Someone To Watch Over You

Chapter 6

This is my long day, so I know Cat is home already and has been home for some time now, so I'm hoping to spring William on her for dinner won't be too much of a hassle.

I open the door to the apartment and it gets stuck on some packing boxes that have my name on them. "What the...?"

"You moving out?" William asks as he squeezes past me.

"Not that I was aware of?" I see more boxes in the kitchen marked KITCHEN and another in front of my bookshelf. What the hell is going on here?

"Cat?!" I yell out as she seems to be nowhere in sight. "Cat, you here?!"

I walk over to the boxes marked KITCHEN and they are empty. So I pull them off the counter.

I pull out my phone and call her.

"Hey, Tiger. I'm at the apartment. What's with all the boxes? Oh. Where are you? Yeah. Okay. See you soon. Love you too."

I hang up and William is looking in the box marked Alex and he pulls out a mug he had given me as a gift last Christmas. "I gave this to you," he says with a pouty face.

I shrug. "I... don't have a clue what she's doing here, but supposedly she right around the corner at that market. When I texted her to say you were coming for dinner, she didn't have what she wanted to make so ran out to get it, but she's parking outside."

I hear someone shuffling with keys outside the door and I open it to see Cat with a key in hand. "Hey! Let me get those for you. Are there more?"

"No, this is it," she says handing things over to me.

She gives William a kiss on the cheek and follows me into the kitchen.

"So... uh... what's with the boxes?" I put the packages on the countertop and she unpacks them.

"We talked about this remember?"

"Uh... no," I say, putting the refrigerated items away.

"I asked if I could bring some stuff of mine from storage. You don't remember us talking about that?"

As she's talking, I see her pull out what looks like a wok from under the counter that used to have my pots and pans in it. I look at the cabinet, wondering where they all went, when I look up at William, who's holding up my saucepan, "Can I have this?"

I look at him like he's lost his mind and shake my head no, and he reluctantly puts it back.

"Okay, I remember you saying you had some stuff in storage and that you wanted to bring it here and I said I imagined that would be fine and we'd make it work out somehow."

"See, you do remember," Cat says smiling at me and gives me a kiss on the cheek and I watch her pour some oil from an olive oil bottle that she grabbed from the countertop into another pan. The countertop now sports a breadbox, a piece of decorative pottery that holds a bunch of cooking utensils, and a cutting board.

"Um ... so when I said, 'we'd work it out' you took that as pack up all my stuff up in boxes and move all your stuff in?"

I see her stiffen as she's steaming the vegetables. Yeah, I probably could have worded that better, but it's a little too late now. She turns down the heat and slowly turns to look at me.

"Alex, there is not a matching set of anything in this kitchen. I have a full set of cooking pots and pans, plates, cups, mugs, even utensils we can use."

My eyes grow wide as I go over to the cabinets and fling them open to find she has emptied them of everything of mine. In its place is all brand new shit. I look at her with disbelief.