“Not especially.”
“How’s training been going?”
Maya nods. “Great. We practice the commands every day. She’s so smart. Very food-motivated. I can relate.”
Wait, did she just make a joke? Indeed, there’s a little smile on her face. I chuckle. “I am too. Although when I was in Marine basic training, we were motivated by pain. You haven’t lived until you’ve done a hundred push-ups in the pouring rain.”
Maya shudders. “I’ll take your word on that. So you’re a Marine?”
“Former,” I reply, leaning down to ruffle Zelda’s fur. “I work in a different branch of the military now.”
“Mm.” She sizes me up. “If you tell me, will you have to kill me?”
I bark out a laugh. “Sure, I’ll tell you. Maybe over dinner sometime.”
What the hell? I didn’t mean to say that! Nice job, Kang. Way to go. It’s not that I don’t want to take Maya out—I definitely do. But now isn’t the best time. I don’t want her thinking I hit on all my clients.
She cocks her head, her cheeks deep pink. “Do you ask all your clients out?”
Fuck, is she a mind-reader? “No,” I say emphatically. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t professional of me. I mean, I would love to take you to dinner. But I planned to ask you at a different time.”
“You were—planning to ask me?”
Busted… My cheeks heat. “Sure. I’d love to get to know you better.”
Her blush darkens as she quickly shifts her attention to Zelda. “Um. Should we get started?”
Way to blow it, Kang. “Yup. Let’s go.”
For the next hour, I test Zelda on her progress of our previous two lessons. She can do all the basics with ease—sit, lay down, shake, roll over. Today, we start working on her leash training and leave-it cues. Zelda is incredibly smart and learns fast, but she’s also easily distracted and stubborn. However, in three weeks’ time, she’s made a ton of progress.
At the end of the lesson, I hand her lead back over to Maya. “Great session. She’s doing an awesome job.”
“Thanks.” Maya takes the lead. She’s blushing again for some reason and can’t meet my eyes. “We’ll practice throughout the week and see you next Saturday.” She starts to turn away.
“Great. Hey.”
Maya glances at me over her shoulder.
“Sorry about earlier,” I say, scratching the back of my head.
“Mm-hmm,” she says in a squeaky voice, then turns and hurries off.
I watch her go, sighing, hands on my hips. “Way to fucking go, Cam.”
3
Maya
A week later
I used to covet my Saturday morning solitude.
Even though I’m in my twenties now, that same feeling of anticipation that would start to grow in me as a little girl and a teen on Friday morning, knowing I had the whole weekend ahead of me, has lingered. It’s similar to the feeling of waking up on Christmas morning, except this feeling gets to happen every week. Whether I was chucking textbooks into a corner of my bedroom as a thirteen-year-old, preparing for a long weekend of playing video games and sleeping in, or whether it’s me as an adult, chucking my heels into a corner of the closet and preparing for a long weekend of just not being in the rat race for a couple of days. The thought of getting up on Saturday morning and doing anything that included leaving the house before noon used to make me shudder, but now…I guess I don’t mind it as much.
“Ready, Zelda?” I ask, glancing over my shoulder.
My little Pom sits up straight, watching me with bright, perfectly round brown eyes. I couldn’t believe my luck when a friend of mine who volunteers at the dog shelter called to tell me they’d just gotten in the cutest dog, surrendered because her previous owner just didn’t have the time. I’d been looking for a smaller dog, one I could easily go places with, so I hurried down there to meet her. And it was love at first sight.
Her old name was Foxy, and while fitting, I thought her brand-new life deserved a brand-new name, so Zelda she became, a nod to my favorite video game as a kid.
I buckle her into her harness and gather her lead, then we head out the door. I rent a townhouse—for now. The idea had been to look into buying a real house with the promotion I was so sure I was going to get. I try not to dwell on that too much, or else I’m going to walk back in the house and go right back to bed.
“Going to see the cute trainer?”
I turn, spotting Margie sitting on her front porch, drinking her morning coffee. My neighbor is an older woman in her early fifties and as cool as can be. She has no husband or kids, just a couple of mid-size dogs. She’s snarky and funny and caring, and in the event I do move one day, I’m really going to miss her.
I blush. “Yes. We have our lesson today.”
Margie tilts her head. “Do you have a date yet?”
“No,” I insist. “It would be weird. He’s my dog trainer.”
Margie scoffs. “That’s hardly what I’d call a conflict of interest, sweetie.”
“Well, he’s military,” I say.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Margie taps a finger against her temple. “Hmm. Hot, built, brave, strong… Yeah, you’re too good for him. Send him over here.”
I laugh a little, then grow serious. “You know what happened to my sister.”
My neighbor sighs and steps off her porch toward me. “I know. But Maya, that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to you too.”
“Doesn’t it? She wasn’t the only wife whose husband deployed, decided he couldn’t wait nine months to see her, and fucked any willing female soldier he could find. Apparently, that shit was rampant in his unit. We have this idea that military men are these upright, perfect guys, and that’s just not the case. My sister is still devastated and going through it, and their divorce was final six months ago.”
“Listen, what I don’t know about the military would fill a book,” Margie says, leaning down to pick up Zelda, who jumps up and presses her front paws against her leg. She rubs Zelda’s ears. “And I wouldn’t insult your intelligence by saying you’re wrong. Men are men, right? That’s why I’m not married anymore and not in the market for anything more than a cute boy-toy here and there.”
I snort.
“But I think you’re unfair by painting all military guys with the same brush. You and I both deal with anxiety—do you think it’s fair if everyone considered us basket cases? Unable to function?”
“No, because that’s not true,” I say slowly. “Even though most days I’m barely hanging on by a thread.”
“But you’re hanging on,” Margie says. “And we’re more than our disorders. We’re stronger than those little, fucked-up voices in our heads that say we don’t deserve good things, like promotions. Like cute guys who want to take us out, who we say no to because we’re afraid that at some point down the line, we’re going to get our hearts broken.”
“Statistically speaking, we will,” I reply. “I do numbers for a living. Numbers don’t lie. Forty percent of unmarried relationships and twenty-five percent of marriages deal with infidelity at least once. Twenty percent of men admit to cheating. That’s just in America. There are almost eight billion people in the world. Let’s say men make up three billion—it’s probably more than that. Twenty percent of three billion is—”