Page 13 of The Goode Girls of Maple Lane
I inhale slowly, exhale slowly. Then I crouch by her side, letting her smell my hand before I run it over her head and down one of the supersoft ears I’m already obsessed with.
“Hi, Aggie,” I say, barely above a whisper. “Are you ready to come home?”
The tail thumps a little faster. I take that as a yes.
Dr. Kong knocks and enters from the door opposite the reception area. While I pet Aggie’s ears and Everett stands nearby, listening intently and nodding along, Dr. Kong talks me through Aggie’s medical issues and the prescriptions she recommends, all of which are at least somewhat familiar to me, thanks to my coursework, though the depth and precision with which she can speak about everything illustrate how much I still have to learn. We also discuss diet, movement, and behavioral changes to monitor, echoing a lot of what Sam and Sariah covered with me, and she recommends a vet in Ithaca where I can schedule follow-up appointments locally. She glances fondly at Aggie as she says this, and I get the distinct feeling I’m not the only one who’s fallen in love with this dog after only a brief acquaintance.
I give Aggie a big bear hug, nearly tearing up for the umpteenth time since the first call from Andy at the shelter, though this time, there’s no grief, no panic, no confusion, no fury at horrible people who shouldn’t have pets. There’s just an overwhelming surge of gratitude.
I get to loveyou, I think.I get the chance to love you.
While Everett backs his car up to the front of the building, I payfor Aggie’s medications at reception, sliding the receipt into my pocket before the voice in my head—the one that sounds a lot like my dad’s—asks if I can really afford this. After tucking the bag of antibiotics, thyroid meds, pain pills, and skin ointment into the front seat, I return with Everett to move Aggie from the consulting room into the back of his station wagon. I brought both the sling and the harness. The sling wraps around her midsection and has two handles that can be used by either one or two people to support a dog’s weight. The harness wraps around both her shoulders and her haunches, allowing one person to lift the front end and the other to get the back end.
We go with the harness, and it’s a bit of a puzzle sorting out how to get Aggie into it, ensuring each length of webbing is in the right place and all the buckles are properly snapped. Thankfully, she can wear it for a while, so I’ll only need to do this once a day, taking it off for bedtime. Also thankfully, she’s very patient, watching with curiosity and an occasional groan of mild discomfort as we work the straps under her girth and around her legs.
“Just wait,” I tell her as I snap the final buckle over her shoulders and test the handle with a gentle tug. “One day, when we come home from a walk, we’ll look back on this and smile.”
She blinks at me as though she thinks I’m full of crap, which is a reasonable response when she looks like we’ve dressed her up for an extremely low-budget burlesque performance.
Beside me, Everett suppresses a laugh.
“Sorry,” he says. “She just looks so embarrassed.”
I tsk at him. “Wouldn’t you be if a total stranger strung webbing between your legs?”
His cheeks go a little pink, but he shrugs and says, “Yeah. Yep. Fair enough.”
He’s very cute when he blushes, and while I have no idea what his kinks are, or if he has any, or if I should be thinking about literally anythingbuthis kinks, I can’t help but feel a certain tenderness toward him whenever he matches my awkwardness with his own.
As his blush fades, I talk him through where to stand and how to hold the handle. We secure our footing and our grips, and I ask Aggie if she’s ready. She looks up at me with so much unearned trust. It’s such a gift, and I make a silent promise to her that Iwillearn it. Then I count down from three and we lift, easing her high enough for her feet to clear the floor.
Everett and I both strain and fumble as we balance ourselves, and I feel bad about it, but this is our first time lifting Aggie and the action will get easier with practice. I can also add upper-body strength training to the 5-to-10K runs I sneak in a couple times a week. This poor dog did not get through the past ten days—and the past seven years—to feel like a burden.
The staff cheers when we pass through the reception area, chorusingGo, Aggie, go!andYou can do it!andEnjoy your new home!That’s the word that follows us out of the office as two vet techs help us ease Aggie up onto her puffy bed and I record a short video of her smiling over her shoulder at us, her pink tongue hanging out and her eyes full of hope and curiosity.
Home.
Chapter Six
Everett needs to return to work for a meeting about a new account he’ll be managing—a vegan restaurant chain with a dozen locations across New York and the bordering states—but he helps me get Aggie and her things settled in my apartment, where we place her bed next to mine and cover it with a secondhand leak-proof blanket for easier cleaning. I have no great ambitions for the evening. We won’t try to get her situated on the bin or outside for a pee. I just want her to become acquainted with me, the space, and the start of a new routine.
As I see Everett out, he turns to face me from the hallway and a laugh sputters out of me before I can stop it. He’s absolutely covered in dog hair. I remember this about Marmie. In many ways, she was the easiest dog in the world. She wasn’t demanding, aggressive, territorial, barky, particularly naughty, or desperate for constant input and activity. But she sure did shed.
“Sorry.” I pluck a few hairs off Everett’s pretty striped sweater. “Though you really should ask before you walk out the door with half my dog.”
A smile stretches across his face, wide and bright, as he helps me brush away hair.
“I like the way you saymy dog,” he tells me.
I glance over my shoulder at Aggie, where she’s watching us from her bed, though I can’t tell from her expression if she’s in strict-chaperone mode or curious-onlooker mode. Either way, by the time I pivot back around to face Everett, I can tell my smile mirrors his.
“I like it, too,” I say. “And thank you again. For everything. The rides. The help. The shoulder to cry on. I don’t know how I would’ve done any of this without you.”
He goes shifty in a way that’s already becoming familiar. A little upward jerk of his shoulders. A twitch of his lips. A shift of his stance. An uptick in fiddling and fidgeting.
“You would’ve figured it out,” he says.
“Maybe, but thanks to you, I didn’t have to.”
