“Hey,” she said after a moment, stepping toward me. She moved her head to the side until my eyes met hers, and then she smiled, the curl of her lips comforting and sure. “If you want to leave, we can go. I didn’t mean to push you into anything. I just… I just thought this might be a good thing, to get a dog, to have a friend at home. And, you know, to get one lucky guy or girl out of here.”
She looked around then, a shade of sadness passing over her.
My chest tightened as I watched the hope in her eyes slowly die at my refusal to move. There was something holding me back, and I hated that I couldn’t place it. I wanted to let Sarah in, to tell her that I didn’t mean to be the grumpy old man that I’d become — though saying I was old was a stretch at just thirty-seven.
Still, I was acting like an eighty-nine-year-old stuck in his ways.
The truth was I was scared.
But I didn’t know how to tell her that, so instead, I blew out a long breath, shaking the doubts from my mind. I would have plenty of time to decipher them later. For now, the only mission I had was replacing that look of despondence on Sarah’s face with one of excitement, like the one she’d wore when we’d left my house.
“So, we just walk through and…” I stopped, not knowing what else to say.
Sarah’s smile returned at my words, and she nodded. “We just walk through, and if we want to bring any of them out to play, to get to know them a little more, we let a volunteer know.”
I nodded, sliding my hands into my pockets. Then, without another word, I started walking.
The shelter had provided one-sheet facts about each dog, pinned to the wire that separated us from them, and I scanned those words as I passed each kennel. Some of them were born there, some were found on the streets, but the ones that really broke my heart were the ones who’d been surrendered by their owners. They were too wild, too energetic, too much trouble or, in some cases, simply too old for their owners to keep them any longer.
The more I thought about it, the more my blood boiled.
“How could anyone just give up their family pet,” I said when we’d turned the corner down the second hallway of dogs. “How could they just… I mean, aren’t pets sort of like family after a while? I can’t speak from experience, but…”
Sarah nodded from where she walked beside me. “I could never have given up Molly.”
“Molly?”
She smiled, but it was a sad smile, one that didn’t reach her eyes. “My cat. Daddy got her for me when I was three, and I had her all the way up until my senior year of high school. I swear, that cat followed me everywhere. And don’t get me wrong,” she said, holding out her hands. “She was a little shit. But she was my little shit. And I loved her, up until the very day she left this Earth.” She folded her arms around herself in what was almost a hug. “I really wished she would have stuck around longer than she did… her timing wasn’t the best, given everything that…”
Her voice faded, eyes spacing out like she wasn’t even in the shelter with me anymore. I wasn’t sure she even realized what she’d said, but I knew it wasn’t something she wanted to expand on. At least, not then. Not there.
I swallowed. “I’m sorry, Sarah.”
She blinked, shaking her head with a forced smile. “Thank you. I miss her, and I think when I get all set up in New York, I’d like to get another cat. I think I’ll be ready then.”
And in that moment, I could picture it all — Sarah in a little apartment in New York, snow falling outside her window, her curled up in a chair with an orange tabby in her lap and a book in her hand. I didn’t know why that vision came so easily to me, but I didn’t wish it away.
“I think that will be the perfect time.”
Sarah’s eyes found mine, her smile growing a bit before she knelt down to pet one of the eager dogs through the holes of its cage. I watched for a moment, fighting back a laugh when the dog got smart enough to lick her face through the gaps in the wiring. Sarah squeezed her eyes shut in a fit of giggles, shaking her head and pinching her mouth shut, but she didn’t move away.
I realized then that ever since I met her, Sarah had always seemed so grown up.
She was a girl, for all intents and purposes — twenty-one, wide-eyed and hopeful. But, whether she ever told me or not, she’d lived through more life than most people her age. She wore that fact like her crystal, a permanent accessory.
But there in that shelter, with that dog licking her face, I saw a girl when I looked at her instead of a woman.
It wasn’t that she looked younger, that the mature way she carried herself slipped in that moment, but rather that for the first time since I’d met her, the ghosts in her eyes seemed to be subdued. She laughed without the edge of worry that always seemed to follow her around, and I let myself watch her play with that dog until my chest ached in a completely new way. It was that same tinge of warmth I’d felt when I watched her with Danny, one that seared me with the urge to protect her, to guard that innocence she’d let show in that moment, to somehow save it and nurture it and help it grow.
Before that urge could take over my entire body, I tore myself away, scanning the cages of dogs as I made my way down the new hallway. They were all adorable. They were all friendly, tails wagging and tongues lopping out of their mouths as they watched me pass. They all wanted a home.
I had no idea how to even begin to make the choice of which one I’d grant that wish to.
Being that I had approximately zero knowledge when it came to animals, I read the breeds and names with a sort of distant recognition.
Bulldog, terrier mix, shih tzu, german shepherd, labrador, beagle, boxer.
Anxiety crawled up my neck more and more with each step I took, each kennel I passed, each dog’s eyes I made contact with. And for some reason, it wasn’t that I felt bad for the ones that would stay behind when I’d left.
It was the one that would come home with me that I worried most for.
Even at thirty-seven, I still felt like a child in all ways. I let my laundry pile up to an impressive mountain before I finally broke down to do it. I’d hired a maid to come by and clean my house once every two weeks because I couldn’t be trusted to dust and vacuum correctly. I still drank and smoked like I was in college, and I ate cereal for dinner more times than I would ever admit to anyone who asked.
How the hell was I ever going to take care of a dog?
I frowned as a softer truth settled in under all those excuses, and as I reached the end of the hallway, I was finally able to name that unfamiliar pressure in my chest. It wasn’t that I was scared of being able to take care of a dog, or that I didn’t think I’d be able to handle everything that went along with that care.
It was that I was scared of loving the damn thing.
Everyone I loved had left me in some way — whether by choice or by fate. Sometimes, I’d pushed them away. Sometimes, I’d missed my chance. And sometimes, I’d wasted the years I had with them, so sure I’d have forever, only to realize how much I’d missed out on once they were gone.
The truth was that I fucked up every relationship in my life. I was like Midas, except everything I touched turned to shit.
I was alone because I should have been alone.