"How oldareyou, goldie?"
I was not ashamed of my age at all, and I didn't think I ever would be. My mom still looked like a teenager right before she died, and one of my student's dad's thought I was joking when I told him I was the teacher.Heh. "I'm twenty-five, Mag. How old are you?"
His eyes widened at my admission. "You are not twenty-five."
"Yes, I am." I told him, perking up expectantly. He was going to tell me I didn't look a day older than sixteen, I could feel it.
"No way. You've got to be at least thirty," he laughed.
"Fuck you," I laughed in response, whacking him with the plastic bottle again.
He winked at me before turning his attention forward. "I'm kidding! You look like you're eighteen max. I just turned twenty-nine."
I did the math in my head; if he was twenty-nine and almost done with law school, what did he do after finishing his undergrad? He’d never mentioned taking time off between schools. Before I could think anymore about it, he'd parked the car in front of a drab looking little building. "Mag, what did you do between your bachelor's and law school?"
The sigh he let out was long and drawn out while we walked up the building. He held the door open for me, ushering me in. "Remember I told you it took me some time to figure out that I wanted to go into law? I was pre-med in college and went to medical school for two years. Then, I figured out that the last thing I wanted to do was medicine, so I dropped out."
There was a sweet looking lady with hair that resembled white cotton candy sitting on the other side of a table, who cleared her throat to gain our attention. "Hello darlings. Can you sign in for me, please?" she asked in a sweet voice.
We made our way over to the table, where Tristan started signing in for the both of us. The lady was looking at me with a smile. "You two are precious together," she mused. "Come to find a new addition to your beautiful family?"
I saw Tristan's head shoot up not missing a beat, and he nodded at the old lady. "We sure are, we want to get a dog."
Her cute little face pruned up in a smile. "I am sure you two will find a perfect companion back there. You can go through those doors. All the animals are in separate rooms," she said, indicating toward the heavy metal door behind her with the sweep of a hand. "Have fun, sweethearts."
Tristan's arm slung over my shoulder a moment later, his side pressing into mine as he led me in the direction of the door. He opened it up for me, and then threw his heavy arm over my shoulder again. "Well precious, let's find us a dog."
We made a plan to start on one end of the building and make our way over.
"So, you went through two years of medical school, and then quit?" I asked, thinking of the amount of money that four years of pre-med and two years of medical school must have cost, only to get flushed down the drain at the end of the day.Shit. I still owed a good chunk of money for my graduate school and couldn't imagine how much more he could've possibly owed before starting law school.
"Yeah," he mumbled as we walked down the aisles still pressed together. There were so many dogs of all colors and sizes that it made my heart hurt looking at them. "I had to go back and take more classes before I applied to law school," he explained.
Each cage had a dog in it, and I pulled away from Tristan to crouch by the gates separating me from the friendlier dogs. Some of the dogs barked when we walked by, others growled, but a good portion of them were all too excited to have visitors. We made our way out of the first room and into the next one, where I saw about ten dogs that I wanted to adopt for myself.
"I want to take all of them home," I whispered to a particularly sweet pitbull that was licking my palm through the holes in the fencing.
"Choose one," Tristan said, squatting down next to me before pressing his hand against the gate to also get a lick.
When we started to get up, the honey colored pitbull whimpered, and I had to bite my lip not to cry. She was so sweet it broke my heart, but I just didn't feel like she was the right dog for Tristan. My dad and I had two dogs after mom died, and he let me choose each one of them. I just had this feeling when I found each of them, it was a type of connection telling me that the dog was destined to be mine. Even though I wanted to feel it, the cute pitbull baby didn't feel that way to me. Tristan sensed my emotional turmoil because I felt his hand on my shoulder as we went through to another room. It was getting harder and harder for me to go from room to room, looking at the countless dogs that deserved to be adopted.
"Hey," he whispered right next to my ear. His hand trailed down from my shoulder, over my arm until it slipped right against my own before interlocking his fingers with mine. "Don't be sad, just find one you like and we'll take him or her." He squeezed my hand.
There were so many sad faces looking at us while we walked by that tears pooled in my eyes. I wanted them all‚ even the mean ones, but I hadn't found the right one yet. His hand was warm and reassuring in mine, long fingers wrapping my shorter ones in a meeting of long and slim. We were getting close to the end of the row of dogs when I heard something that sounded like a whisper coming from up ahead. There was another whisper again a minute later. I pulled Tristan toward the cage where the whispering came from, only for me to let out some sort of squeak.
He was there. A massive looking puppy with four huge paws that floated in the air, he had a massive, square head with oversized, floppy ears resting against the floor. Best of all— his legs spread wide and his massive balls were pressed against the fence. The puppy had a dark fawn coat. He was all puppy fat and rolls, and as soon as I dropped to my knees I heard another whisper... and it was coming out of his ass. The smell was so awful I had to pull my shirt up over my nose as Tristan started gagging.
"What the hell is that smell?"
I pointed at the puppy's crotch. "He farted!"
Tristan made a face and started reading the information listed on the outside of his crate. "He's eight months, a mastiff-great dane mix, and it says he weighs... holy shit, he weighs a hundred and forty pounds, Kat."
The oversized puppy rolled over onto his tummy with one ear cocked back and the other flopped over his face. He was looking at me with big brown eyes and a slowly wagging tail. "This one," I said softly to Tristan but kept my eyes on the big boy sitting up across from me.
"This one? You're sure? I was thinking more about a small one. You know, maybe like a terrier or a yorkie."
I had to snort at the idiot behind me. "You want me to buy you a carrying bag for your yorkie, Miss?"
