Page 21 of The Night We Met

I was doing well. In a better mood than I’d been in months. I think it was the dog.

He gave me someone to hang out with when I didn’t feel like hanging out with humans. He was friendly and sweet.

He did this thing every morning where he’d wake me up by army crawling his way across my comforter with his legs dragging behind him. You wouldn’t think that getting teabagged by a Yorkie at 7:00 a.m. would be good for morale, but it was so funny it cracked me up every time. I don’t think I’d ever met a quirkier dog. He was a tiny mountaineer. He liked to climb up onto the kitchen counter to surf for snacks, so I had to move all the bar stools, and he had an insatiable prey drive that he liked to use to bring me dead things. The first time I let him out in the yard, he killed a mouse, then brought it in and left it on the bed. Two days later I found him eating a rabbit head on the couch. I think an owl dropped it onto the lawn? He prowled the yard like a tiny velociraptor. I liked him.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think I could keep him.

He wasn’t housebroken and I wasn’t home enough to teach him. He couldn’t hold it when I was gone all day, he shredded pee pads and diapers when left alone, and crating wasn’t working. He’d do his business outside if he was walked regularly, but that wasn’t realistic with my shifts. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

He sat on my lap, his paws on the steering wheel scanning the parking lot in his Doglet Nation shirt and a diaper, growling at people who walked by.

“Nice of Xavier to tap in,” Jesse said, typing a text on his phone.

“Yeah.”

“What do you think of flying out to see him?” I asked, looking over at him.

“Sure. In the winter though. In January, I’ll get the hell out of here any chance I can get.” He glanced up. “So what’s Larissa like? Heard you hung out with her last week.”

I shrugged. “She’s nice. I like her.”

“Becca likes her too. I think Mike’s sprung.”

“I think you’re right.”

“Heard he paid like, two thousand bucks to get her car out of the shop.”

“Yes, he did.”

“He said he had to snake toilets at Mall of America for like three hours to do it.”

“And he has not shut up about it,” I muttered.

As long as he didn’t bitch about it to Larissa.

I liked her too. She was funny and smart and interesting—and different from the women Mike usually dated.

I wondered if that was the point.

I’d never actually seen him this into someone—and now that I knew her, I got it. I really did.

The automatic doors opened to the building and Jesse sat up. “Here they come.”

Xavier was pushing Mike out in a wheelchair. Mike’s jaw was wrapped and he had gauze hanging from his mouth.

I got out and opened the back passenger door. “How you feeling?” I asked.

Mike looked at me like he didn’t know who I was. “Why are you here?” he slurred around the cotton.

“Like I’d miss this?”

He was so out of it he could barely stand. Xavier and I had to practically lift him from the chair to the car.

“Where’s Laritha?” Mike asked while Xavier and I helped him into the back seat.

“You told her not to come, remember?” Jesse said, twisting to talk to him from the front seat. “You said you don’t want to look like a chipmunk in front of her.”

Xavier chuckled and closed the door. He handed me Mike’s bag of medications. “Thanks,” I said. “You coming over?”