different day?”

“Of course they would.” She gulped. “But we don’t have the time for that, Burak. The colony…the more we delay this, the more of a last-minute disaster it’s going to be. And I want to do this right.”

He paused for a moment before dropping his hands and stepping away from her towards the couch. “You text your friends, or call them, whatever sort of communication you all like to use with each other…tell them to order drinks without us and we’ll be there as soon as we can. Hopefully in no more than half an hour.”

Jasmine turned her head to the side, studying him from a different angle. “And what are you going to do?”

“I…” He rubbed his palms together and crouched down in front of the couch. “…am going to work a miracle.”

Jasmine shook her head at him, but managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes. His comment may have sounded cocky out of context, but for just this moment she was willing to suspend her disbelief and take a chance on the fact that, just maybe, Burak was about to bail her out. And if he didn’t succeed, it’s not as if she would be any worse off than she already was.

She fired off her message to Celia and then turned to find Burak crouched down in front of the couch, making soft noises to Cheddar. She couldn’t make out what he was saying, so she simply stopped and observed.

“Er…what can I do?” she asked with hesitation.

He looked over his shoulder at her, giving her a smile and a small shake of his head. “You can put your feet up for a minute and take a break. We’re just having a little man-to-man chat over here, but we’ll figure it out. You don’t need to worry about a thing.”

“Are you sure? I could—” She was gesturing towards the back of the cafe, formulating some vague plan of finding something there to entice Cheddar out from his hiding place when Burak interrupted her thoughts.

“I’m sure,” he said. He nodded towards the bag he had dropped on the floor next to himself. “I brought reinforcements.”

With only thinly veiled curiosity, Jasmine took a seat where she could watch Burak unseen. She smiled at the gentle way he spoke to the cat, at his eagerness to help her out, to solve this problem for her, at every new treat and toy he pulled out of the bag.

And sure enough, it worked. It was only a few moments before Burak held Cheddar in his hands, and if the loud purrs emanating from the small beast were any indication, they were equally pleased about it. Burak was grinning, his chest puffed out in pride, and Jasmine rushed to her feet to approach them, holding out the backpack for Burak to deposit the cat inside.

“That’s amazing. You really are a cat whisperer,” she said. “That gives me a lot of hope for our colony relocation plan. Thank you so much.” But as she held the backpack closer to Cheddar, he began to scramble, trying to get away. “Why does he hate this thing all of a sudden?” She lowered the backpack, her free hand coming up to her forehead. “I don’t know what I'm going to do if this becomes a nightly occurrence.”

“Hey.” Burak’s hands were both occupied with Cheddar, who was scrambling less but still not back to his previous relaxed state, so he reached with his elbow to nudge her upper arm. “We’ll figure it out.”

Jasmine scoffed before she could stop herself. “Sorry, but you being a cat whisperer doesn’t exactly help me long-term, now does it? Unless you’re saying you want to do this every evening.” She gestured towards the cat, who was now cuddled against Burak’s chest, once again purring.

Burak tilted his head down, looking at her through his lashes. “While that wasn’t what I was offering, I’d gladly do it if the need arose.” He looked down at the cat, scratching him behind his ear. “This little guy is growing on me, and I don’t actually mind spending the time with you either.”

She felt her cheeks heat at his words, but before she could object, he kept going.

“I just meant there has to be a solution. Maybe it’s forming a positive connotation with the backpack for him. Have you tried that?”

Jasmine shook her head, a sudden awareness that she was the least qualified person in the room to run a cat cafe dawning on her. “I know it’s important to get them used to new things, but…well, the first time I put him in the backpack, I just really needed to get home and get him there with me. I know it wasn’t ideal, but I sort of figured that with time, he would get used to it.”

Burak turned Cheddar over in his arms, stroking his belly as the cat stretched its paws up towards his face. Jasmine felt a pang in her chest at the cuteness of the moment, forcing her eyes to stay locked on Burak’s so that she wouldn’t say “Aww” out loud.

“Well, why don’t we try something different today?” Burak tilted his head towards the bag he had brought with him. “Maybe a treat and a toy that he only gets when he’s in the backpack…do you think that could work?”

“It already sounds better than just being unceremoniously shoved in there, doesn’t it?” She was nodding as she spoke, for the first time letting herself feel hopeful that they might actually figure this particular dilemma out.

Five minutes later, Cheddar was in the backpack, curled on his side with a catnip mouse clasped in his front paws as he bunny kicked it with his back legs. Burak finished zipping the closure shut and then turned to face Jasmine.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t. And even though I’m thinking of all the ways it might not work in the future…” She trailed off, letting herself smile at him.

“It’s enough to be glad that it worked tonight, isn’t it?”

She nodded, feeling her smile spread wider. “It is. And I couldn’t have done it without you.” She surprised herself by reaching for his hand, her palm settling across the back of his knuckles. “Thank you. Really. You saved us both.”

Burak gave her a grin that crinkled his eyes at the corner. “You are very welcome, though I fully believe you would have managed just fine without me. I’m still glad I could be here to share the experience.” He picked up the backpack and nodded towards the door. “Now, shall we get this little fellow home to your apartment so we can get on with our evening?”

Jasmine reached for the backpack, but Burak shook his head, lifting it to his own shoulder as he nodded towards his car. As they left the cafe, locking the door behind her, she felt a faint flutter of butterflies at the awareness that Burak was accompanying to her home—well, to Viola’s home, but it was still the place where she lived and slept and let her guard down. This hadn’t been included in their original plan, of course. He was supposed to be downstairs waiting for her, and she was going to make a dramatic entrance, not at all unlike a scene from a teen movie, and there would be no need at all for him to come upstairs, to enter her space.

She was unusually quiet on the journey, speaking up only to tell Burak where to turn as her mind raced through different possibilities. Was there a way to keep him waiting in the car? Something to distract him with there? And if he did come upstairs, were her freshly laundered bras and underwear really laid out on the drying rack in her kitchen, or was that just the stuff of a bad dream?

She had almost settled on handing him her phone and telling him he simply had to try playing the latest matching game she had downloaded—though why sharing her unlocked cell phone with him unsupervised felt less invasive than letting him into her grandmother’s apartment was a mystery of the highest order—when they arrived in the parking lot of her building.

“I can wait here,” Burak offered, not meeting her eyes. “You can run up and drop off Cheddar, and I’m sure you don’t need me for that.”

Jasmine shook her head at herself, at what she was about to say. Why was it that the slight flush of his cheeks, the hesitation and vulnerability that suggested he would love to accompany her upstairs but didn’t feel he had the right to ask…why was it that all of that made her want to let him in?

“Nonsense,” she said as she unbuckled her seatbelt. “Who’s going to play with Cheddar while I freshen up if you stay down here?” And with that she opened the door, slid out of the car, and started walking towards the door, knowing without even bothering to look that Burak was right behind her. She kept herself moving, kept the momentum pushing her forward so that she could avoid asking herself why she was suddenly willing to let down one layer of boundaries with this man, why the thought of having him in her home, sitting on her couch was suddenly something she desired rather than something that would make her shudder with dread.

They made it up the stairs of the old building in record time, and before Jasmine knew it, they were in front of the apartment door, unlocking the deadbolt as they both slipped off their shoes and Cheddar meowed in anticipation. “Oh right, I should probably warn you,” said Jasmine over her shoulder as she made the final turn of the key. “There’s another cat inside, and he’s probably going to be nowhere near as happy to see you as Cheddar will be when we let him out. I just want to manage your expectations, so you don’t take it personally when Gator sniffs you and then promptly hides himself under the bed.”

Burak chuckled softly, and she was suddenly aware of just how close behind her he was as she felt the sound even more than she heard it. “I appreciate the warning,” he said, touching the backpack that was slung over her shoulder. “How does Cheddar feel about Gator? Do they get along?”

“Oh, he’s obsessed with him. Typical orange cat antics, as far as I understand. And he’s completely unbothered by Gator’s indifference. It works for now, at least, and I’m hopeful that by the time he’s old enough to settle down a bit, they’ll get along just great.”

They were inside now, and Jasmine slipped the backpack to the ground to release Cheddar into the hallway of the apartment. Just as she had predicted, Gator poked his head into the hallway from the bedroom before disappearing back inside.

She gestured towards the living room, cringing at the sight of her drying rack full of intimate apparel. Rushing in ahead of Burak, she awkwardly folded the drying rack on itself, no small feat considering that it was still loaded down with socks and underwear. “Why don’t you have a seat in here?” she offered, squeezing through the doorway with the metal contraption banging against the walls. “I’ll just take this…”

Inside her bedroom, Jasmine closed the door behind her, leaning against it and letting her head drop into the wood. Gator was watching her from the bed with an appraising eye, and she shook her head at him. “Don’t even start with me. You’re the one hanging out in here when you could be out there sniffing a handsome stranger and having the time of your life.”

Jasmine took a quick moment to change into a dress—the adventure of the couch had definitely made her work up a sweat—and throw her hair in a clip. She opened a tube of red lipstick, about to swipe it across her lips when she hesitated. “Is this too much?” she asked Gator. “Is he going to think I’m trying to impress him?”

Gator stretched and rolled onto his other side, the picture of unbothered feline bliss. 

“Good point,” said Jasmine with a nod. “We are going out on the town after all. And meeting friends, too. Lipstick it is.”

When she emerged from the bedroom a few moments later, Gator was at her heels, as if he had heeded her words and really did want to meet Burak—or as if he wanted to be entertained by whatever reaction her makeover drummed up.

Jasmine wasn’t sure what she had expected to find in the living room, but judging by Cheddar’s typical energy level after a day at the cafe, there wasn’t much that would have surprised her. Hanging from a light fixture? That wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. Tap dancing across lit flames on the gas stove? It hadn’t happened before, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen one day.

The only thing she definitely hadn’t expected to find was Cheddar snuggled into the crook of Burak’s arm, sound asleep with his fuzzy belly exposed. Even more surprising than that, Burak was petting said belly…and there was no blood dripping from his hand at all, no indication of any kind that Cheddar had attacked him for daring to touch his soft fur.

“Huh.” The words came out before Jasmine could stop them, and Burak’s head turned with a jerk to look at her over his shoulder.

“Hi,” he said. His smile was sheepish, morphing into something unrecognizable as his eyes scanned her, taking in her transformation of the previous moments. He swallowed, blinking slowly. “You look nice,” he said, at last, before glancing down at himself. “Now I’m wondering if I’m too casual to be seen next to you.”

“Nonsense,” said Jasmine with a wave of her hand, once again looking for some surface she could busy herself with tidying rather than coming closer to Burak. She found the mug from her early morning coffee in the sink and set to washing it, glancing over her shoulder at Burak. “Besides, orange cat hair really elevates any outfit.”

He grimaced. “Right, didn’t think about that.” He was looking down at the kitten with such a soft smile that Jasmine had to look away. “It wasn’t as if I could say no to him, though. He might actually be the cutest cat I’ve ever met, but don’t tell anyone I said that.”

When the mug was rinsed and placed in the drying rack, Jasmine wiped her hands on a dish towel before taking a few tentative steps towards Burak. “Your secret’s safe with me, but I’m not entirely sure who you’re keeping it from. Is it that you don’t want anyone to know that you’re a softie who loves cats? Because if they see you feeding the strays, the jig will definitely be up.”

Burak slid Cheddar from his lap, repositioning him on the couch cushion so seamlessly that his eyes only blinked open for a slow second before he settled back into his sleep. “No.” Burak’s voice was quieter as he got up, easing himself away from Cheddar. “I don’t want him to know. Don’t want it to go to his head.” He shrugged. “And it’s probably for the best if the other cats don’t know either. Don’t want the secret that I have a favorite to get out.”

Gator took that moment to issue a plaintive meow, and Burak bit his lower lip with chagrin.

“Hey buddy. Didn’t see you there,” he said, dropping to a knee to hold out a hand for Gator to sniff. “Isn’t this Ms. Viola’s cat?”

Jasmine nodded. “He is, but he stayed behind. Something about pets not being allowed on the cruise ship.”

Burak looked around the room as he got back to his feet. “Won’t you miss all of this when she comes back? What are you going to do then?” His eyes widened as soon as the question was out, as if he had surprised himself by asking about it. “Sorry, that’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s okay.” She gestured towards the door. “We can head out, and I’ll answer your question on the way. That’ll give me a minute to think about what my answer is.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly, but started to move towards the door. “You really haven’t thought about it? Doesn’t that stress you out?”

Jasmine sighed. “It’s not that, not really. I was so aimless before I came here, that I’ve really just been enjoying the steady routine. The regular rhythm of opening the cafe, knowing what each day holds. Even having the time to paint again a little bit.”

“You paint?” They had made it to the door by then, but Burak paused with his hand on the knob, looking around as if evidence of Jasmine’s painting was hiding somewhere he could see if he just craned his neck a little more.

She nodded, placing a hand on his shoulder to urge him forward and feeling a twinge of surprise or electricity at the contact. “I do, but that’s a story for another time.”

“You’ll show me your work the next time I come over?”

Through gritted teeth, she answered. “Fine.”

She could hear the smile in Burak’s voice. “Then it’s a date.”