The Beginning of After (13 page)

“How’s he doing?” I asked after I finally got the dog off me.

“Good.” He paused. I noticed now that he’d put something in his hair to slick the sides back behind his ears, which looked newborn pink and too exposed. “I think he’s been a little sore or something. That’s actually the first time I’ve seen him stand up like that.”

I nodded, and now that the moment had turned awkward, I wondered how I could smoothly get back behind the safety of the front desk.

“How’s the job?” asked David, and looked me in the eye.

“I love it,” I replied, loud enough so Eve could hear.

I wasn’t sure what to do next but fortunately, Eve piped up, “Why don’t you take them into room two? Dr. B will be there in a minute.”

So I led David and Masher to the exam room, David holding onto Masher’s leash but Masher walking close to me. Once we were in, I wasn’t sure whether to stay or go. I waited for an invitation from David, but it didn’t come. He just examined the poster of two golden puppies in football jerseys and blackout under their eyes—“Wide Retrievers”—and let out a little laugh.

I had no idea what to say so I didn’t say anything, which seemed the worst choice of all, as I left the room and closed the door behind me.

Fifteen minutes passed. I spent most of it on the phone with a client who was disappointed with the grooming her Persian cat had received at a pet store, and wanted a promise from Dr. B that he could fix it.

“They were supposed to give him the lion cut, but he looks more like a poodle!” the woman said, on the verge of tears.

Eve and I had developed a hand signal for this type of call; I put a finger-gun to my head and pretended to shoot. Eve smiled, glad she’d dodged that bullet.

Finally, I heard a door creak open and Dr. B appeared. He was filling out some forms.

“We’re going to do a blood panel on Masher to check his coagulation levels and overall health. Apparently it’s been a while since he had a checkup or even any vaccinations. Pam Fischer has all his records, so call over there to get them faxed.”

Dr. B shot me a puzzled look, and although I knew he was wondering why I hadn’t brought Masher to his regular vet that day, I remained silent. If he wasn’t going to ask directly, I was definitely not going to answer.

The doctor disappeared again, and then I heard footsteps through the waiting room. I looked up just in time to see David walking out the front door, then watched him through the window as he sank down onto the stone bench right outside.

When I stepped out to join him, he was sitting on his hands, staring into space. He just glanced up at me with no expression.

“The doctor says it’s going to be a few minutes,” he said, and I just nodded. I’d watched a lot of clients waiting on this bench for test results and good news and bad news. It was designed to look like a big rabbit, with one end shaped like the head and the other, the tail and hind legs. Most people got on their cell phones or whipped out a magazine. But David didn’t seem to need anything to pass the time.

Finally, I found something to say. “How is it, staying with your cousins?”

He shrugged. “It’s not fun, but they leave me alone. It’ll do until I can figure out my next move.”

My next move
, like he had a plan.

I knew I should ask him about his father, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It opened up too much for me that was so neatly shut tight.

Instead, I offered, “I’m sorry about not taking Masher to Dr. Fischer. I knew she was your vet.”

He looked up at me and there was something about his eyes, suddenly warm and familiar. “It’s okay. I know why.”

The relief of that washed over me, and I felt like I could breathe for the first time all day.

Then David slid over on the bench to make room. I wasn’t supposed to be on a break, but I sat.

“My grandparents went down to their place in Florida,” he said flatly.

“I noticed I hadn’t seen them around.”

“They want me to come stay with them, but I don’t know. . . . On one hand, there’s the beach. On the other hand, there’s two old people who annoy the living crap out of me.” He swept a glance up and down my face. “Your grandmother is much cooler than mine.”

I’d never thought of Nana as “cool,” but apparently everything is relative.

David let out a long sigh, the kind that takes forever to wear out and seems to contain every emotion at once. Neither of us spoke again, and we both just gazed at nothing. The silence was almost comfortable now.

Finally, the front door opened and Robert appeared with Masher.

“We’ll call you with the results sometime tomorrow,” he said to David, handing him the leash. Then he turned to me and said, “Eve needs you.”

I bent down to Masher, who now had a small bandage on his right foreleg from getting blood drawn, and hugged him quickly.

“Bye, buddy.” I forced it to sound businesslike and cold.

“Bye, Laurel,” David said, as if answering for him. “It was good seeing you.”

I looked up, a little surprised, and then suddenly tired of always feeling that way about David. Some of his hair had fallen out of the slick-back and across his eyes, and I had a sudden urge to sweep it away. Those eyes were my favorite part of him, and I hated to see them covered up.

Wait—I had a favorite part of him?

“Let me know what happens, okay?” I said quickly, trying to de-focus from his face, sounding purposely vague. I wasn’t sure when I’d see either of them again. He could be back next week, or never.

David nodded slowly and smiled a bit, although sadly, and this was possibly the closest thing to a farewell that we could hope for.

I went inside and didn’t look back.

Chapter Fifteen

M
asher, as it turned out, had the beginnings of arthritis; plus, he still needed vitamin K for another two weeks. The arthritis wasn’t related to the poisoning, but Dr. B felt it had probably come on recently.

“Stress can trigger it,” he was saying on the phone to David, down the hall but loud enough so I could hear his end of the conversation from where I sat at the front desk. I could tell that Dr. B was prodding for some more information, and I was hoping David wouldn’t offer anything up.

“Well, I’ll find a pharmacy near you and call in a prescription,” he continued, then added a reminder to keep Masher on the vitamin K until it ran out.

Then he was quiet for a few moments, listening to David. I wished I could hear a little of David’s voice on the other end of the phone, but I was too far away.

“Let me ask around for some vet recommendations in that area,” said Dr. B. “There’s got to be someone good you can go to so you don’t have to drive an hour every time he needs to be seen.”

Something in me lurched. Did David ask for that information, or did Dr. B volunteer it? Did David not want to come back here?

I couldn’t let it go. Every time I saw the bench outside, I relived those moments. David scooting over to make room for me. David and I sitting together. That comfortable silence and the strange almost-freshness of the air between us.

When Suzie asked me about work during one of our sessions, I found myself omitting the story of David’s visit. She knew I’d seen David and that we’d apologized, and that he had Masher now. She stopped asking about him, which made sense. Why would he matter? On paper he was just a footnote.

A few days later I gave in once again to the email drafts in my head, and sent Masher a message.

I wasn’t sure what kind of response I was hoping for. I just wanted a response, period. Something to grab onto, although I didn’t know what I’d do with it once I did.

The reply came the next day:
Thanks. I’ll be okay.

It wasn’t exactly an answer I could grab. But I could touch it, and that was enough.

The rest of July passed quickly. It was a busy time at Ashland, with people going on vacation and boarding their pets, animals getting dehydrated from the heat or infested with fleas. Dr. B had another vet come part-time to fill in the gaps.

I’d mastered the phones and the filing, and loved walking the dogs because they reminded me of Masher and because it forced me to explore the streets around the hospital. Unfamiliar houses owned by unfamiliar people, and I didn’t mind looking up to say hi when someone passed me on the sidewalk, because I knew I was a stranger to them. It still amazed me that even though I was less than ten miles from my neighborhood, I might as well have been in another state.

Eve found a nice family—blond parents, blond boy, blond girl, right out of a magazine—for the tabby cat twins Bryce and Denali. Then she placed Ophelia in a temporary “foster home,” aka a friend of hers who got suckered in, because the hospital needed the kennel space.

One day, we were all so busy that we had to work through lunch and Dr. B ordered in pizza for the staff. A bunny came in that had been attacked by a dog, and a cat who had a hairball stuck in its digestive system needed emergency surgery. When these kinds of life-and-death dramas swept through, I felt almost ill on adrenaline but tried to be as useful as I could.
Please don’t die
, I’d think while we waited for the outcome, watching the pet’s owner in the waiting room, planning to disappear if Dr. B came out with bad news. A few times, he did. I’d go into the bathroom and spend a long time making it really, really clean.

When we were finally caught up, and Tamara said Eve and I could go home, Eve turned to me and said, “I need a little coffee after that one. How about you?”

We stepped out into the late afternoon heat, and I followed her down the street to a strip mall. There was a café where we often had lunch.

After we ordered, I instinctively scanned the room to see if I recognized anyone, expecting that relief I’d gotten used to here.

Except I did see someone I knew.

Joe Lasky, sitting at the back of the room, staring at me.

I was so surprised that there was no way I could pretend not to see him. I smiled briefly at him, and he smiled back.

Okay, maybe that was that. I turned to Eve. But she looked over my shoulder and nudged me.

“Some cutie’s coming over to us,” she said.

I turned again to see Joe bouncing in our direction, a little too quickly, like he wanted to get it over with.

“Hey, Laurel,” he said.

“Hi, Joe.”

“I’m on my break from the movie theater,” he replied to a question I hadn’t asked. He pointed with his thumb to our left, and I remembered the little art house cinema at the other end of the shopping center. “What are you up to?”

“Just trying to cool off,” I said, as Eve handed me my drink.

“We’ve had a furry day,” said Eve, with no sense of how absurd that sounded.

Joe frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a long story,” I said. We were all silent for a moment, so I added, “This is my friend Eve . . . Eve, this is Joe, from my school.”

“Do you guys want to join me?” asked Joe.

Eve glanced quickly between Joe and me, picking up on something. “I should get going,” she said. “But Laurel, you can stay.”

I knew I didn’t need Eve’s permission or even encouragement, but in that moment I was glad to have it. I looked at Joe now, at those eyes that had searched me over in Adam LaGrange’s backyard. He had been there for me, once. He had made me feel propped up for a few lovely hours.

So I said, “Sure.”

After we said good-bye to Eve, I followed Joe to his table. It was in the back corner and the place was packed, so of course we had to scrunch in and bang our knees together to make it work. I placed my ice-blended chai next to Joe’s black coffee, the wimpy chick drink alongside the grown-up guy one like they were already in a relationship, and tried to look him in the eye.

“I didn’t know you worked at the movie theater,” I said.

“Yeah, I take the tickets, and then when the movie’s over, I get to clean up the garbage the audience leaves behind. In between, I like to pop over here.”

“You don’t stay and watch?”

“Well, yeah, when we first start showing something. But after twenty or thirty times, it gets old. Especially if it’s, like, French.”

“Too bad you take Spanish,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. I wasn’t supposed to know which classes he took, was I? Joe laughed nervously and shifted in his chair. He had a messenger bag hanging over the back, and now I noticed a big sketch pad sticking out of it. To change the subject, I asked, pointing at the pad, “Did you get that at Walden Art Supply?”

He turned to look at it, then nodded. “You know it?”

“My mom used to buy her paint there.” Joe looked instantly uncomfortable, so I added, “I’ve seen those pads at the store, that’s all.”

Now Joe reached for the pad and pulled it out. He opened to a page and turned it toward me to show what he’d drawn: a middle-aged man in a cape and a helmet with two bugles sticking out of it like antennae, a big B inside a hot air balloon on his chest.

“I call this one BlowHard. Yesterday I was sitting here next to some dude with his girlfriend, and he was just going on and on about stuff like he knew everything there was to know, and every time she tried to correct him, he’d shoot her down.”

“Do you turn everyone into some kind of superhero?”

“If they seem like they deserve it, yes.” He stared at the sketch protectively, like a new parent. “I mean, isn’t everyone a superhero, in their own mind?”

I smiled. “On certain days, yeah.”

We were quiet again, and I tried to fill the silence by sipping loudly on my drink. Why did things have to be so weird? We had kissed. We had kissed a lot, and from what I could tell it had been pretty good, until everything imploded. Before, I’d believed that once you’d done that with someone, you’d broken a barrier, like maybe you could always kiss them again whenever you wanted and it would be completely okay. But now there was some kind of force field between Joe Lasky and me, stronger than if we’d never kissed to begin with. He felt further away than a complete stranger.

A quick flash of David and me, sitting together on the bench outside Ashland. We’d had a history between us too, but a different kind. It was confusing to think about these differences or about David at all. I pulled my focus back to Joe and suddenly felt mad.

We would have been a couple by now.
But no, I didn’t get to have that, just like I didn’t get to have a prom memory that didn’t make me want to puke from embarrassment. The wave of anger at myself came so fast and lethal, I could have slapped my own face.

Finally, Joe planted his elbows on the table and leaned in. “So. Been to any good proms lately?”

I just broke out laughing, and the rage flushed away.

“Nice,” was all I could say.

“I’m sorry, I had to do it.” He smiled now.

“
I’m
sorry.”

“Please,” he said, holding up his hand. “You have nothing to be sorry about. I should have tried harder to reach you.” He took a deep breath and wrapped both hands around his coffee cup, like the heat was giving him the guts to keep talking. “I could say that I wanted you to have some space, some time alone to work through your stuff, but that would be bull. I was scared. It’s not the kind of thing I know how to deal with.”

I nodded. “I know. I would have done the same thing.” As long as we were being honest, I wanted to ask him whether he’d been set up by someone to take me to the prom. But I didn’t want this sweet, sudden normalness to end just yet.

Joe took a deep, relieved breath and then a sip of his coffee, staring at his drawing of BlowHard. Then he raised an eyebrow and said, “Hey, you paint scenery, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think you could give BlowHard something in the background? I suck at backgrounds, but I feel like he needs something behind him.”

“For context,” I said.

“Exactly!” said Joe, lighting up now.

“I have an idea.”

Joe dug into his bag and pulled out a pencil, then handed it to me. As I started to draw in the beginnings of BlowHard’s context, Joe said, “While you’re doing that, why don’t you tell me about the furry stuff?”

Meg was smug. “I told you!” she said with a grin that evening. We were sitting on our rock, feeling the air cool off. Breathing the relief of it, in and out.

Meg and Gavin had gone out nine times since prom night. He’d gotten to see that new bra eventually, and now they were a couple. At least I hadn’t totally screwed that up for my best friend.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” I said, hoping that wasn’t true.

“You deserve someone like him,” said Meg, and I had nothing to counter that with.

“Do you think I should go say hi to him the next time we’re at that mall?”

Meg looked at me. “We?”

“Eve and me.” The way it came out, and the way Meg flinched, made me want to un-say it.

Just then, Meg’s cell phone chirped with a text message, clicking us away from that awkward pause. Meg read the message, then started typing back.

“Gavin?” I asked.

“No, it’s my boss from camp, reminding me to come early tomorrow. There’s a big rehearsal.” She looked up at me. “You should come to the performance. The kids are doing an Andrew Lloyd Webber revue.”

Meg said this sincerely, but how could I go? It would only remind me of the summer I was supposed to be having, and force me to make comparisons to my job at Ashland that I didn’t want to make.

“Yeah, maybe,” I replied, and then we were just silent, listening to the cicadas and the distant squeal of kids’ voices down the street, where someone was having a barbecue and probably lots more fun than we were.