“I needed a haircut.”
She looks so taken aback by the news that I wonder if there was some kind of invisible line I wasn’t supposed to cross there.
Or is it that she hadn’t heard?
I give Jitter the treat and get a reward of him once again leaning against my legs and gazing at me with so much adoration, you’d think the treat was an entire steak dinner.
“Go kennel,” Sabrina tells Jitter.
He looks at me.
Sabrina folds her arms and looks at her dog.
He flops to the ground, then rolls onto his back, pushing me back three steps.
“Kennel,” she repeats.
He whines.
“He gets lonely,” I say.
“So get in there with him.”
Jitter barks, flops back to his stomach, rises, and trots to his doggy house.
He looks back at both of us like he understood exactly what we said, and he’s waiting for me to follow.
“I have to watch your mom try the coffee I made,” I tell him with a shrug.
Jitter snorts, but he finishes walking into his house and flops to the ground again, where he puts his nose between his paws, his jowls flopping over his legs, and gives us the most heart-wrenching puppy dog eyes.
“Did you train him to do that, or did he come with those guilt-makers?” I ask.
“Those are the reason he’s mine.”
“It’s sweet that your mom adores him but worries he’ll crush you in your sleep.”
“Did you have pets before Duke?”
Weirdly, the question doesn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. And it doesn’t sting as much as I’d expect. I shake my head and gesture for her to follow me up front. “No.”
“So what made you decide to get a dog?”
“He moved in to my trash can and Zen adopted him.”
“I almost got my first pet that way, but my mom refused to keep a raccoon as a house pet.”
That’s absolutely adorable. I can picture her baby-talking a raccoon, feeding it food scraps, making a bed for it on the floor next to hers, and it makes me smile.
Again.
I don’t know that I smiled this much when I was dating Felicia. And that thought isn’t as terrifying as it should be.
I gesture her to go around and sit at one of the stools on the other side of the counter.
“Here.” I set a large café mug in front of her once she’s settled. “How’s this taste?”
I think it tastes like crap, but then, I think all coffee tastes like crap. Zen says it’s a genetic deficiency on my part.
