Smitten Kitten

chapter sixteen

     "I'M SO SORRY, BABY. I didn't mean it, I promise. Forgive me, please, I don't even know what I was thinking."

I understand in a karmic sense that sure, I've lived a less than perfect life. I've accidentally killed a fish here and there. I've littered. I buy child's tickets at the movie theatre and hope that the jaded fifteen-year-old doesn't care too closely- and they never do. My general juju probably has a few stains here and there.

Honestly, I get it.

But this is ridiculous.

"Please look at me, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking. I was just- please."

My lips press into a thin, concentrated line as irritation licks up my rib cage, iron-hot and corrosive. It's only growing stronger the longer I hear his voice, pleading and desperate, muffled from the other room. It's a complete 180 from the low, throaty whispers that had been tantalizing my senses only twenty minutes ago, the sweet promises he'd been pressing into my skin- gone. Vanished. Completely dissolved.

And instead, this.

"Baby, please look at me. I'll do anything. I promise it won't happen again."

Noel is an alien. That is literally the only explanation that makes sense.

"Nat, I swear to god, he's been talking to the cat for the past ten minutes and he keeps calling it baby. Baby. Why didn't you talk me out of this? Why did you let me do this?"

The cackling that sounds from my cellphone threatens to break my eardrums.

Which, at this point, might be a welcome addition to my life.

"What kind of weird shit did you guys get up to? How badly could you have possibly scarred this cat? Wait- do I even want to know? Think hard before you answer. I know you can't afford my therapy bills," Nat says, but any sense of sincerity is betrayed by her sadistic laughter.

My narrow gaze fixates on the ceiling of my room, where I'd escaped to after Noel had realized Cleo was watching us from the corner (the pervert). I was hoping that Noel and I could go farther, explore deeper, finally breach whatever we'd been tiptoeing around this entire time and adventure to amazing, orgasmic faraway lands.

Or just get somewhere that didn't end up with me in my bedroom, alone, and talking to Nat on the phone.

Honestly, I wish any man harboured even half the amount of passion for me that Noel did for that damned demon cat.

"It was all strictly hand stuff! I did dirtier things when I was a junior in high!" I huff, heaving myself up into a sitting position and shifting my glare to the doorway where pathetic cooing could still be heard from the other side. "He's acting as if we stole her innocence or something."

"Well, clearly you did, Vika. It sounds like she won't ever be the same again after this."

I roll my eyes. "She's a cat."

"A traumatized cat," Nat corrects me with an unnerving amount of enthusiasm.

I groan, again. "Everyone around me is awful and I hate all of you. I have enough on my plate as it is with Dr. Doolittle over here, so I'm hanging up on you. Try to be less of the worst next time I call you in my time of need. Goodbye."

Her only response is, once again, laughter. I think I hear the beginnings of a, "Wait, don't forget-" but then I've already clicked off and dropped my phone on the comforter, wondering if there's a limit to the amount I can roll my eyes before they roll right out of my head.

At least that would've saved me from the scene I find when I trek back into the living room.

"Oh my god, it's a cat," I grumble, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning against the doorframe.