Chapter 4 Andrea
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Andrea
Finneas smiled at me on a Monday morning and I almost dropped his briefing folder.
He looked up at me. And smiled.
It was small. Brief. Gone almost before I fully registered it.
But it was there, a real one, the corners of his mouth actually lifting, and it changed his entire face.
His eyes softened and that hard line along his jaw relaxed and for half a second he looked like a completely different person.
Like someone who might actually enjoy being alive.
I forgot what I was saying. Just stood there in front of his desk with my mouth slightly open and my brain fully offline because Finneas Kingsley had just smiled at me and I was not prepared for what that would do to my nervous system.
“The 10:30,” he prompted.
“Right. Yes. The 10:30, the client called and asked to push, I confirmed.” I was speaking too fast and I knew it and I couldn’t slow down because my face was doing something embarrassing and I needed to leave his office immediately.
I quickly walked out of his office, sat back down at my desk and stared at my screen without reading a single word on it.
My heart was hammering. He smiled at me.
Actually, genuinely smiled at me. I told Fin last night that I wanted that, sat on my porch and said it out loud like a wish, and now it happened, and I was having a full internal crisis about it at 7:15 in the morning.
The rest of the day, he did it two more times.
Once when I handed him his afternoon coffee.
I’d switched him to decaf three days ago and either he hadn’t noticed or he was choosing not to fight me on it, and when I set the mug on his desk and said “last one for the day, don’t push it,” the corner of his mouth twitched up and there it was again.
Brief, barely there, but aimed directly at me.
The second time was during a review of his quarterly report.
I was standing beside his desk pointing at a chart that he’d put together himself, which was his first mistake, and I told him his pie chart looked like it was designed by “a very confident toddler.” He looked at me, and the smile came again, quicker this time, like he couldn’t quite stop it, and my stomach dropped so hard I had to grip the edge of his desk to keep from swaying.
Three smiles. In one day. After two years of nothing but grunts and hand waves and the occasional jaw clench that I had to squint to interpret as approval. Three real, actual smiles directed at me and each one knocked about three seconds of cognitive function clean out of my head.
By the end of the day I was a wreck. A fully operational professional wreck who had filed everything correctly and responded to every email on time and was also quietly losing her mind over micro-expressions from her boss.
I went to Bonalisa to clear my head, which was a joke, because the second I walked through the door and saw Maryjane behind the counter I opened my mouth and what came out was: “He smiled at me. Three times.”
Mary looked up from her paperwork. “Okay?”
“Mary. He has never smiled at me. In two years. And today he did it three times.”
“And this is a problem because?”
“Because now I know what it looks like and I want it to happen again and I’m spiraling.
” I dropped into the folding chair and pressed my hands over my face.
“His whole face changes, Mary. His eyes do this thing where they go soft and his jaw relaxes and he looks like an actual human being instead of a corporate robot and I wasn’t ready for it. ”
Mary and Peter exchanged a look across the room. Peter mouthed something that I couldn’t read but Mary nodded with a grin that told me it was at my expense.
“You’re both terrible friends,” I said.
“We’re your best friends,” Mary corrected.
“Which is why I’m going to distract you from your spiral with something useful.
” Her face shifted then, the teasing dropping away, and I sat up straighter because I knew that look.
That was the look Mary got when something at the shelter had gone badly.
“We had a rough intake this morning. German Shepherd, male, badly malnourished. Clearly abused based on the scars on his muzzle and the way he reacts to sudden movement. He’s in the back kennel and he won’t let anyone near him.
Peter tried earlier and the dog nearly climbed the wall. ”
Peter nodded from where he was stacking food bags. “Not aggressive. Just terrified. Wouldn’t even look at me.”
“We’re overcrowded right now,” Mary continued.
“That litter of eight we took in last week is still here and every foster on our list is full. If we can’t find somewhere for him by the end of the week, we’ll have to transfer him to county, and you know what county is like for a dog in his condition. ”
I did know. County shelters were loud, fluorescent-lit, packed with barking dogs in small cages. For a traumatized animal, it was the worst possible environment. I was already standing. “Can I see him?”
He was pressed into the far corner of the kennel.
Ribs visible through dull, patchy fur. Head low, eyes darting between me and the door behind me like he was calculating escape routes.
He was shaking, his whole body trembling in these small, constant waves that made my chest hurt just looking at him.
When I knelt in front of the kennel door, he flinched and pushed further into the corner.
“Hey,” I said softly. “It’s okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
I sat cross-legged on the cold concrete floor outside the kennel without reaching in, without trying to coax him out or make eye contact or do anything that might feel like pressure. Just sat there and talked.
“My name is Andrea. I come here a lot. I’m going to sit here for a while and you don’t have to do anything, okay? Don’t have to come over, don’t have to look at me. I’m just going to be here.”
I pulled out my book and started reading aloud. Book four, where I’d left off. I kept my voice low and even, not performing the accents as big as I usually did, just letting the words fill the quiet space between us.
After about twenty minutes, his shaking slowed. His ears perked slightly when I dropped into the Scottish brogue for the hero’s dialogue, and I made a mental note of that because if a terrible fake accent was what this dog responded to, I would do a terrible fake accent for as long as he needed.
I read for another forty minutes. By the end, his head was up and he was watching me. Still pressed into the corner, still scared, but watching. His eyes had stopped darting and were focused on me, and his ears were forward, and that was enough. That was everything.
Mary came to check on me. “You’ve been here an hour.”
“He looked at me, Mary. His ears moved.”
“We really need someone to take him. Just until we clear some space. A week, maybe two. I wouldn’t ask, but we’re out of options and he needs somewhere quiet.”
I looked at the dog. Then back at Mary.
My house was small and my hours were insane. I left before dawn and didn’t get home until close to midnight most nights. Taking on a foster right now was objectively a terrible idea and I already knew what I was going to say before I said it.
“I’ll take him.”
I named him Buddy on the drive home because he sat in the backseat shaking the entire time and I kept reaching back to touch his head and saying “It’s okay, buddy, we’re almost there” and by the third time I said it the name just stuck.
Fin was on the porch when I got home, and when he saw me walking up the path with a leash attached to a strange dog, he stood. His whole body went rigid. Ears forward, shoulders stiff, legs braced like he was about to either charge or bolt.
“Hi, Fin! Look, you might have a new friend!” I crouched down to Buddy’s level, keeping the leash loose. “Buddy here needs a safe place for a week, so you guys can hang out together.”
Buddy was pressed against my leg so hard I could feel him trembling through my skirt. Fin didn’t approach. He stayed at the far end of the porch, stiff in a way I’d never seen from him before, watching Buddy with an intensity that bordered on hostile.
“Don’t be jealous,” I told Fin. “There’s plenty of me to go around.”
Over the next few days I poured myself into getting Buddy settled.
The first night I set up a bed for him in the corner of my room with old towels and a blanket, but every time I tried to leave he whined, high and desperate, scratching at the door until I came back.
So I grabbed a pillow and a blanket and lay down on the hardwood floor beside him and talked to him in the dark until his shaking stopped and his breathing slowed.
I woke up at 3 am with my cheek on the floor and his nose touching my hand and my back screaming at me, and I didn’t care because he was calm for the first time since I’d brought him home.
I hand-fed him for the first three days.
Kibble mixed with boiled chicken, tiny portions, held flat in my palm so he could eat at his own pace.
He ate so carefully, taking each piece with his front teeth like he expected the food to be snatched away, and I had to keep my breathing even so he wouldn’t pick up on the anger burning through me at whoever had done this to him.
I read to him every evening. It had worked at the shelter, so I kept doing it, sitting on the floor beside his bed with the book in my lap and my voice low.
By day three he ate from my hand without flinching, and by day five he let me pet his head and press my face against his neck and he didn’t pull away, just stood there with his tail giving one tentative wag, and I cried a little into his fur and pretended I didn’t.
Fin barely got any attention the whole week.
When I was on the floor with Buddy, Fin lay in the doorway watching with an expression that I could only describe as deeply personally offended, and when I read to Buddy he sat across the room looking betrayed.
I tried to split my time but Buddy needed me more right now and Fin seemed to understand that, even if everything about his body language suggested he was filing a formal complaint.
On the last night before I took Buddy back to the shelter, I sat on the porch with both of them.
Buddy was beside me, finally calm, his head resting heavy on my knee.
Fin was on my other side, pressed warm against my hip.
The porch light hummed above us and the street was quiet and I had one hand on each of them and I didn’t want to move.
Tomorrow I’d bring Buddy back to Bonalisa and Mary would find him a proper foster or, if they were lucky, a permanent home.
He was ready. He’d come so far in a week that Mary had teared up when I’d sent her a video of him eating from my hand, and Peter had called me a miracle worker, which I wasn’t.
I was just patient. I was just willing to sit on a floor and read bad Scottish accents until a scared dog decided I was safe.
But giving him back was going to hurt. It always hurt. Every animal I fostered took a little piece of me with them when they left, and I always told myself it was worth it because they were better off, and it was true, but it didn’t make the missing any easier.
“I wish I could keep you,” I told Buddy, rubbing behind his ears.
“Both of you. I wish I could keep every animal that came through that shelter.” My voice cracked on the last word and I swallowed hard.
“But I can’t. I work insane hours and I’m barely home and that’s not a life for a dog.
It would be selfish to keep them for me when they deserve better than an empty house and a person who’s gone sixteen hours a day. ”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Buddy’s ear twitched under my fingers and Fin pressed closer against my side, warm and solid, and I leaned into him.
“Besides,” I said, looking down at Fin, “I have you, right? Even though you’re not really mine.”
Fin pushed his nose into my hand and I curled my fingers into his fur and held on.
“You know what happened this week, Fin?” My voice was quieter now.
“Finneas smiled at me. On Monday. Three times. And I’ve been thinking about it every single day since and I can’t stop.
He has this face he does for clients and meetings, this polite professional nothing expression that could be printed on a stock photo.
But Monday it was different. Monday it was real. I could tell because his eyes changed.”
I looked at Fin. “I’m his assistant. I schedule his meetings and organize his files and fight him about coffee, so I really shouldn’t be losing sleep over a smile. But here I am, Fin. Losing sleep. Over a goddamn smile.”
I leaned my head back against the railing and closed my eyes. The night air was cool against my face and both dogs were warm against me and for a minute I just breathed.
Then I opened my eyes and looked at Fin. “Don’t go anywhere tonight, okay? Both of you. Just stay.”
I stood up, stretched my stiff back, and went inside with Buddy trailing close behind me.
Fin stayed on the porch. When I looked back through the window before heading to my room, he was still sitting there, facing the closed door, and something about the way he sat so still made my chest tight in a way I couldn’t explain.