Page 105 of Her Sloth

“Hey, I’m out here,” she says from outside, and I lurk through the big open door.

She sits at a table where the outside kitchen is, filled with cereal and fruit. I sit down.

“Thanks,” I mumble, and she smiles at me broadly.

We eat breakfast in silence. The cat jumps next to me on the table next to my bowl and eyes my food.

“Watch him,” she says. “He thinks he can pull it off with you, because you’re new. Might be old, might not see and hear properly, but he’s a little fucker regarding food.”

I nod, not really listening, because the way she talks about that cat is the most real I have ever seen her.

Throttle lies down on the table; he looks like he’s falling asleep, as old as he is, and I feel safe to just watch her. Watching her not just exist, but be alive, even glow.

I know I have made a mistake the moment my fork lands on the floor with a loud clunk: Throttle lunged sideways onto my bowl and now inhales the rest of it.

I grab him by the neck, but he doesn’t give a fuck.

“I see what you mean,” I say, as she cracks into laughter while fighting Throttle and cursing at him.

“God damnit, you little fucker!” I say as I rip the bowl from his paws with the milk spilling all over the table.

“Told ya,” she says, taking another spoonful of her own cereal as if nothing has happened.

I throw him—kindly—off the table. He’s back two seconds later. I push him off the table, but he seems not to take no for an answer, like most males, and jumps back up, licking off what we just spilled.

“You gotta handle him. He needs a strong hand,” she says, sucking in her lips to stop the girn.

“He’s old and way too cute,” I say, caressing him.

“Cass,” she says. “Get a hint.”

It takes me a second to catch up to what she meant.

This place is doing something to me. Normally it wouldn’t take me that long.

“Oh,” I say—and when it finally clicks, it turns into an “Ohhhh.”

She laughs. This laugh that’s so unique to her and vibrates straight into my chest.

“Let’s go,” she says and pushes herself carefully off the table.

She’s still in loads of pain, even if she denies it.

We walk out of the house, where she leads me to an old rusty truck I saw yesterday. Its baby blue color has its best years behind it, with some of it flaking off, bearing the rust of years, adding to the bumps and bulges. A truck that’s lived a whole life.

“You’re driving,” she says and walks over to the passenger seat.

The truck is something so normal.

It’s not the Hollywood star, not the billionaire daughter—she is none of that here.

Here, she is just a girl in a truck, so normal.

Well, normal if I forget about how we got here and that this house must have cost some millions, even if it’s not Hollywood Hills chic.

I sit in the truck with an old radio and a gearshift next to the steering wheel. It takes several turns of the key and a lot of gas to get her going.

“She’s a bit picky,” Addy says as she manually rolls down the window. “She’s an old lady.”