ONE
Alfie
“Oh my God,Alfie. Why do you swipe right on guys who clearly want to kill you?” Andrea asked, spying over my shoulder.
I flipped my phone over.
The guy on the screen was…ugh, so perfect. Dangerously good-looking with intense eyes, visible tattoos, an impressive beard, and a sexy swoop of dark-brown hair sprinkled liberally with silver.
“Shut up. Mean-looking guys make me feel all safe and small.”
“You’re almost six feet tall, Alf.”
“Yeah, but I look like a friendly bit of Play-Doh with corkscrew hair,” I said, patting the tiny belly I’d decided to accept as part of my personality.
“Stop describing yourself like that! Are you ripped? No, but nobody really likes that anyway. Lanky guys with dad bods are a hot commodity, and bonus, your hair coordinates with Judi Dench,” she said, referring to my black teacup poodle mix.
Why, yes, I did name my dog after the best actress on the planet.
No, I would not be entertaining any debates on this topic.
Andrea picked up my sweet pooch and nuzzled her nose. “Isn’t that right, Dame Judi?”
Andrea, a genius pet groomer, had just finished Judi’s monthly trim and nail polish. Her face had been freshly sheared into a perfectly round puppy cut, complimented by the little ear poofs on either side of her head, not to mention the pretty forest-green polish to coordinate with the Texas “fall” landscape.
By the way, “fall” went in quotes because it was the end of September, and the high had been in the nineties all week. I lived north of Austin in Georgetown, Texas, where air conditioning was nonnegotiable.
Horrifying weather aside, Dame Judith Olivia Dench was pretty much the cutest damn dog ever. As long as you didn’t look into her eyes.
They were a bit…how do I say this?Pug-likefor a poodle.
I’d never seen them look in the same direction at the same time, and only one of them actually worked. It was also helpful if you overlooked the tongue constantly hanging out of her mouth, or the fact that someone clearly gave a teacup poodle the wrong legs. Like maybe an Italian Greyhound’s legs, only fuzzier.
Wait.
“Why did you shave her thighs? She looks ridiculous!”
“Oh, come on! Now it looks like she’s wearing leg warmers!”
“Because what her look needed was a fashion tragedy best left in the eighties?”
Andrea cackled, giving Judi scritches under her chin. “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we, Miss Dench?”
She was right, of course. I was a family therapist and volunteered with a small-breed rescue in my free time. They called me the poodle whisperer, so when Miss Judi came into the rescue, I was the obvious choice.
Sadly, she had been a matted mess with a terrible skin rash and the worst gunky eye I’d ever seen. Within days of receiving proper care, however, it was clear she would be okay.
The board had serious reservations about how they’d ever adopt out such an ugly dog, not realizing that I’d already foster-failed so hard I nearly gave myself a concussion.
My two previous poodles, minis named Statler and Waldorf, had come in as a bonded pair, and I had them for over ten years. They’d passed within three days of each other, and I didn’t mind saying I was bereft for months after.
Then this goofy, leggy, six-pound girl crawled onto my lap and stole my heart, and it had been just the two of us ever since. I’d been trying to find her a daddy for a while now, but—despite Andrea’s insistence—my pale, nondescript physique was not setting my notifications on fire these days.
“And, anyway, what does it matter?” I asked, stealing my dog back from my very best friend. “I’m just looking.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, grabbing her purse and giving Dame Dench a little pat on the head. “I’ve got to go open up the shop. Text me if you hook someone who doesn’t look like he frequents the FBI’s Most Wanted list.”
I rolled my eyes as we exchanged hugs, then waited till she closed the door, got in her car, and backed out of the driveway before flipping my phone back over.
