After Hours
A Cat Café Confessions Bonus Chapter
by Aurora North
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Part One: Zoe
The thing about Cat Yoga After Dark was that it was, objectively, the most ridiculous event Catpurrcino had ever hosted, and Zoe had been present for the Great Oat Milk Incident, the pipe burst, and the time Ghost materialized inside the dishwasher during a health inspection.
Twenty-five adults. Yoga mats. Wine. Cats.
Zoe leaned against the espresso bar and watched the chaos unfold with the clinical detachment of a nature documentary narrator observing a species they’d grown reluctantly fond of.
The adult human, freed from the obligation to model good behavior for children, immediately begins drinking rosé in child’s pose. The cat—Chairman Meow, alpha predator, sixteen pounds of entitlement and unearned confidence—senses vulnerability and claims the nearest mat.
The cat room was transformed. Immy had dimmed the lights to the amber glow she used for evening events. Candles—battery-operated, because cats plus open flame equaled a liability Talia had calculated to the cent—flickered on the windowsills. Ghost was on his shelf. Observing. Judging. Existing in whatever quantum state Ghost occupied between corporeal presence and interdimensional travel.
Dani wasn’t in the yoga class. She was in the book nook, set up with her ring light and camera, doing a live BookTok feature from the Ghost Recommends section. She was wearing a fitted black sweater and her glasses—she wore glasses now, a recent development that Zoe was handling with approximately zero chill.
Zoe’s foot hit a yoga mat. They stumbled. Wine sloshed. The hazard was entirely Dani-related.
The yoga class ended. Customers filtered out. Dani stayed. On her stool at the bar. Watching Zoe clean.
“Can I help?” Dani asked.
“You want to wash glasses?”
“I want to be here.”
The sentence was so simple and so loaded that Zoe’s hands paused on the espresso portafilter. I want to be here. Present tense. Active choice. In this specific space, at this specific time, with this specific person.
“Dani,” Zoe said.
“Zoe.”
“If I come around this bar and kiss you, are you going to film it?”
Dani’s eyes widened. Then crinkled. “My phone is in my bag. So no.”
“And if it wasn’t?”
“I’d still say no. Some things aren’t content.” Dani’s voice dropped. “Some things are private. Ours.“
Zoe came around the bar.
Dani’s glasses were in the way. They bumped noses. Zoe’s septum piercing clinked against Dani’s teeth, and they both laughed—into each other’s mouths, which turned out to be better than any cinematic swell because it was real.
Then the laughing stopped and the kissing started for real, and Zoe discovered that Dani kissed the way she observed: with total, focused, overwhelming attention.
“The nook,” Zoe breathed. “The book nook.”
They stumbled to the book nook in the dark. Ghost was on the window seat. He assessed the situation, jumped down, and sauntered away into whatever dimension Ghost retreated to when his humans were doing things he found beneath his dignity.
“Let me see you,” Dani whispered, pulling Zoe’s shirt off with careful, photographer’s attention. “I want to see all of you.”
Zoe—who hid behind humor, who deflected every genuine emotion with a well-timed joke—was being seen without the humor for the first time. Shaking. Not with cold. With being known.
“You’re so beautiful when you’re not deflecting,” Dani said. Her voice was low, constant—the narration that was Dani’s love language. She kissed the tattoo on Zoe’s shoulder, the one on their forearm, the small crescent moon behind their ear. Each kiss placed with a photographer’s precision.
They undressed each other on the book nook cushions—the ones Immy had made washable for exactly this kind of scenario. Dani was soft and warm where Zoe was angles and tension, and the contrast when they pressed together was so vivid that Zoe gasped.
“I’ve been wanting to taste you since the lavender latte,” Zoe said. “Since day three.”
“Then taste me.”
Zoe settled between Dani’s legs and learned her—not methodically, but instinctively. The way they made coffee: reading the texture, the temperature, the response.
And Dani couldn’t stop talking. Even here. “You feel—oh—your mouth is so—I’ve imagined this. In the corner booth. Watching you make coffee. Imagining your hands on me instead of the portafilter—”
“The portafilter?“
“It’s a very suggestive shape—fuck—don’t stop—”
Zoe didn’t stop. They worked Dani with their mouth and slid two fingers inside her, and Dani came apart on the book nook cushions with a cry she muffled against her own arm—shaking, clenching, displacing a romance novel that fell to the floor.
“I think I’m in love with you,” Zoe said. Raw. Direct. The truest sentence they’d ever spoken.
“I fell a while ago,” Dani said. “I was just waiting for you to catch up.”
Then: a sound from the back office. A very specific sound.
“Oh no,” Zoe whispered. “We’re leaving. Right now. We’re leaving and we’re never discussing this.”
They grabbed clothes, dressed in the dark, fled past Ghost—who was sitting on Dani’s missing shoe—and out the front door into the October night.
On the sidewalk, Zoe took Dani’s hand. “My place is two blocks from here. Come home with me.”
“Yes.”
Part Two: Talia
Thirty minutes earlier.
Talia was not thinking about spreadsheets.
This was notable because Talia was always thinking about spreadsheets. But tonight the only calculation running in her brain was the distance between her body and Immy’s, and the time remaining until that distance became zero.
Because Immy was in yoga pants. The good ones. The black ones that fit like they’d been painted on by someone with a deep understanding of human anatomy and a grudge against Talia’s concentration.
She’d watched Immy do yoga for an hour. Sixty minutes of downward dog and warrior two and a hip-opener that should have been classified as a weapon.
Now the customers were gone. She pulled out her phone.
Talia: Office. Now.
Immy appeared in twelve seconds. Flushed from yoga, hair in a messy bun, sports bra and those pants.
“You lasted longer than I expected,” Immy said. “I had you at downward dog.”
“You had me at the door.”
Talia locked the office door. Crossed the three steps of office. Took Immy’s face in her hands.
“You wore those pants on purpose.”
“The ones that make you lose your ability to calculate quarterly tax liability? Yes. I wanted to see how long you’d last.”
“I’m done being restrained.”
The kiss was the accumulated pressure of a full hour. She walked Immy backward to the desk. Cleared it—one arm, laptop safely relocated. Immy hopped up and wrapped her legs around Talia’s waist.
“You were so good tonight,” Talia murmured. “The event was flawless. Twenty-five adults, eight cats, zero incidents—”
“Are you praising my event management while you undress me?”
“Multitasking.” Talia peeled the sports bra off. Then the yoga pants—those pants, finally off, discarded like a decommissioned weapon. Immy was bare on the desk, and Talia dropped to her knees.
“Your social media strategy for the After Dark series has generated 200,000 impressions,” Talia said, her mouth on Immy’s inner thigh.
“Talia—if you give me a performance review while you’re down there—”
“Your merch designs are our highest-margin product line.” Talia’s mouth found her, and the sound Immy made was worth every minute of the last hour. Two fingers inside, curling, the rhythm she’d perfected over three years. “And you’re such a good girl.”
Immy came with a scream she didn’t muffle. Talia held her through it—mouth softening, fingers gentle, the anchor, always the anchor.
“Sit in the chair,” Immy said, recovering. Eyes dark.
Talia sat. Immy straddled her—naked, confident, the body of a woman who’d been told she was too much and had decided that too much was exactly the right amount.
“You watched me do yoga for an hour and you didn’t touch me,” Immy said, her hand sliding between them, finding Talia wet and aching. “That must have been torture.”
“You built this business,” Immy said, her fingers moving. Slow. Deliberate. “You made space for me. For my ideas. For my color on the spreadsheet.” Her thumb found Talia’s clit. “You said no to a franchise because you chose us over safety.”
“Immy—I’m—”
“I know. Let go, Talia. Be a good girl and let go.”
Talia let go. In the desk chair, in the office, with Immy’s hand between her legs and Immy’s mouth at her ear whispering good girl, I love you, let go. The sound she made was the one she only made with Immy—the sound from underneath thirty-one years of control.
After: tangled in the desk chair, foreheads together. The framed photo on the desk—the one that tilted during every encounter and never fell—was crooked again.
“Twenty-eight,” Immy said.
“Twenty-eight.”
“Same time next month?”
“The ticket revenue was exceptional. And the wine markup—”
“Talia.“
“Same time next month.”
They cleaned up. Locked the café. Went upstairs to their bed—too small, too full of cats, absolutely perfect.
“I love you,” Immy murmured, half-asleep.
“More than spreadsheets?”
“Don’t push it.”
Immy laughed—the last laugh of the evening, soft and warm and aimed directly at the center of Talia’s heart—and fell asleep.
Talia held her. In the dark. In the warm. In the life they’d built, one cat and one muffin and one “good girl” at a time.
This, she thought. Always this.
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