It was pouring rain when Ruth left the university campus. She thanked her lucky stars she'd driven in that day. Usually, if the weather was agreeable, she would walk the mile and a half from home to her lecture hall, but Harry had warned her to take the car and she was ever so pleased she did.
Ruth sat in the car and pulled out her mobile to call home. Harry picked up almost immediately. "Hello," he greeted, a smile evident in his voice.
"Hi, I'm headed home and I wanted to know if you've already got plans for dinner or if I should pick up some Chinese on my way back."
"Chinese sounds perfect, darling, thank you. I got caught up outside, fighting the rains, and I lost track of time."
Ruth chuckled lightly. "Did you succeed against the weather?"
He grumbled in annoyance, "I just planted those tulip bulbs and now they're going to be drowned. Stupid bloody coastal climate."
Once the reality of retirement had really hit him, Harry had gone nearly stir crazy. Ruth was busy preparing for her classes and grading papers, but Harry wasn't similarly occupied. After they'd gotten completely moved in to the new house, he took it upon himself to rescue the overgrown and neglected garden. Ruth would have just left it as it was, though she was never a very orderly type of person the way Harry was. And it turned out, he had quite a green thumb. He could be found out in the garden pulling weeds and trimming hedges and arranging flowerbeds almost every day. He'd finished most of the clearing away before they'd gone to Paris, and he was now in the midst of researching what sort of flowers would be the best for their garden and planting a bit of everything. Harry admitted he was quite surprised at himself, that he'd fallen in love with gardening, but the physicality of the work and the sense of pride and accomplishment that it provided was more fulfilling than he'd imagined. Ruth got the combined benefits of having him kept physically fit and as in a much better mood most days as well as a beautiful garden where she could sit and mark exams in nice weather surrounded by fragrant flowers. And having Harry smell faintly of soil was strangely attractive as well.
"Alright, shall I order our usual items, then?" she asked him, knowing that if she let him, he'd continue to complain about what the rain was doing to his flowers.
"Yes, that's fine. I'll see you when you get here," he replied before hanging up the phone.
Ruth braved the wet streets to the restaurant they liked to order from. The biggest downside to living outside London now was the lack of variety in food options. Their town thankfully had a Chinese restaurant and an Indian place that had the most marvelous curry. But otherwise, they were left with two proper English pubs where they could eat in and the market for whatever they wanted to cook for themselves.
She parked up the street and dashed inside from the car through the rain. "Professor! Hi!" the young man behind the counter greeted.
Ruth grinned. "Hello, Al, how are you?" she asked in return. Al was the son of the restaurant owners and a student in her Nineteenth Century French Literature course. He lived at home and helped out at the restaurant while attending his university courses.
"I'm very good, Professor. Nearly finished annotating The Count of Monte Cristo," he replied with a smile.
"I know you're lying to me, but since I'm here to order food and not lecture you, I suppose I'll let it go for now," she answered with a knowing expression.
Al just laughed. "The usual for you and Mr. Harry?"
"Yes, please. And extra—"
"Extra hot sauce for Mr. Harry, I remember!"
Ruth grinned. A few years ago—even a few months ago—the idea that people out in the world knew about her and Harry and their relationship would have made her wildly uncomfortable, even frightened. But now, such darkness was far behind them. They lived in the country in a little town where people only knew them as Ruth and Harry, the professor and the writer, who liked to talk walks while holding hands and eat together and share a bottle of wine in the middle of the day and lived in the house with the green front door. It was all so simple and elegant, and she loved it.
Al had their order ready before she knew it. Ruth dashed back into the rain to get back to the car as quick as she could. But in an effort to unlock it while holding a huge bag full of Chinese food, she lost her balance and stumbled. One of the takeaway containers fell and exploded all over the sidewalk.
"Oh hell!" Ruth swore under her breath. She quickly put the rest in the car before turning back to try to decide what to do. She couldn't very well just leave all the lo mein in the middle of the walkway. Perhaps she'd go back and tell Al and he could get a broom to help sweep it up.
But when she went back to the mess, she found someone was already cleaning it up. A bedraggled orange cat had already scarfed up most of the food on the ground and had its head stuck inside the carton to get at the rest. Ruth's first instinct was to shoo the cat away, but there was really no purpose. They were both getting rained on, and the feline was being rather helpful.
She watched for a moment and sighed, "Well, I know from experience that those noodles are rather good, so I'm glad one of us can enjoy them. Though I hope this doesn't mean that you aren't getting fed at home." Ruth approached the cat slowly, hoping not to frighten it. "You shouldn't be out in the cold and wet like this. You must be very brave," she said in a gentle tone.
The cat tried to extricate itself from the carton and failed, suddenly beginning to thrash about thanks to the confinement. Ruth scooped the cat up in her arms and took the box off its head. The animal stopped struggling, seemingly quite content to be held. It meowed at Ruth as she pulled lo mein off its nose. She noticed there was no collar of any kind and based on the state of this cat, it hadn't seen the indoors in quite some time.
Content that this was a hungry stray in need of some comfort, she bundled the cat up in her coat and got into the car to drive home.
Harry was sitting in his enormous armchair watching the evening news and enjoying a glass of scotch when he heard the front door open. "Ruth?" he called out.
"Could you give me a hand please?" she called back.
He put his glass down and got up to assist her. "I'm glad you're back, I'm starving."
To his utter surprise, Ruth was soaking wet and her face was flushed and smiling. "The food is in the car. I've got my hands full," she told him
Poking out from her coat was a wet cat. "What on earth have you done?" Harry asked incredulously.
Ruth just beamed. "This is Noodles. I think we should keep him."
Harry opened his mouth and closed it again. There was just too much to ask. So he went out to get the food from the car. They could discuss this after he'd eaten something.
By the time he returned to the kitchen with the takeaway, Ruth was at the kitchen sink with cat, toweling it off with one of the dishrags.
"You're dripping everywhere and the food is going to get cold," Harry informed her, pausing to watch the inexplicably odd things she was doing.
"Make me up a plate, would you? I'll sit down in a minute."
Harry did as she asked, opening the cartons and spooning some of each onto a couple of plates. "Where's the lo mein?" he asked with a frown.
"I dropped it and Noodles ate it right up. That's how he got his name," she replied, as thought that were a completely ordinary thing to say.
"Ruth, are you telling me that a stray cat ate our dinner and you decided to bring him home?"
She turned to look at him with a concerned expression in her eyes. "Are you really opposed to keeping him? I suppose I could find a shelter for him."
Harry sighed in resignation. "Just don't let him sleep in our bed. Your last cats had this horrible habit of sleeping on my pillows, and it took me months to be able to fall asleep with the smell of cat surrounding me." The memory of taking in Ruth's cats during her exile, both of whom were affectionate and sweet but old and rather annoying, was still somehow fresh in his mind.
Ruth's face lit up. "Thank you, Harry."
"It'll be nice to have an animal in the house," he reasoned.
"I'm just going to jump in the shower so I don't catch my death. You can get acquainted with our new friend," she told him, putting Noodles on the floor and rushing past Harry, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek as she passed him to go upstairs.
Now left alone with the cat, Harry kneeled down, careful to avoid his bad knee, and held out a gentle hand. The animal immediately went right up to him and nuzzled his orange head against Harry's palm. He chuckled pleasantly. "Hello, Noodles," he greeted. "I'm Harry. And you already know Ruth. Now, you're welcome to live with us if you want to. I know Ruth would love you to stay. But just remember that I'm her favorite and I'm the only man who gets to be in bed with her, alright?"
Ruth returned downstairs, feeling warm and clean, and found Harry on the floor with Noodles, her heart soaring to see the man she loved be so wonderfully sweet with the little cat. She realized he must have been like this when he took in her old cats when she'd gone away. Had he sat on the floor with them, snuggling and talking quietly, reminiscing about her while she was gone? Harry had told her after her return that they'd both died almost two years after she left, but he'd kept them until their last days. For all his harshness, his strength, his terrifying brutality thanks to the job he'd held, Harry Pearce was a kind-hearted and gentle man. Yes, he was often a bit bumbling and awkward when it came to such things, but he was soft and loving, and that was how he'd irrevocably captured her heart.
He eventually noticed her standing there. "Oh finally, let's eat," he insisted, hauling himself up.
"Need a hand?"
"I'm alright," he grunted, embarrassed at the effort it took him to just get off the bloody floor. That knee was going to have to be dealt with one of these days. "I've got to wash my hands. Please start eating," he insisted.
Ruth sat down at the table, smiling to feel Noodles nuzzle against her ankles. "Oh, and Al remembered your extra hot sauce."
"Brilliant, thank you." He dried his hands and came over to the table. Ruth was about to take her first bite of kung pao chicken when he stopped her. "Hang on a moment."
"What now?"
He leaned in and gave her a gentle kiss. "I haven't done that all day. Hello," he murmured.
She smiled and kissed him again. "Hello, my love. Now sit down and eat some cold Chinese. Mind the cat, he's under the table."