Page 2 of Forget About Me

“Do you have any idea how long it’ll take? I have to get to work soon.”

“Would you prefer to come back?” She flips through a large datebook. “I could get you in tomorrow or call you if we have a cancellation today.”

“Yeah, I drive a delivery truck, so there’s no way to call me.” I look back at the dog, who’s got quite the baleful look on his face. “I’ll wait.”

“Someone will be out as soon as we have an opening.”

When I sit back down, the dog sighs quietly. He’s remarkably calm, despite the rabbit scrabbling in a cage next to us and a yappy little dog across the room. Even the cat stalking along the top of the reception counter doesn’t seem to faze my guy.

I check my watch. Maybe I should make an appointment and come back tomorrow. His wound is still oozing blood, though, and I don’t want it to get infected. I’ve had a few like it myself, growing up in and around my dad’s woodshop. Do dogs get tetanus shots, too?

After I’ve gone through all the magazines in the waiting room—which, thankfully, are pet magazines, so I don’t have to encounter photos of myself—I go back to the desk. The gatekeeper’s on the phone, so I give her my most winning smile, hoping she can do something to get us in soon.

“Porter?”

I turn from the receptionist’s frown to face the girl I wasn’t sure I’d ever see again, and it’s like one of those movie moments where the music swells and the light gets rosy.

For half a second. When I really look at her, it’s like the needle scratches across the record and the light blinks back to harsh fluorescent.

I do catch a flash of something in her wide-set, brown eyes. Luciana Maria Minola taught me what passion looked, felt and sounded like when we were barely adults. I’ve never encountered anything as intense with anyone else. There’s a half second where it zings back and forth between us, as strong as ever.

Until the dog interrupts our staring contest with a sharp bark.

She closes her eyes and takes a quick breath. When she opens them again, a cloak of professionalism smothers any remaining fire. Quickly dropping her eyes to the chart in her hands, she asks, “Does the dog have a name?”

All I can think isplease Lucy, just yell at mebecause this fake niceness will kill me. “Uh, no. I just found him. Or her. I’m not sure.”

She takes a quick look at the dog’s undercarriage. “Okay, little man, let’s take you to a room so we can figure out what’s going on here.” She slips a leash that doubles as a collar over his bare neck. She heads out of the waiting area, the dog limping at her side.

I hesitate. “His foot—I mean, his—uh, paw.” I seem to have forgotten how to speak English. I could probably recite some Shakespeare. Mercutio has a few lines about a cat and a rat that might be appropriate since I’m pretty sure the latter is how Lucy would describe me.

“You can go with them.” The receptionist’s amused tone breaks through the fog Lucy’s left me in. “You’re the dog’s owner, right?”

I stare at the woman, not sure of how to answer the question.

She shakes her head and points, as if she understands that just being in Lucy's presence makes all men act like idiots. “Just follow them down the hall.”

“Oh. Yeah. Okay.”

A few wrong turns later, after I surprise an old guy holding an enormous hissing cat and a goth girl with what I think is a ferret, I finally stumble into the correct exam room. The dog’s on his back on an exam table. Lucy is rubbing his chest, cooing sweet nothings. My privates jolt with jealousy. Moving across the country, immersing myself in work, even dating other people—none of it has dimmed her effect on me.

I perch on a bench, again not sure if it’s for humans or animals or both, and clasp my hands in front of the one part of my body that’s sure of itself at the moment, willing it to sit, stay and behave. Lucy was my best friend’s sister. Taking advantage of her in the past had disastrous consequences. I don’t deserve to eventhinkof how delicious her soft skin tasted or how beautiful her hair looked sprawled out on a pillow.

“So, we’ve got a puncture wound.” Her voice is sharp. “He’s a stray?”

I sit up, begging my frontal lobe to work. “Yeah. He just showed up at my house this morning. I opened the front door, and there he was holding up his paw.” I imitate the dog’s pose. “It was bloody, but I couldn’t find anything in there. Maybe he got it out himself.”

“Yeah, that happens. No collar or anything?”

“No, and I haven’t seen him around before.”

“Okay, well, you have a couple of choices here.” Eyes on the chart, her tone grows even more businesslike. Each clipped word erases another chunk of our past. “You can take responsibility for him financially, as well as commit to take care of him until you find the owner—assuming you’re able to find them. If no one claims him, you can either choose to adopt him or look for someone else to adopt him. Or you can surrender him to us, and we’ll take care of him and try to find him a home. Or you can take him to the shelter, where they’ll deal with him, which may include euthanasia, depending on how many dogs they already have on board.”

Finally, her face reveals some emotion. It’s crystal clear what she thinks of options two and three. If I choose either, anything good she ever felt for me will be buried forever.

She may be right, it’s definitely crazy, but maybe it’s a lunatic she’s looking for, as Billy Joel would say. The song, featured in one of the many mixtapes Lucy made for me, echoes in my mind as I try to find words. “You know I never had a dog. I have no idea whether I can take care of him or what to do?—?”

She snaps the chart closed. “Okay, then. You can either take him to Animal Contr?—?”

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