Page 51 of Shake the Habit

“Someone surrendered a Bouvier?”

“A what?” Caleb asked.

“Sir is a Bouvier des Flandres,” the trainer said. “It’s an old Belgian breed. I heard that they were intelligent but I never got the chance to work with one before now. You don’t see too many.” He glanced at the throng of animals. “We mostly get doodles.”

The class had been full of those. “I didn’t know that Sir was a special kind of dog,” I admitted. “I thought he was a mix.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s pure Bouvier,” Neal said. “After the first class, I looked up the breed standards and Sir fits them to a T. Who gave up such a beautiful dog? He’s a sweet boy, too.” Then two of the doodles got in a little scrap, and he left to deal with them.

“I had wondered if he was a purebred,” Caleb said, bending to scratch Sir’s ears again. “He’s so handsome. Specialty dogs like this are usually expensive.”

“Someone didn’t care about him,” I said firmly. “Someone let him run away and I looked, but there was never anything online with people trying to get him back, and no one asked for him at the shelter, either. He’s mine, now. It’s official, he has the chip!” Sir and I gone to get that on Valentine’s, in fact, and it was the best present I’d ever received on that day.

“Uh, ok,” Caleb answered. “I’m not saying he isn’t yours, but I wonder what his history is.”

Whatever it was, his future was with me because he was my dog. I was done with the discussion and we had to hurry back to the house anyway. The ceremony had started a little late due to another doodle making a mess on the floor and my parents and a few other guests would be arriving for what I had called “Sir’s Graduation Reception” when I’d texted invitations to everyone. It was just my parents, Aunt Paula, Aria and Cain and their family, Marc and Taygen, and Cassidy and Jack. Of course, the last two invitees wouldn’t actually be coming since they were in…I’d lost track of exactly where they were, but somewhere on their tour. A few weeks ago, they’d flown home, had her OB appointment, and left the same day, without anyone even getting to see them. It was really just a rushed thing.

I ran around the living and dining rooms, rearranging the flowers I’d gotten and trying to make pretty displays like my cousin Prue always did at her house. As I fretted, I also admiredthe furniture that Caleb had bought when we’d done some whirlwind shopping the weekend before.

“If we’re going to host people, we have to have a place for them to sit,” he’d told me. “One couch and two chairs won’t be enough. This house is empty.”

There was Aunt Paula’s rug, of course, but he’d been correct about the lack of seating. So we’d asked Marc if he wouldn’t mind hanging out with Sir, and we took the dog over to my cousin’s house while Caleb and I drove all around Chattanooga to shop. It had been a fun day, although it made me a little anxious to see how much he was spending, and we’d managed to fill up a lot of the empty space in his house. There were now several armchairs, a larger couch, a dining room table, and a new bed for him that was an appropriate size. His feet no longer hung off the end.

“I don’t know why I waited so long to do this,” he’d said as we’d billowed the new comforter over it after the furniture delivery.

It was habit, like anything. Good or bad, they were hard to shake. “I’m glad you did it now,” I’d told him.

Sir enjoyed that new bed a lot, because now there was space for him to be in it with Caleb. He’d been alternating between our rooms and sometimes sleeping in both places in one night. We’d taken to leaving our doors open so that he could wander.

Marc had told me that while we’d shopped, he and Sir had a fun day together, too. “He’s a good boy,” he’d crooned, which had made Sir immediately flop over to offer his tummy. It was scratched. “He was a good buffer.”

He meant that the dog was a buffer between himself and his fiancée, because Taygen had also gone to his house that Saturday to help make decisions about bathroom fixtures and flooring. I had considered it to be a very, very bad idea. Why would they have needed more things to fight about? Their arguments hadn’t stopped and if anything, they were bickering more. The wedding was a constant topic.

“It’s strategy,” my cousin had explained. “If I start talking about napkin folding, then we fight over that instead of over her parents trying to control the whole damn thing. They try to control her whole damn life, like she’s a toddler instead of an adult.”

“My Lord, Marc,” I’d said, wincing, but he wasn’t yet ready to confront the big stuff and he wasn’t ready to do anything else—like break up. So he’d had Sir as a cushion between him and Taygen and he was now talking about getting a dog of his own, since it had worked so well. She loved Sir and everyone had gotten along as they’d all played together.

“Tay and I have been fighting so much, I forgot that we did have fun at one point,” he’d told me, which had made me wince again.

At least Taygen and I had made up. She had texted to apologize for getting angry at me on my birthday, then she’d come to the office with flowers, too. It wasn’t my fault at all, she’d said, and had almost started to cry. Marc had looked very uncomfortable and I hadn’t felt much better. No, their problems weren’t my fault, but I had introduced them and now they were both so unhappy.

But I was glad that she and I had resolved things and that they were still talking, which must have been true since they were coming together to Sir’s party. I fixed his bow, because he still wouldn’t wear the cap and gown, and quickly checked myself in the powder room mirror. I’d put a lot of work into my own hair and makeup, so I felt that I was equal to him. Caleb had gone all out and had gotten a haircut and before the graduation ceremony, he’d come downstairs wearing a tie. He looked…well, my jaw had dropped and I’d only been able to stare for a moment when I’d seen him. “Handsome” wasn’t a strong enough word, which I’d told him and had made him blush.

He got a little flush now, too, because we were both running around the house completing the last minute party details. He strongly believed that song selection was the most important thing so he’d been working on a playlist for at least a week, but he was experiencing last-minute trouble with his speakers.

“Why won’t they connect? They always connect!” he kept telling me, but I was busy plating the pimento cheese that was Aunt Amber’s specialty and would hopefully make Aria, her daughter, very happy. We had several platters on the new dining room table (the chairs would be coming, but there was a delay) and Sir knew that he wasn’t supposed to get into them. I was afraid, though, that the temptation would be too much, so I was also keeping a close eye on him.

Soon enough (and actually, too soon because I really should have washed the grapes for the fruit salad the day before), my parents showed up with Aunt Paula, and then the rest of the guests were knocking, too. Caleb finally got the music workingand he was very relieved, and everything was fine. We showed off the house and Marc got excited about possible improvements and renovations.

“This kitchen’s a great size,” he noted. “You could take a little space from the back entryway and make a bigger family room, too.”

“Marc, do you really need another project?” Taygen asked sharply. “You’re always swamped as it is.”

My mom looked at her and at my cousin and said, “That’s great to hear that you have a lot of business, Marc. Come out onto the patio and tell me about it.”

Taygen followed and I heard her apologizing. After a moment, most of us went along, too, because it was a beautiful day. Caleb and I had done a lot of work in the back yard, weeding, trimming, and chopping. It still had the air of a jungle but it was much improved, and my dad walked around talking about all the different plants that he thought we could return to a healthier state. He got excited about that himself. “I can come up next weekend,” he mentioned four or five times.

Aunt Paula had stayed inside and soon she was at the door, asking if we were going to eat any of the food that she was sure it had taken us so long to prepare. “I recognize my cheese straws,” she said with satisfaction. “Caleb, they turned out beautifully.” He’d been over at her house for hours and had come home with a sheaf of recipes, some that she had picked up herself and some that had been passed down in the McCourt family forgenerations. She’d texted me several times since that day to say that he was a good man and she liked him, and I had to agree.

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