“Gotcha,” he said, bending to snatch them up and shove them into my hands. “You a gymnast?”
“I’m a medic, remember?” I asked as I stepped back so he could close and bar the door again.
“What, now we’re in here, you’ve got jokes?” he asked with a snort as the bar dropped into place.
“Well, helps when I’m not wondering if Mother Nature is going to take me out,” I said as I glanced around.
“If a little storm is going to bug you, I think you might have come to the wrong place,” he said with a laugh as he led me up the stairs into a hallway that split in three directions. He took me to the right, and I blinked at the bright light overhead, seeing a kitchen. It was a little ramshackle; the stove looked like it was from when my parents were still in puberty, and the microwave looked last century. It was clean, though; not a crumb of food, and the stove, ancient as it was, gleamed. “Hungry?”
“A little,” I admitted as my stomach growled loudly at the offer. “I sometimes get airsick, so I didn’t eat on the plane or before.”
“Geez, worried about storms and you get airsick? Did they have you on the ground the whole time?” he asked with a snort as he opened a cabinet and dragged out an apple, an orange, and a banana, holding them out.
I took the banana with a grunt of thanks. “Just because I’ve been neck-deep in life-or-death situations doesn’t mean I look forward to them. And I said Isometimesget airsick. Not always. I just figured it would be safer not to eat, so I didn’t end up yacking overpriced Panera Bread into my neighbor’s lap.”
“I hope they understood the sacrifice you made for them,” he said with a grin as he heaved himself onto the counter and looked me over. “Probably a good thing I didn’t make us go to the other door; you look like a drowned rat.”
It was probably a bad idea, but with a grimace, I pulled out my phone and flipped on the front camera to look at myself. Sure enough, my black hair was glued to my forehead, the tips dangling over my hazel eyes. Under the harsh light, my fair skin looked positively sickly, and the smattering of freckles across my nose and under my eyes were washed out. His assessment was right; I had a thin face and a pointed nose, so the soaked look really gave the idea of a rat expelled from a storm drain.
“Not my best look,” I admitted, pushing my phone back into the safety of an inside pocket and pushing my hair off my forehead. “Knew I should have got a haircut before I left.”
“I’d take you to your room, but I’m not allowed to give tours anymore,” Jake said, swinging his long legs back and forth, his heels thumping the wooden cabinets. “Something about giving the wrong idea to new people.”
“Not something,” a fresh voice added, preceded by the welcome smell of coffee. “You were given a write-up for it. In detail.”
“Aww, you know I can’t read,” Jake said with a pout. “That’s mean, picking on someone with a disability.”
“Stop forgetting to get tested, and maybe we’ll be able to make accommodations,” the woman said as she stepped into view. Her blond hair was pulled back into a messy bun, and when she looked at me, I wondered how old she was. There were lines on her face that said she was creeping up the age bracket, or had lived a hard life. Her eyes, though, were bright, tinged with annoyance that I suspected had more to do with Jake than anything else, but they were shining and alert and made her seem younger. “You must be Colin, good to see Jake’s ability to get people to and from in one piece during shitty weather is intact.”
“That would make you Catherine,” I said, setting the half-eaten banana on the counter to step forward and take her hand. “We spoke a few days ago.”
“Catherine outside these walls, but Cait here,” she said, shaking my hand and looking me over. “Christ, he make you go all the way around?”
“No,” Jake said with a huff and a scowl. “We came in through the normal ass door, Cait.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Funny, I’ve been waiting to hear that buzzer go off to say someone was here, but I find you trying to flood the kitchen.”
“It was just a little friendly B&E,” Jake said with a grin. “Our new buddy here is pretty nimble, got through that window clean as it gets; barely even touched anything on the way in.”
“He’s…easily impressed,” I noted as I grabbed the banana. It wasn’t going to do shit for me but at least I could trick my stomach into thinking it was something substantial for a little while.
“Simple mind, simple pleasures,” she said, waving her mug. “Now, why don’t we get the tour out of the way? Not much to see, then we can get you to your room so you can change…and probably shower. Jake, mop up this mess.”
“Aww, but why can’t I?—”
“Clean it up since you decided not to use the buzzer like a normal human being,” she said with a scowl. “Colin, wipe your feet so you don’t make this one cry because he has to do more cleaning.”
“He was the one who broke in!”
“At your behest, I’ll bet; clean.”
Jake sighed, shoulders slumping. “Yes, Mom.”
“I’m not your momma,” she said grimly. “If I was, you can bet I’d have beaten you a lot more than you were.”
Jake wrinkled his nose. “She didn’t beat me…no one did.”
“And there’s the problem,” she said, then nodded at me. “Let’s go.”