Chapter 1 #2
“Thank you,” I said.
“Thanks a lot for getting him out.”
“My pleasure. Let’s get your tire on.”
It was easier for him in his jeans than for me in my cousin Cassidy’s dress and my heels, and he put on the spare in about a second.
The dog crowded around him the whole time he did, overseeing the operation, and I watched, too.
“Thank you,” I repeated.
“I really, really appreciate that you stopped.”
“Happy to help.”
“It’s a generous thing to do on Christmas,” I said, and he seemed slightly surprised.
“Right, it’s Christmas,” he answered, nodding.
“I lost track of the days.” He looked down at the animal.
“What about him?”
The dog was currently sitting on his foot, and I remembered something about possession being nine-tenths of the law…
wasn’t that right? I took a step backwards, away from them.
“He seems to like you,” I mentioned, but as I said the words, the dog hopped up and walked toward my trunk.
I had closed the door, luckily, but he stood there expectantly.
“No, sir,” I said. He wagged his bobbed tail.
“No, I can’t take you. You smell, and the shelter is probably closed today, anyway.” But I didn’t want to leave him out here in the cold, either.
I looked at the man.
“I can’t have a dog.”
“I wasn’t suggesting—”
“I’m gone all day at work. I live by myself so there’s no one else to be with him. I’m totally alone, every day. Alone all the time,” I reiterated.
“And if you asked anybody, they would probably tell you that I’m not the kind of person who could take care of an animal. They would probably say, ‘Kayleigh can’t be trusted with a dog, because she doesn’t care about anyone but herself.’”
He was looking surprised again.
“That’s not true,” I informed the man.
“I would take great care of him. I would give him a bath, which he really needs, and I have money to buy food and anything else. I mean, my expenses are practically nothing. This car is paid off because it used to belong to my nana, and I live in a cheap apartment. I don’t go out, not ever. Not ever,” I repeated.
“I don’t take trips but even if I did, I have a million and two McCourt relatives who could step in to watch him.”
“A million and two McCourts? Sounds like you’re all set then,” he said.
“Be careful driving on that spare.” He was walking back to his truck as he spoke, his hand held up in a gesture of farewell.
“Wait, where are you going? What about the dog?”
He stopped.
“I thought you just explained how you were taking him.”
“No, sir!” I said vehemently and the dog woofed a deep bark in response.
It sounded as if he were arguing, and he jumped a little, too, lifting his front paws.
“Oh, my Lord! What am I going to do with you?” I asked him.
There was only one answer.
A few moments later, I was back on the road, heading toward my house.
“You smell terrible,” I told the animal in the cargo area.
“My whole car is going to reek!”
He had no response to that.
But after all his insistence about getting in here with me, he didn’t much like the ride I was giving him.
He cried in deep, hoarse whimpers that were really heartrending.
“I’m sorry, I’m going as fast as I can on this tire,” I kept telling him, and I checked a lot in my rearview mirror to see how he was doing.
When I did that, I also saw that the truck was behind me.
The man who’d helped me had pulled out after I did, and at first, it made sense that we’d be heading in the same direction.
After all, we were going towards the closest town in the area, and I lived on the outskirts of it.
But when I turned off the main road, so did he, and that was odd—and then when I made the next turn, he did, too.
So I stopped before he could follow me all the way to my duplex, and I got out.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
The man rolled down the window.
“I wanted to make sure you made it on that doughnut and that the dog didn’t act up,” he called.
“You never know with a stray.” Then he pulled around me and drove off and I watched the truck turn at the next street and disappear.
Ok, good. If he had been telling the truth, then it was a nice thing, but it was unnerving…
oh, no!
“No, sir!” I told the dog.
“You may not sit in the driver’s seat. Get back. Get back, right now!”
He rested his chin on the steering wheel, and I looked at the sky and asked for patience.
But later that night, I had decided that it was a nice thing to have a dog.
I had already determined that I would keep him when my cousin Cassidy called to talk about the day and gossip about our relatives.
I told her my news, how I’d had the blowout and how I’d found a new companion.
“We’re already friends,” I explained.
“It was meant to be, like a rom-com movie or a romance novel. I saw him, I almost killed him, and boom. Happily ever after.”
“I don’t know about this,” she answered doubtfully.
I did. I was absolutely sure that I was going to keep him.
“We had dinner together and talked,” I said.
“He watched me clean the bathroom.”
“If he got you to clean, then he is a positive influence.”
“You should be proud,” I told her.
“I even used bleach.”
“Don’t use ammonia in there, then!” she immediately ordered.
“They don’t mix.”
“I don’t even have that stuff.” I’d been lucky to find the bleach spray, and it had come from her.
Cass had given me a bucket of supplies when she’d left her old house and moved into her boyfriend’s beautiful place on Lookout Mountain, above the city of Chattanooga.
I was happy for her and I’d been glad to accept the surplus bottles, sponges, and rags.
To be honest, I’d never expected to use any of them, especially not with so much…
force.
But I’d had to go hard.
After I’d given the dog a bath, and then another bath, the whole room had resembled the facilities in a public campground after a rainstorm: disgusting and smelly.
He had been filthy, so dirty that he’d changed colors after the ninth or tenth rinse.
It turned out that he wasn’t actually a black dog.
His thick coat was dark grey, and he had a white patch on his chest. He was hugely strong, like he was muscular enough that it made me wary again.
But when I was drying him (after the second bath), he’d put his chin on my shoulder and huffed.
The curls on his face were springy now and had tickled and made me smile.
“What are you going to do with a dog?” Cassidy asked.
“Well, I was thinking about it, and he can come to work with me,” I said.
“He’s very pleasant.” He would either make friends due to his charming personality, or he would scare the living crap out of clients with his huge head, heavy paws, and massive body.
“Are you even allowed to have a dog in your apartment?” she asked next.
Out of Cassidy, Aria, and me, Cass had always been the most logical and sensible.
For my part, no one had ever associated “Kayleigh McCourt” with “good judgment.”
“Yes, in fact, I am allowed to have a pet. I just checked my lease,” I answered.
It said I could have a cat or a dog (one, not both) and the animal must weigh under twenty-five pounds.
I didn’t think this dog’s front leg weighed under twenty-five pounds…
there were also breed restrictions but those wouldn’t be a problem, since I didn’t know what kind of dog this was and nowhere did it state “mutts forbidden.” It did say, however, that a pet deposit was required, and since I hadn’t had a pet when I’d signed that lease, I hadn’t given over the extra money.
The landlord lived in Ringgold, Georgia, though, and didn’t come out here to Sequatchie County very often.
Hardly ever, in fact.
No need to look for trouble, as my mother said sometimes.
We’d just let sleeping dogs lie for a while…
my Lord, where was this dog going to sleep?
“I had no idea that you even liked dogs,” my cousin said.
“I’ve never even seen you pet a dog before, KayKay.”
“I like this one a lot,” I told her.
“He’s very sweet.” He was next to me on the couch right now, and his head (which also probably weighed more than twenty-five pounds) rested on my thigh, with his funny beard spread out on my sweatpants.
He smelled a lot like my shampoo, because I’d emptied most of the bottle on him to remove the dirt and skunk odor (although that still lingered under the apple blossom scent of my beauty products).
“Anyway, it was lucky that the man came along, otherwise I might have gotten dirt on your dress,” I said.
I was going to get it dry cleaned anyway because unfortunately, it also had a lingering odor of skunk.
“I knew I recognized that dress! You better give it back…well, you can keep it until the next time I come home,” she reconsidered.
Cassidy had to hang up after not too long, because she was a lot busier now.
We’d been lucky to see her at all today, but she’d been able to fly home from the tour she was on with her boyfriend.
Yes, you heard that right: she was on a music tour, like a big deal, five-star hotel, eating out all the time, screaming fans, seeing new places, living the high life, multi-month kind of a tour.
That was because Jack, her boyfriend, was a country music star, and yes, you heard that right, too.
I missed her so much that it was hard to put into words.
Actually, I didn’t try to put my feelings into words in her hearing because she’d gone though tough times over the last few years, very tough, and I wanted her to enjoy every moment of this new life.
She was having an amazing experience with Jack, who loved her so much that he wrote songs about her.
Like, songs that were played on the radio, so that everyone in the world could also hear how he felt.
They were crazy about each other.
And then there was our third musketeer, Aria, who had been married for a few years now and had two kids.
Two! I had a feeling she wouldn’t stop there, either, because she loved children and she was such a good mother.
Her husband seemed to spend his time thanking the heavens that he had her for a wife, and then also doing everything he could on this Earth to make her happy.
It worked.
I was also happy for them, my two best friends.
They deserved every bit of everything wonderful.
And as for me? Now I had my dog.
He had just drooled all over my sweatpants as a sign of his affection, too.
I had the next day off, but I was now a pet owner and I couldn’t sleep in like I usually did.
I also couldn’t stay in PJs and eat popcorn on the couch, watching the six-part series about travel in Italy that I’d been thinking about all week.
No, I couldn’t do any of that, because just as the sun started to illuminate my bedroom the next morning, the dog was nosing my side.
And by “nosing,” I meant shoving his tank-sized head into my ribs and hip, to the point that he rolled me over.
“No, sir!” I told him.
“Don’t push me around.”
He looked abashed, and sat down very nicely next to me.
Then he picked up one giant paw and planted it on my chest.
“Umph,” I grunted.
“My Lord, that’s a lot. Ok, I’m getting up.”
The night before, I’d filled one of my bowls with water and another with ground beef, rice, and some vegetables, all cooked to an edible level and then mixed together.
After he was done eating, I’d let him out of my back patio door and I hadn’t really watched what he’d done in the dark, but he seemed more relaxed when he’d come back in.
Now, however, I decided that he needed some exercise.
It probably wouldn’t have hurt me, either—after all, I was getting up there in age, and it was important for older ladies to have a high step count and to bring up their heart rate.
“This is another benefit of having a dog,” I told him after I took a quick shower.
Rather than practicing self-love in there, I had sung, and he’d seemed to enjoy it.
“Besides companionship, I’ll also get attention, affection, and exercise! It’s really amazing.”
Something that wasn’t amazing was how he pooped, and then what was I supposed to do about it?
I couldn’t leave it in the front yard (which I shared with my neighbor), but the thought of picking it up had me puking into my own mouth.
“We’ll deal with it on the way back,” I told him.
“Let’s go.”
He really did make a pretty picture with his grey fur and the pink scarf that I’d tied around him to make a collar and leash.
We’d go later to get him something real, but this worked for right now.
“You’re very handsome,” I told him.
It wasn’t every day that I got to be escorted by such a fine-looking gentleman.
After a while, though, I told him that we were turning around.
Due to all his pretty fur, the cold didn’t seem to bother him but I was a bit chilly.
“Ok, we’re heading home,” I announced and swiveled, glad to be done.
The dog stopped but he didn’t turn with me.
He only looked over his shoulder and watched.
“Come,” I ordered. “We’re going this way now.”
But he continued walking in the same direction.
Since I didn’t want to be dragged off my feet, I went along with him, but I protested.
“No,” I said. “Hey! Listen to me, please.” And then the knot in the scarf, which I hadn’t tied very tightly in order not to hurt him, loosened until it undid completely.
As soon as he was free of the encumbrance of me pulling on him, he went even faster.
“Stop!” I called, but he didn’t.
He broke into a trot, actually, so I started to jog, an activity I was not prepared for.
I had on old slippers, for one thing, and a bra that was crap for support.
I clasped one arm under my chest and pumped the other back and forth, like I’d seen real runners do.
It didn’t seem to make me go faster, though.
“Halt!” I ordered, but the word was breathy because I was so out of shape.
The dog didn’t give me even a backwards glance and he even picked up his pace, from the trot right into a full-fledged gallop.
“Wait!” I yelled then, which worked just as well as “halt,” “no,” and “hey.” As in, it didn’t make any difference to him at all, and he only got farther from me no matter how hard I pumped both my arms (I had let go of my breasts and they were free-flying).
He rounded the corner and I couldn’t see him anymore.
I stopped, gasping and now holding my ribs because I had stitches in both my sides.
I was crying, too, but not from any physical pain.
The dog was gone. I hadn’t even had him for a full day and here I was, standing on the sidewalk and weeping because I had already lost him.
“Ingrate!” I yelled, but I didn’t have enough air in my lungs to do it very loud.
That had been really good shampoo.
He’d gotten to sleep in my bed with me, too, and he’d totally hogged it.
“Jerk!” I tried to yell, but it was mostly a sniffle.
I had thought it was a sign.
Aunt Amber had given me that weird pep talk, the one that had seemed to be about erotic auto-stimulation but had really been about emotional self-care—and right after that, I had found a companion.
“Today will be a good day,” she’d announced.
“Today, I’ll find love!” I’d thought that I really had found it, like a Christmas gift.
But instead, I stood alone on the cold sidewalk and then used the pink scarf to wipe my cheeks free of the tears that had dripped down them.
I was alone, just like I’d told that stranger.
Was I always going to be this way?