Chapter 490 | The Far Side of Sixty-Five

Chapter 490: 490 | The Far Side of Sixty-Five

Kumiko was already gone. She sprinted out the door to 403, bare feet slapping the concrete like applause, and twenty seconds later came back holding the pink onesie over her head like an Olympic torch. Triangle ears on the hood, embroidered whiskers, a tail swinging from a single loop of stitching.

"I measured you with my eyes in October," she announced. "It’s going to fit perfectly. I’m never wrong about shoulders, only about emotions."

"Absolutely not. I am a Van Der Berg."

"Van Der Bergs can be cats, it’s not in your family charter, I checked your Wikipedia."

"My family doesn’t have a Wikipedia."

"It has a stub! It’s a very short stub about a shipping company and a scandal in 1974, and nowhere does it say cats are banned!"

"We don’t talk about 1974."

"I know! Neither does the stub! It’s two sentences!"

Jordan pressed his knuckles to his mouth. Chloe kicked his ankle without looking, which meant his jaw was doing the cocky thing again.

Alexis looked at the onesie, then at the marinade on her cuff.

"Give it to me. If anyone takes a picture, I will end your bloodline."

"My bloodline is mostly fabric," Kumiko said happily, and pushed it into her arms.

Kumiko’s phone, Jordan noticed, was already face down on the cushion, where it couldn’t be accused of anything at all.

Alexis stood, wobbled once in the cat slippers, and walked to the bathroom with the pink fleece clutched to her chest like a stolen file. The door clicked shut.

Chloe walked to the kitchen without a word. Jordan followed. A silent Chloe heading toward a counter was a summons, never a coincidence.

She turned around at the refrigerator, under the sticky note and its frowning stick figure, grabbed the front of his navy shirt, and yanked him down.

"You were staring at her trapezius for the whole five minutes."

"I was massaging her trapezius for the whole five minutes. Staring was part of the job description."

"Mm. Then this is part of mine."

She kissed him hard. Cold chamomile and hotteok honey, and her teeth caught his lower lip and tugged until a sound climbed out of his throat. His back hit the refrigerator, and three magnets broke loose and skittered across the concrete. Clack clack clack.

"Mmmh, Jordan." Against his mouth, her fingers tightening in his hair. "You’re coming upstairs with me tonight, and you’re sleeping on the wall side, and you’re not going to think about anyone’s shoulders but mine."

"Your shoulders are excellent shoulders."

"Hnnn, shut up. Don’t be smooth at me while I’m being jealous."

He cupped the back of her neck, and Master Massage engaged before he meant it to. Heat poured into the base of her skull, and Chloe’s knees buckled against his thigh.

"Ahhh, no, no fair, you can’t use the hands while I’m making a point."

"You started the point on the fridge."

"Nnnngh, I hate you. Keep doing that."

Over her shoulder, Jordan caught movement. Kumiko sat cross-legged on the slipcover with both hands over her face, fingers spread wide enough for both eyes. And the bathroom door had opened a crack, one blue eye peering through the gap above a pink fleece collar.

Chloe heard the hinge. She turned her head halfway without letting go of his hair.

"Get a good look," she told the bathroom door. "That’s what the far side of sixty-five looks like."

The door slammed. Through the wood came a muffled sound that started as a word and ended as a groan.

"I can hear you," Alexis said through the door. "I can hear everything. These walls are paper."

"The walls are brick," Chloe said. "The door is paper."

Kumiko fell backward onto the couch and kicked both feet at the ceiling.

"Chloe-chan! You can’t say things like that, you’ll kill her, she just learned how to say no, she can’t handle a yes!"

"She can handle it fine. She’s a Van Der Berg." Chloe let go of his hair and smoothed his shirt flat, twice, because her hand wouldn’t stop. "Pick up the magnets."

Jordan stuck them back on the freezer door. His lip throbbed in a way that made him feel extremely smug, and he decided he had earned it.

He had been kissed against appliances before, by this exact woman. He had never been kissed against one as a public statement. It turned out to be a different sport, with its own scoring.

"Was that for her," he asked quietly, "or for me?"

Chloe tilted her head and considered it the way she read a lease. "It was for the record."

The bathroom door opened again, slower.

Alexis Van Der Berg walked out in a pink fleece cat onesie, both ears pointing at the ceiling, hair spilling out the front of the hood, tail dragging on the rug. The champagne silk hung folded over her arm. At her wrist, the frayed black cuff poked out from the fleece sleeve. She had kept the henley on underneath.

Kumiko screamed at a frequency that rattled the acoustic panels.

"It fits! I told you it fits, my eyes are never wrong about shoulders!"

"Stop screaming. My ears are in a hood."

She caught her reflection in the microwave door and stopped. For a second Jordan thought she would turn around and lock herself back in the bathroom. Instead she reached up and straightened one ear.

"Your ears are cat ears now, and cat ears can hear everything, that’s the whole point!"

Alexis walked to the sink with her chin high and her tail swinging and scrubbed dish soap into the silk cuff like the marinade had personally insulted her mother. Her shoulders stayed loose the whole time. No hitch on the left.

Chloe watched for four seconds with her arms folded. Then she reached past her without a word, flipped the tap from hot to cold, and went back to the island.

Alexis kept scrubbing, a little gentler now. "Thank you," she told the sink.

"Cold water. I said cold water. Nobody in this apartment listens."

Jordan didn’t say anything. Pointing at a good thing made it run.

Chloe leaned on the island beside him and spoke without moving her lips.

"Stop looking at her shoulders."

"I’m admiring the onesie."

"You’re admiring the trapezius under the onesie, and I’m going to write it down."

"You don’t have a pen."

"I have a memory, Jordan. It’s worse."

Alexis wrung out the silk and draped it over her fleece arm like a waiter’s towel. Then she turned and faced the three of them, pink fleece and ruined mascara and a tail. She did not lift her chin this time.

"Where am I sleeping?"