“Can you help carry it?”
“I have an appointment any minute now.”
“We’ll get this over with faster if we carry it together.”
“I’m a veterinarian, not a pack mule.”
“You this friendly with everyone?”
“I’m very nice to my patients. And usually, they don’t talk back to me.”
“Please?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Follow me.”
Lauren huffed and followed Caleb to the storage room, where two twenty-pound bags of the cat food she ordered sat.
“All right. Come on, cat lady. We’ve got forty pounds of food to get next door.”
She wasn’t normally like this. She liked everyone, generally. She believed in being nice to people, in having empathy for everyone. But something about Caleb just rubbed her the wrong way.
“How’s that little calico?” he asked as he stepped toward the bags. “What was her name?”
“Sunday. And she’s fine. I guess the stone passed, because she’s basically back to normal now.”
“Make sure you have plenty of water out next to this expensive food. Stones happen more often when cats are dehydrated.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Caleb picked up a large bag of cat food and handed it to her. “You take this one. I’ll grab the other.”
Olivia breezed by them. “Hey, Lauren. Coming to get the cat food?”
“Yes. Thanks for ordering it.”
“No problem. There’s a form at the front I need you to sign, so stop there on your way out, please.”
“I will. Thank you.”
“You’re nice to my boss,” Caleb said after Olivia was out of earshot.
“She is friendly and respects me, unlike some other people I know.”
“Hmm.”
Lauren carried the bag of cat food to the waiting room, dropped it on a chair, and signed the form for Olivia. They exchanged pleasantries while Caleb stood impatiently at the door with the other bag, shifting his weight back and forth between his feet.
“Is it wrong to say that I’m kind of enjoying watching him squirm?” Lauren whispered to Olivia.
Olivia laughed. “Seems a little mean, but it’s only twenty pounds of cat food.”
“Can we go?” Caleb called out. “This isn’t exactly a bag of feathers.”
“You know,” said Lauren, “at my last job, whenever we needed to move something large, my boss would ask one of the male employees to do it. Ladies never did heavy lifting.”
“Seems pretty sexist if you ask me.”
Lauren laughed.
