Jennifer stared at the amber eyes looking back at her from behind the cage. She sighed. This was possibly the most desperate, pathetic thing she'd ever done. But it was the first decision she'd made in the three weeks since Nick left that felt at all comforting.
"I'll take him," she announced.
The shelter worker smiled excitedly. "Wonderful! Do you know what name you'd like to give him? I can register him now if you know."
Jen frowned. "What name does he have now?"
"Jerry."
With a shrug, Jen replied, "Might as well keep that. No reason to change things on him." She put her finger through the cage and allowed the orange cat to nuzzle her. "Hello, Jerry. You're going to come home with me. I hope you don't mind."
And that was how Jennifer Mapplethorpe lost a baby and the man she loved and ended up with a cat. Once she figured out she needed somewhere to direct her love and attention, getting a rescue animal seemed the best idea. She'd never imagined she would be the kind of woman to have a cat and love it like her best friend, but it seemed fitting now.
She sat on the floor, tossing treats and toys at him, hoping he'd be interested in something and he'd start to like her. But Jen needn't have worried. Jerry was sweet and affectionate. He snuggled up with her when she sat on the sofa with a glass of wine. He curled up on the bed while she slept, filling the space left by Nick's absence. It was as though the cat sensed how broken she felt and wanted to be the one to fix her. And in a strange way, he did.
Part of Jen hated that she was that girl who deals with heartbreak by focusing her love on a cat, of all things, but Jerry was special. Jerry had a troubled past, and he and Jennifer seemed to heal each other.
Nick, on the other hand, tried to heal himself in equally pathetic but vastly less effective ways. Every night after he got off his shift, he'd head to the bar with some of his mates and find a woman to go home with.
He and Simon Joyner were quite the pair, betting each other on who could get which girl in the bar. Simon was always the pretty boy, and he usually ended up with the most gorgeous blonde in the room. Nick avoided blondes as much as he could. The point of all this was to not think about Jen. And the shimmer of golden hair made Nick's heart leap in a way he really wished it wouldn't, until the woman turned and it wasn't Jennifer's turquoise eyes looking at him. Nick gladly introduced those girls to Simon.
But Nick did plenty well on his own. He was well aware of his own appeal, his quiet and stoic nature, his fit physique, his disarming smile. More than once, he'd been able to use his subtlety to steal a gorgeous woman away from Simon and his overly boisterous charms.
After a few months, the mindless, meaningless sex definitely lost its appeal. Simon could have his fun, but Nick knew this just wasn't like him. Instead of enjoying himself, he ended up just feeling lost and empty at the end of the night. The distractions weren't helping.
As much as it pained him and as much as he tried to ignore it, Nick knew the only thing that would make him feel any better: Jennifer.
Nick was desperate for her. They'd been apart for months now. And he was still hurting, both from the miscarriage, destroying his dreams for the future, and their breakup, which had wounded him to his core. He had done the one thing he'd never, ever wanted to do; he had hurt Jen. She was hurting enough as it was, and instead of talking to her, explaining what was wrong, he just slowly retreated from her. And when she figured out what was going on, she had felt like he was abandoning her. He'd never wanted to do that. But he did. The guilt was eating him alive.
If only they had discussed things. But they never seemed to be able to talk about anything important. Undercover, they hadn't talked about anything. It would have compromised their mission of they had. And they had gotten into that habit, it seemed. For Christ's sake, they'd been living together for three months before they even said, 'I love you.' They had just always known each other. A touch, a smile, a glance. Those were all the things they really needed to communicate. And it had failed them miserably. It was time for words.
Pen and paper in hand, Nick sat down at the table he built from a sheet of plywood on a pair of sawhorses in the construction zone of his house, and he began to write.