Page 5 of Shake the Habit

“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—andright 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?

Chapter 2

Iwas about halfway home when I heard the horn.

The dog and I had gone a lot farther than I’d realized, almost back out to the main road that led into town. Maybe that was where he had headed, toward the smells of restaurant meals, the roasted chickens sold in the Greet ‘n Gobble grocery store, and the movie theater with the popcorn pouring out of the kettle into the glass case. I’d worked there as a teenager, scooping it up into bags and spilling it everywhere, and giving my friends free Cokes. The job hadn’t lasted long.

I was heading back to my car to go look for him, and I decided that if I found him, I would take him to the animal shelter and they could deal with the giant beast there. If he didn’t want to be with me, then fine, but he couldn’t run wild on the roads where he might get hurt.

But he wasn’t doing that. I saw where he was when I turned to look at the vehicle honking, because it had made the sound again. It was the same truck from the night before and thedog was riding in the front seat next to the same man who had changed my tire. He’d done that and then followed me, I remembered, and I got my phone ready to call for help as they pulled to a stop.

“Hello,” he said, and got out. The dog did too, scrambling through the driver’s side and running joyfully to me as if we’d been parted for months, not a few minutes, and as if the separation hadn’t been totally his own fault.

“Where were you going?” I asked him. I tied the scarf around his neck again, doubling the knot this time.

“He was running toward the road,” the man told me.

“And you just happened to be there? Really?”

He acted embarrassed, squinting and then rubbing his jaw with his knuckles. “Uh, no, I didn’t just happen by. I knew that you lived back here.”

Yes, I did, off this small street where the houses were far apart and there was no one else around right now, no one who could help me if things went wrong with this person. He was a lot bigger than I was, and I could scrap but not enough to save myself if things turned very bad. But he stayed near his front bumper while the dog cavorted between us.

“I knew you lived back here,” he repeated, “and I thought I would, uh, drive by to see how he was doing.” The man pointed to the dog, who was obviously doing great. “He smells a lot better.”

“He took a bath. A few of them.” I put my arm over my chest again and wrapped the pink scarf around my other hand. He wasn’t getting away, not this time. Nope, I was going to make him love me! That had always worked so well in my past relationships.

“Did you think of a name for him?”

My cousin Cassidy had asked me the same thing. “No, I haven’t,” I answered. The dog suddenly jumped, putting his paws on my chest and shoving me backwards. It had warmed up and the frozen ground had turned into muddy ground, so now I had a lot of that on my coat. “No, sir!” I ordered.

He barked, and the man laughed behind his fist.

“I’m dirty and I almost fell. That’s not funny,” I told both of them.

“No, the dirt’s not funny, and he can’t jump up on you, either. You’re too small and he’s too big.”

Small? No, I wasn’t. But I felt that way when the guy took a few paces forward and reached out his hand.

“Give me his, uh, leash for a second.” I did, and he escorted the dog back to his truck. “Now say the word S-I-R.” He had spelled it.

“Sir?” I said, and the dog immediately turned and barked. “Sir?” I repeated, and he ran to me, tugging the man along with him. “Oh, my Lord! You think that’s your name? Sir?”

The dog—Sir?—nearly knocked me down again with a bout of violent affection.

“He does think it!” I said, and started to laugh. “I have to call you that all the time? How about…Coal? Like Charcoal? Or Basalt? That’s a cool name for a dark dog.”

Sir seemed totally unimpressed, and the man was shaking his head. “It’s too late,” he told me, and he was holding up his fist again and laughing behind it.

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