Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
BLUE
“I thought I’d find you here,” Dr. Monroe—Rex to most people—said, entering the back where the sickest animals were kept.
I’d gone to school to become a vet tech and sometimes when I thought maybe I’d gone into the wrong line of work, I’d come back here and look at the tiny animals that depended on me to help them.
Rex crouched down next to me and gently stroked his fingers over the head of the little tabby cat we’d been working on.
She’d come in as a stray who was badly malnourished and had multiple other issues.
I’d given her a flea bath to get rid of the fleas sapping her strength.
I’d cleaned her up and we’d treated her wounds and various ailments, and now the rest was up to her.
“How’s she doing?” Rex asked.
“Her temp is down. Her eyes are clearing up. She’s a little fighter.
” I stroked her fur, which honestly wasn’t the healthiest. She’d been outside for so long and so malnourished that her fur was still kind of grimy feeling even after a bath.
It would take a few months for her to get back to full health.
“Sometimes I wonder how you haven’t taken home twenty-five animals by now,” Rex confessed to me as he took the opportunity of her being out of her kennel to give her a quick exam.
“Easy. School took all my money.” I laughed a little, and the cat, whom I’d taken to calling Cookie, let out a disgruntled little grumble. “Oh, I’m sorry, did that disturb you?” I said to her, stroking her fur again.
“Plus,” I continued, “not everyone is you, Mister. It’s not a zoo if they’re just dogs and cats. And one goat. And a bird.”
Rex grinned. “And a hedgehog.”
“Rex… nooo. We talked about this. They’re pets, not Pokemon. You can’t collect them all.”
“If it makes you feel better, I found homes for the goat, the hedgehog, and even for the bird. He’s going there this weekend. He’ll have other little bird buddies to hang out with, and he won’t have to worry about the cats anymore.”
“I’m sure he’s very relieved. Where’s he going?”
“A vet friend of mine knows people who run a rescue. He’ll be well cared for there.” Rex eyed me like he wanted to examine me next, like I was one of his patients. “What about you?”
“What about me?” I turned away and gently put Cookie back in her kennel. I kept my back turned to Rex while I messed with her blankets, making sure she was comfortable.
“You’ve been sulking back here every day for a week.” Rex moved away and checked on a little dog in a different kennel. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
“I do not sulk,” I said, trying not to sound like I was sulking.
“When something is bothering you, you spend increasing amounts of time here when you’re not technically on the clock. I allow you to volunteer a certain amount of your own time here, on top of paying you for extra hours that you work, and I love your dedication, Blue, but you can’t live here.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “These guys don’t mind.”
“These guys are hopped up on pain meds or are too sick to give a shit where they are, so that’s not the argument you think it is.
” Rex moved on to another patient after that.
He had a way about him of opening a conversation and letting you know you could go to him if you wanted to continue it, but then backing off and giving you space to breathe.
It was one of the things that made him a good vet. He was a good listener.
“It’s dumb.” Leaning forward, I rested my forehead on the metal bars of one of the kennels.
“Ah, must be man trouble then.”
I snorted a laugh and turned around to look at him. “How’d you guess?”
He shrugged and put his stethoscope back around his neck.
“Experience. If it’s a problem, and it’s a dumb problem, it’s probably about a man.
” He gave me a sad kind of half-smile. Last year, just after he hired me, he and his long-time boyfriend had split up and he’d taken it pretty hard.
And without his boyfriend around to rein him in, Rex took home a lot more animals.
But the fact that he was giving up the bird gave me hope that he was starting to cope better.
I’d always tried to be as honest as possible with Rex, and before he hired me, I’d told him about my career making adult content, explaining that it was how I put myself through school, how I supported myself.
Rex blinked at me and simply asked me to not ever film at the clinic and then told me that he frankly didn’t care how I made my money so long as I showed up to work on time and did my job.
“So there’s this guy.”
Rex did a fist pump in the air, for which I looked at him in mild disgust.
“Sorry, but I knew it. Go on.”
“So there’s this guy.” I started over, but paused and held Rex’s gaze because I wanted to see his reaction for the next part. “And there’s this other guy.”
“Ooh, a love triangle.”
“And they’re into each other.”
He deflated, but before he could talk, I kept going.
“And they’re into me.”
“Okay… well, to be honest, I kind of fail to see the problem.” He folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the kennels.
Explaining my rules out loud sometimes made me feel like a crazy person.
Like it was unhinged of me to only have sex at work, for work.
To not indulge in it outside of that setting.
And when I’d first put the rule in years ago, it had made sense to me.
I had things I wanted to accomplish, goals I wanted to reach, and I didn’t want a bunch of relationship drama getting in the way.
Working kept me sane and satisfied, and staying out of my costars’ beds kept my life simple and let me focus on school.
Now that I was finished with school, though, and I was working, all those safeguards I’d put in place no longer seemed like protection but instead were obstacles I wasn’t sure how to remove. Or if I should.
“Do you remember how I said I don’t sleep with people when I’m not working?”
Rex nodded. “You said it was to protect your peace.”
“Well, it’s starting to feel less peaceful recently.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “These guys I work with. One I’ve worked with before, and the other has been around for a while working behind the scenes, but he just recently got to film with me and the other guy.”
Rex furrowed his brow. “Are they pressuring you to break your rules for them?”
“No, but maybe that’s the problem. I look at them and think wow, they’d be good together, but then I get stupid and jealous about it.”
He said nothing, he just stood there and smiled at me.
“What?”
“You like them.”
I rolled my eyes. As if that wasn’t obvious by my current state of inner turmoil.
And the fact that I was confiding in my boss.
But over the course of the year, the relationship between Rex and me was definitely evolving into a solid friendship.
Which now included relationship advice, I guess.
“I wouldn’t have filmed with them if I didn’t.
A girl’s gotta have standards, you know. ”
“When we make rules for ourselves, we do it because, for whatever reason, in that moment, they work for us. Or that’s the goal anyway. But if things aren’t working for you anymore, there’s no harm doing things differently.”
“Let me guess; rules were meant to be broken?”
Rex gave me a look that was indecipherable. “Rules were meant to be changed.” He looked like he wanted to say something else, but Mercy, the receptionist, poked her head into the room.
“Rex, your next appointment is here. And, Blue, we have a poodle who needs their anal glands dealt with.”
“If it’s Chew-Barka, make sure Pauline puts a muzzle on her little demon before I go in there.”
“Oh, stop. Chew-Barka is a saint.” Mercy laughed but there was an evil glint in her eye because she knew that Pauline’s dog hated me.
“Tell that to my bite scars. Muzzle, Mercy. Muzzle,” I called after her.
“God, you’re such a baby,” Mercy teased, but I knew she’d make sure Pauline’s little devil dog was properly secured before I went in there.
“Find me later and we can talk more about your boy troubles.” Rex squeezed my shoulder and left the room to go to his next patient.
After that, the day got insane. Chew-Barka was his usual awful self, but after him there was an emergency with a dog who got into his owner’s weed stash.
A cat that had been missing for three months and returned full of fleas and ticks and definitely skinnier than it had been.
The family was happy to have him home and glad to hear he would most likely make a full recovery.
Rex was dealing with health checks on a batch of kittens when I slipped out the back. My shift had ended an hour before, and things had calmed down, and the other tech was still there so I only felt a little guilt at ducking out before Rex could corner me.
Maybe he could change his rules, but when I thought about changing mine, it made my pulse race and my stomach churn.
I was well aware of the fact that I had issues, and they were why I had rules in the first place.
But years later, I still had issues and having the rules hadn’t fixed them.
They’d just helped me ignore them. And I was good with that.
Except it had been nice to have Jax and Asher around after our scene.
Curling up with Asher on the couch was one of my recent favorite memories.
Plus there was Jax, and the way he looked at me hadn’t changed.
Jax had a face that was an open book, and I attributed it to him never having to hide how he felt from the people who cared about him.
It’s what made filming with him so memorable.
He was open in ways that I couldn’t articulate.
Like it was easy for him to just exist as himself, to lay himself bare.
Asher was more like me. More closed off and wary.
It was easy to see that Jax liked him. Right now, Asher was hung up on Lukas, but he wouldn’t be forever.
And maybe when he wasn’t, he’d find someone better for him.
Someone who was more open and more able to share themself with him. Someone like Jax.