“Well, I am out here on normal New York time.”
“Be that as it may,” Jack laughed, spinning a pen between his fingers. “I wanted to see if Travis was around.”
“He is….somewhere,” Holly answered, drawing out her syllables. “There he is. Travis! Jack is on the phone.”
“Well, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Travis greeted after a few seconds. “I was certain you’d left me to bathe dogs alone never to be heard from again.”
“I had a change in circumstance.” Jack stopped spinning the pen and began clicking the retractable point in and out.
“What can I do for you, old friend?” Travis asked.
“Do you still have a contact out here at that dog rehab facility?” Jack threw the pen into a drawer so he’d stop fiddling with it.
“Candace? Yeah, somewhere. Why?”
“I wanted to see about taking one home.”
Jack had thought about getting a dog every day for the past two weeks. Initially, he’d thought about going to the shelter and adopting a stray, but he’d seen a commercial one night when he and Callum were up late and it had reminded him about Travis’s friend who owned a rehab center for abused and abandoned dogs.
He knew that the kind of dogs Travis’s friend cared for at her facility weren’t your standard issue shelter pets, but he was fairly certain Callum needed something that would require a little bit more care. Jack had watched him struggle over the past two weeks and it drove Jack nearly insane that he wasn’t able to really help Callum. A dog would give him something to focus on, and it was something they’d talked about when they first met anyway. Now, after the attack, it seemed as good a time as any.
Jack could be with Callum, or not, and he could leave the lights on when he went away, or not. He could work with Callum on physical therapy exercises for his arm and he could ice his eye when the bruises flared, but he couldn’t fix him. He couldn’t get his kitten back to how he’d been before, and the worst part was, Jack knew that wasn’t even a reasonable expectation. Callum had survived a horrific attack. In addition to his own attack, he’d watched a friend get assaulted, and he bore the physical and mental scars of both.
Callum had, thankfully, started to see a therapist, but he was still jumpy, and still very afraid of the dark. Jack had the idea that a dog might not only help him emotionally, but provide him a sense of safety at home beyond what Jack could.
“You finally in the market to get a pet of your own?” Travis questioned.
“It’s for my husband,” Jack answered, his heart still thudding with an unexpected happiness every time he got to refer to Callum as such.
“I’m sorry, your what?” Travis shouted into his ear.
“Husband.”
“Holly, Jack got married!” Travis exclaimed.
There were sounds of a struggle and then, “You what?”
“I got married,” Jack repeated for Holly.
“I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone!” Holly yelled into the phone. “Here I was, trying to set you up with Travis.”
“What?” Jack could hear Travis through the phone.
“You both had so much in common,” Holly explained. “Great hair, you both lived in East Harlem, you both loved dogs. It seemed like it would have worked out.”
Jack barked out a laugh. “I didn’t know you knew Travis was gay.”
“Of course I did,” she said. Her voice was tinged with such a high level of annoyance and disbelief, Jack could almosthearher rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t have tried to hook you up with someone straight, Jack.”
“Oh, that’s rich.” Jack laughed, trying to catch his breath until he heard Travis in his ear again.
“She knew!” he shouted.
“I know!” Jack wheezed. “Oh man, that’s hilarious. I needed this laugh, Travis. Now that I’m gone, she’s gonna focus all her attention on finding you a mate.”
“A mate?” Travis scoffed.
“Must love coffee, dogs and volunteer work.”
