Hi, well, Christmas day is over, but I sincerely hope everyone had a super holiday. I hope you got the chance to spend some time with relatives and friends, and I especially hope your celebrations will continue...right into the new year and beyond.
I do not own Glee or the characters, neither do I own Chasing Christmas Eve.
Later, Mercedes got into bed, with the intention of taking a well deserved rest...she'd certainly earned it.
The black cat had come and gone a few times, and she'd become a bit concerned about it, so she left the window open just wide enough, for it to seek shelter if it needed.
She lay in bed in the dark thinking about her crazy day.
'Crazy but good,' she decided. 'Shockingly good!'
But that was because she hadn't yet looked at her phone.
Remembering, she got out of bed and fished the bag of rice from her purse.
She pulled out the phone and turned it on. Surprisingly, it worked.
Notifications began to fill her screen, but she chose to start with a group text with her assistant, Trisha and publicist, Jaci.
Trisha: Hey, Editorial wants to know your projected delivery date for the manuscript.
Jaci: Whoa! Hold up there, missy. First, I want to know her projected delivery date, for the articles and blogs she's supposed to write for the promo.
Trisha: Don't make me sorry I put you on this convo, Jaci. Merce...I didn't tell Editorial that you ran away from home to find yourself, because I didn't want to set off a panic avalanche. Why should everyone panic, when I'm doing enough for all of us?
Trisha: At least tell me you're on a warm beach somewhere, with a really hot cabana dude pouring you wine?
Jaci: Oh no! You're panicking, Trish. But how about me? Mercedes hasn't done a damn thing on her list! Listen, Merce, I get it. You needed to get away. Fine. But at least go through your damn e-mails and send me back the articles and posts I need pronto. Miss you, honey, but I'd miss you more if you'd GO THROUGH YOUR E-MAILS.
Mercedes answered with, 'I'll send everything soon,' making sure, not to define soon. Then, she silenced her phone and slept like a baby, at least until around two a.m. when something shook her bed.
Mercedes sat straight up with a gasp and came nose-to-nose with the black cat.
"Meow."
"You need a curfew," she said.
The cat, noncommittal, turned in a circle three times and then plopped on her feet and closed its eyes.
"Fine with me. My feet were cold anyway."
She fell back to sleep, waking only when daylight was streaming in through the window.
"Wow," she said to the cat in genuine shock. "A whole night's sleep, with the exception of your arrival. It's a miracle."
The cat looked pleased, like it'd been all her doing.
Mercedes picked up her phone.
She had texts from her brothers, which she ignored for now. Same with Johnathan's.
"Whoa!" she said, surprised to see a text from her mom.
She had bought her an iPhone Plus, so she could text with ease rather than always calling. And so far, her mom had refrained.
Until now, apparently.
Mom: Love you, that's it. Send Siri, send it Siri. Are you on crack? Send the message to Mercedes.
Mercedes cracked up. Maybe she could ask her brothers to help her mom construct text messages.
However, she sent a return 'I love you text' just as a certain black cat's face came right up against hers, its gold eyes very serious.
"Meow."
"Let me take a wild guess. You're hungry?"
The cat's eyes said it all.
"If I didn't know any better, I'd say, you're giving me a 'duh' look."
Mercedes got up and showed the cat her bowls filled with water and the cat food she'd purchased last night at the store, when she'd been stocking up for herself.
"Do you feel like Cinderella?" she asked the cat. "Because I do."
"Meow."
She smiled.
"Maybe I'll call you Cinder for short."
With a low, approving chirp, the cat dove into her food, apparently feeling as completely at home as Mercedes did.
A while later, Mercedes showered, dressed and took a deep breath, before reading the twins' texts.
David had locked his car keys in the car. While it was running. In a blizzard.
No surprise there.
And Davis has been fired from his sandwich shop job, for hitting on the boss' daughter.
"Son of a Cheez-It," Mercedes said.
And, instead of responding, or giving in to the stroke she could feel coming on, she set her phone aside and filled out the rental app Kitty had given her.
"Should I list you as my roommate?" she asked the cat.
Cinder rolled onto her back on the hardwood floor, in the sole sunspot and closed her eyes in bliss.
"I'll take that as a yes. You don't listen to rap at earsplitting levels in the middle of the night or ask for money, right?"
"Meow."
"Good enough."
Five minutes later, Mercedes brought the application and her rent money to Kitty's office on the second floor.
But Kitty wasn't alone in the office. She had two others with her, and they were all eating muffins from the downstairs coffee shop.
"Wendy owns the pet shop," Kitty said, by way of introduction, pointing to her friend on the right. "And Karen here works at Reclaimed Woods, the furniture shop."
Karen smiled and offered Mercedes a muffin, while asking the room a question for the ages.
"How am I supposed to stay in shape, when the best part about life is food?"
"You could exercise," Kitty said.
"I do," she replied. "My cardio of choice...is online shopping."
"Very mature."
Karen laughed.
"I am mature. But not, like, mature mature. I mean, I pay my bills on time, but I still have to say stuff like 'righty tighty and lefty loosey' to figure shit out."
"Honey, we all do that," Wendy said, finishing up a muffin and licking her fingers. "Ugh. If I were murdered right now, my chalk outline would be a circle. Very soon, Keith won't be able to get his arms around me."
Muffins weren't on Mercedes' diet either, and she was pretty sure, her butt alone, could weigh almost as much as Wendy did.
But she told herself, that her New York diet could be different from her San Francisco diet.
Her first bite of a blueberry muffin had her moaning.
"Tell me this counts as a serving of fruit," she said.
"Maybe we should go to the gym later and do some crunches or something," Wendy said, sounding less than enthused about the prospect.
Karen shook her head.
"My brain just auto-corrected the word 'crunches' to cupcakes. And we all know, that once you lick off the frosting, a cupcake is really just a muffin. Which is almost a serving of fruit, as Mercedes pointed out."
Contemplating this, they all ate some more muffins, including Mercedes.
"Listen," Wendy said to Mercedes. "I'm really sorry about what Daisy did to you yesterday. She's usually such a good girl, but that stray black cat is her nemesis."
"She's not a stray anymore," Mercedes replied. "She's sleeping on my bed as we speak."
"You were able to catch her?" Wendy asked. "I've been trying for weeks. I wanted to find her a home."
"I didn't catch her. She caught me."
Mercedes took another muffin.
"So, who makes these little bites of heaven? I want to bow down before them."
"Tasha. And she's currently spoken for," Karen said. "If she's ever single again, we're all on a waiting list for her."
They all eyeballed the last muffin.
"How about we split it four ways," Karen suggested.
And like magic, Kitty produced a pocketknife.
"What the hell is that?" Karen asked.
"I always carry a knife," Kitty said. "You know, in case I have to split a muffin into four pieces. And don't look so shocked. You carry dangerous tools yourself. Yesterday, I watched you use a huge jigsaw like it was nothing."
"Yes, but that was for work," Karen explained. "Although, you've got a point about being able to split a muffin. I bet I could do that with a jigsaw in an emergency."
Kitty carefully and surgically split the muffin.
"How's the elbow?" she asked Mercedes.
"Fine."
She'd had far worse injuries, breaking up fights between her brothers.
"Thanks again for taking such good care of me yesterday."
"That was all Sam," Kitty stated.
"He was great too," Mercedes said.
"He's always great," Wendy said. "He's one of the good ones. He's a smart, super-sexy eye candy, and he doesn't even know it."
Kitty shook her head.
"What?" Wendy asked. "I'm taken, not dead."
"What is it, that Sam does for a living?" Mercedes asked.
And Kitty gave a little smile.
"A lot," she said.
"Such as?" Mercedes asked.
"Such as...a lot."
Karen and Wendy, who were watching the exchange like they were at a tennis match, popped their quarters of the last muffin into their mouths in unison.
Mercedes turned to them.
"Is she being mysterious on purpose?" she asked.
And Karen almost choked on her piece of muffin. Wendy kindly patted her on the back before answering.
"Sam is our resident genius."
Kitty gave her a look.
"Well, he is," Wendy said. "He's the smartest person we all know. That's no secret."
"But what he does for a job is?" Mercedes asked.
"Let's just say, we're a little protective of him," Wendy said. "For good reason."
"He seems like a guy who can protect himself," Mercedes said, slowly.
"Oh hell yeah, he can," Wendy said. "Just a few weeks ago, Karen here, was locking up late one night on her own and some guy started hassling her, and Sam..."
"Wendy," Kitty said in warning.
"What?" she asked.
"He..." She mimed some sort of karate motion and straightened with a smile. "Kicked ass like a glasses-wearing superhero."
Mercedes had no problem picturing Sam, stepping in to help a friend in trouble. But picturing him using actual physical force, gave her a ridiculous feminine flutter.
Karen was hugging herself now and Wendy's smile faded, as she realized, she'd brought the vivid memories back too harshly.
"I'm sorry," Wendy said, hugging Karen tight. "I shouldn't have..."
"No, it's okay. Really." Karen gave a little smile. "He was my superhero that night. And he never even lost his glasses."
She was wearing a heavy work apron, covered in wood chips. And Mercedes realized, that in one of her big apron pockets was a stuffed animal.
A very small French bulldog.
But then it moved.
And she realized it was real. She laughed in delight, because the dog was actually smaller than Cinder.
"His name's Vinnie," Karen said. "He's a foster fail." She handed him over to Mercedes and she and the dog eyed each other.
Vinnie's head was the same size as the rest of his entire body and his huge, deep brown, soulful eyes, melted Mercedes.
"Oh my God," she said, snuggling the thing close. "How do you get anything done, other than loving him up all day long?"
Karen smiled.
"That's why he practically lives in my pocket...well, unless I'm working the big table saw or the planer, or anything dangerous like that. He's small, because he was malnourished, but I think he's still growing."
"I need a cutie like this to keep in my pocket," Mercedes said. "There's no danger in what I do."
"Which is what again?" Kitty asked.
Mercedes met her gaze. It was friendly enough, but as sharp as a razor.
"I'm a writer."
"Oh, cool," Karen said. "What do you write?"
"What she said...and how do you make a living while doing it?" Kitty asked.
Again, not unfriendly, not at all. But the woman was definitely reserving judgment.
"I write young adult," Mercedes said to Karen, still snuggling with the lovebug Vinnie. To And to Kitty, she said, "And I do other stuff as well. Write short stories, waitress, work in retail, whatever comes my way."
Again, this was more of an omission than a lie, since she'd done all those things...just not since the royalties had started rolling in.
"You landed in a pretty amazing place to write," Karen said. "This building's a fun place to be creative."
Mercedes smiled. It was exactly what she was banking on.
Stay safe!