Stray City by Chelsey Johnson

Author:Chelsey Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-01-28T05:00:00+00:00

Credit in the Straight World

WHO ELSE WOULD MOVE IN WITH ME?

He had so few things. Two trips with the Cold Shoulder van and his apartment was empty. Crates of LPs, a couple of boxes of leftover band merch and records, the slim Danish couch. The guitar. A real mattress. Ryan took up hardly any space, outnumbered by my sprawling archives.

We dropped the boxes in Summer’s empty room. On the floor was a scattering of dust bunnies and bobby pins; in the closet, wire hangers. She’d left in a hurry, impatient to get to her new life with Marcy.

“What’s with that cat?” he asked. Edith Head, who was nowhere to be seen while we carried in the boxes, had now emerged onto the porch and was mashing her head against his shin.

“She mostly lives under the porch. Summer’s allergic. Was.”

“Well, let her on in.”

“I guess we can.”

I held open the door and Edith swanned past, stopped in the entry, and took a look around the place, tail flicking back and forth in a slow question mark. Then she dove under the couch.

Finished, we sat on the top step of the porch. It was newly April. Pink and white cherry blossoms soft as kitten ears carpeted the gutters, smelling like fleshy candy, sweet decay. The afternoon and evening lay ahead of us with nothing planned. I hadn’t thought we’d be done so early. What were we going to do?

Edith emerged from the house, rolled onto her back, and stretched her paws over her head. I reached out and rubbed her downy belly. According to the neighborhood, she’d had a litter of kittens before she shacked up with us. What was it like to have so many? I tried to picture ten babies squirming in her belly, packed in like sticky gummy bears, a tangle of umbilical cords like the cables behind the television. How extravagant that humans have only one, with all that space to itself. No wonder we turned out so entitled.

Ryan opened a beer and tipped the bottle my way. I hesitated with the rim at my lips. “I don’t think I should,” I said.

“Not even a sip?”

I handed it back to him. “From here on out, I want to fuck up as little as possible.”

He sighed. “Good policy.”

Ryan stayed up late. I woke early. We shared the same bed for a few overlapping hours in between. How strange now to wake up beside him, with no sense of alarm, nor any devious thrill. Back when every minute with Ryan felt forbidden, stolen, my senses had stayed keen. Now the urgency was gone, and with it, my desire. We had sex a few times—lights off, I tried to project a fantasy—but neither darkness nor surging pregnancy hormones could summon my lust. Our bodies slammed methodically, a rehearsal of mating. He sensed it and asked me if it was the pregnancy. I said yes. We stopped. We went with that, for now.

Ryan rehearsed or went out in the evenings and I

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