Chapter 324: Hello, Kira

He called Tasha from the car.

It rang twice and she picked up with the specific energy of someone who was already in the middle of something and had answered without fully leaving it.

"Hey," she said.

"Where are you," he said.

"Pet store," she said. "Tim’s. On Caldwell Road. I’m here with Kira."

He looked at the road ahead. "I’ll be there shortly."

A pause on her end. "Okay," she said, and the okay was not warm but it was not closed either, which he decided to take as something.

He drove.

---

Tim’s Pet Store was the kind of small business that had decided its signage was going to make a statement and had committed to that fully.

The letters across the front of it had been designed by someone with a sense of humor that had found its way into the typography, the I standing upright like a worm caught mid-stretch reaching for the sky, the S at the end curling into itself in the unmistakable shape of a snake frozen mid-coil, the whole word sitting above the entrance with the specific charm of something that had not taken itself too seriously and was better for it.

The window beside the door was floor to ceiling glass, showing the interior at street level.

A large dog enclosure sat visible from the pavement, clean and spacious, two dogs inside it currently doing the thing dogs did when they were being observed, which was pretend they were not being observed.

A hamster cage beside it, smaller, the occupant running the wheel with the focused energy of an animal that had decided this was its entire purpose.

Bags of dog food stacked along the back wall of the window display in a neat arrangement that suggested someone cared about the presentation.

Liam was approaching the door when it opened from the inside and a man came out, delivery uniform, clipboard tucked under one arm, the other hand steering a carrier carriage across the threshold, the wheels of it dropping off the small step at the entrance with a bump.

Liam stepped to the side.

The man navigated past him with the focused expression of someone running slightly behind schedule, the carriage moving across the pavement, and he was gone without acknowledging Liam in any direction.

Liam went in.

The store was small in the way that certain small places were small without feeling cramped, the space organized with the logic of someone who had thought carefully about where everything went.

The smell of it was the specific layered smell of a place that contained animals and the things animals required, warm and present and not unpleasant.

Cages along the left wall, enclosures along the right, a central aisle running to the back where two people were standing at the far end near a display of accessories and smaller cages.

He walked toward them.

He could hear them before he reached them, Kira’s voice first, carrying the warmth that Kira’s voice always carried when she was talking about something she genuinely cared about.

"I really appreciate it," she was saying. "Genuinely. I would have been stuck with this for another week."

"Stop," Tasha said. "I’m glad I could help. Although." A pause, and he could hear the smile in it. "If the price of helping is getting to hold this little one then honestly you did me the favor."

He came around the end of the aisle and saw them.

Tasha was holding a kitten.

Small and white, sitting in her hands with the complete comfort of an animal that had decided this particular set of hands was acceptable and had made itself at home in them.

Tasha was looking at it with the expression of someone who had forgotten for a moment that the world contained anything other than what was in their hands.

Kira was beside her, watching the kitten with the fond expression of someone watching their thing being appreciated by someone else, which was its own specific kind of satisfaction.

Liam cleared his throat.

Both of them looked up.

Kira’s expression did several things in rapid sequence when she saw him, the warmth of the conversation landing on the surprise of his face and then doing something more complicated.

Tasha’s expression settled into something that was not quite neutral and not quite anything else.

"Hey," Liam said, directing it at Kira. "It’s been a while."

Kira looked at him.

She looked at him for long enough that the looking itself became the response, the specific silence of someone deciding not to spend words on something, and then she turned back to Tasha and the kitten.

"You good?" she said to Tasha.

Tasha looked between them briefly. "Yeah," she said.

"Okay," Kira said. She picked up a bag from the shelf beside her and started moving toward the front of the store, her path taking her past Liam.

As she passed him their eyes met.

Not accidentally.

She looked at him directly, held it for one deliberate second, and then she was past him and heading for the counter without having changed her pace once.

Liam turned and watched her go.

Then he laughed.

Short and genuine, the laugh of someone who had received a message that was rude and fair in equal measure and had decided to respect both qualities.

"I think she doesn’t like me anymore," he said.

"That makes two of us," Tasha said.

She said it while looking at the kitten, her voice carrying the specific tone of something said casually that was not casual, and Liam looked at her and the smile left his face.

She felt him look at her and glanced up and saw the expression and something moved across her face that was not softness exactly but was adjacent to it, the specific thing that happened when Tasha saw something she had caused and had not fully intended.

She puffed her cheek.

"Okay," she said. "Let’s get out of here."

"Okay," he said, the smile coming back.

She turned to put the kitten back and then stopped.

"Oh," she said. "Oh no. I’m still supposed to be helping Kira." She looked at the kitten. Then at the direction Kira had gone. Then at the ceiling briefly. "Well. I can just blame you if she finds out I disappeared."

"Or," Liam said, "we stay and I help too. Maybe she comes around. Gets me back on her good side."

Tasha looked at him with the expression of someone evaluating a proposal that had more optimism in it than supporting evidence.

"Good luck," she said.

"You’re still here."

Kira’s voice came from behind him.

He turned.

She was standing at the entrance to the aisle with a clipboard now, looking at him with the expression of someone who had gone and come back and found a situation unchanged from how they had left it.

"He wants to help," Tasha said.

Kira looked at Liam.

She looked at him with the thoroughness of someone performing an assessment that they had not requested having to perform.

"Is this you trying to get me to forgive you," she said.

Neither of them said anything.

Kira looked at Tasha.

Tasha looked at the kitten she was still holding. The kitten looked at Kira with the complete indifference of an animal that had no investment in the social dynamics of the humans around it.

The silence sat there.

Kira exhaled through her nose, the exhale of someone doing the internal arithmetic of a situation and arriving at a number they had not wanted to arrive at but could not argue with.

"Fine," she said. She turned. "Follow me."

She started moving toward the back of the store.

Liam stood where he was.

Tasha came level with him, the kitten still in her hands, and leaned slightly toward him without looking at him.

"Good luck," she whispered.

He smiled and followed Kira down the aisle.

Kira led them through a door at the back of the main floor and into the storage area behind it.

Kira led them around the side of the main floor, past the last row of enclosures, to a section at the far end of the store that was separated from the rest of the floor by a low partition, the kind of divider that existed to organize a space rather than close it off.

The area behind it was clearly the receiving and storage section of the shop, open to the rest of the building, just tucked away at the back where customers generally had no reason to wander.

Bags of dog food. Everywhere.

Not a small spillage.

A proper situation, the kind that happened when a delivery had been received without enough hands to manage it properly, bags of various sizes covering most of the floor space in a sprawl that had no particular organization to it, some of them stacked on their sides, some flat, some split at the seam and spilling their contents onto the concrete, the whole thing sitting there with the patient chaos of something that had been left too long and had stopped being embarrassing and become simply a fact of the room.

Liam looked at it.

Kira stood beside him and looked at it too, with the expression of someone who had been looking at it for a while and had developed a complex relationship with the sight of it.

"This is what needs doing," she said. "Every bag sorted, stacked, and the broken ones dealt with. The shelving along the back wall is where they go, organised by weight." She gestured at the labels on the existing bags on the shelves, the system visible once you knew to look for it. "I have the system written down if you need it."

"I can see it," Liam said, looking at the shelves.

Tasha was looking at the floor.

At the scale of it.

At the specific amount of lifting and sorting that stood between now and the room looking the way it was supposed to look.

"I’ll start on the far side," she said, already moving toward the edge of the pile.

"I’ll handle it," Liam said.

Both of them stopped and looked at him.

Tasha had her hand on a bag.

Both of them looking at him with the same expression, which was the expression of two people who had heard a sentence and were waiting for the part where it turned out to be a joke.

"You’ll handle it," Kira said. Flat. Checking.

"Yeah, it doesn’t look too hard to handle by myself." Liam said.

"That’s a lot of bags," Kira said.

"I can see that," Liam said.

"Liam," Tasha said, and her voice had dropped into the register it went to when she was being genuine rather than performing anything. "You really don’t have to do all of this yourself."

He looked at her.

"I’ve got it," he said. "Both of you go. I’ll sort it."

Tasha looked at the bags on the floor. Then at him. The worry was sitting plainly on her face, not hidden, just there, and she was not doing anything to manage it away.

Kira looked at Liam.

Then she looked at the room.

Then something shifted in her expression, quiet and specific, the particular shift of someone updating something they had been holding in a fixed position.

She grabbed Tasha’s arm.

"Maybe I’ll forgive him," she said, already pulling. "Let’s go."

"Wait," Tasha said, being pulled. "Are you sure you—"

"He said he’s got it," Kira said, steering her toward the door with the efficient energy of someone who had made a decision and was implementing it before anyone could complicate it.

Tasha looked back at Liam over her shoulder as Kira pulled her through the door, the worry still on her face, sitting there honestly without apology.

He looked back at her.

Then the door closed and it was just him and the bags and the bare bulb and the smell of the storage room.

He looked at the floor.

He cracked his knuckles.

He picked up the first bag.