“That was good thinking. I hope she likes them.”
“Me too. Want me to set them inside for you? I left my dogs in the car, so I need to go get them.”
“Sure,” she said. “You’re on your way out for a hike?”
“Yeah. I didn’t want to stress Violet out by introducing them.” I opened the back door and stepped inside, frowning at the exposed particle board. I’d told Phoebe I’d help her lay new floors if she fostered Violet, and I needed to make good on that promise. I crossed to the kitchen table and left the bedding there before walking back outside. “Still need help with the floors?”
She nodded. “If you don’t mind. I didn’t get much done at all today with Violet underfoot. I keep worrying she’s going to sneak off and have puppies somewhere.”
“I can come by after work tomorrow and help for a few hours if that’s a good time for you,” I offered.
“That would be great. Thank you.”
Violet got to her feet and walked to me, tail wagging shyly. Her leash dragged behind her in the grass.
I crouched to pet her. “Contrary to what you might think, she seems like she’s doing really well here so far. She’s restless and unsettled with everything that’s happened, and her hormones are telling her to start getting ready for the puppies, but she seems to feel comfortable with you.”
“Well, I hope so,” Phoebe said. “But I still think she’d be better off somewhere else.”
“She likes you, Phoebe. Just look at her.”
Violet walked back to the blanket and plopped down beside Phoebe, tail wagging. Phoebe gave her a hesitant smile. “I can’t stop worrying about her.”
“Try not to. You’ll only stress her out. Chances are she’ll deliver the puppies just fine with minimal help from you. Animals are pretty good at this stuff.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“I’ll make sure someone’s here with you to help,” I told her. “And in the meantime, I’ll be back tomorrow without my dogs so I can help you with those floors.”
11
Phoebe
“We need to get some sleep tonight, Violet,” I said. “Both of us, okay?”
She looked at me with those soulful brown eyes. There was nothing flat or dull about Violet’s eyes. They showed everything she was feeling, and right now, they looked anxious.
“Taylor brought you a new blanket. It was your owner’s. Let’s see if you like it.” I patted the inside of the playpen, where I’d arranged the new blanket on top of one of my grandma’s.
Violet leaned through the open gate and sniffed, and then her tail started to wag. She walked all the way into the pen and pawed at the blanket, but this seemed less hostile than the way she’d pawed at it last night and more like she was trying to get comfortable. She nipped the blanket, and then she began to spin. She tugged and pawed and spun until I was dizzy just watching her, and then she plopped down in the middle of the bedding, looking up at me as her tail thumped the bed.
“You like that?” I asked.
Violet’s tail thumped again.
I took that as a yes. ThankGod. I shut off the light, beyond exhausted after last night. To my relief, there was silence in the playpen. Violet seemed ready to crash tonight too. As I drifted to sleep, my last thought was of Taylor, spouting dog knowledge from those soft pink lips, the first lips I had ever kissed.
When I woke the next morning, Taylor’s face still lingered in my mind with a hazy kind of familiarity, as if I’d spent most of the night dreaming about her. Not only that, but the ache between my thighs suggested they might have been sexy dreams. I wished I could remember them. Our summer together had been so long ago, and we’d kept it such a secret that sometimes it felt more like a fairy tale than something that had actually happened.
I’d been so young and inexperienced at sixteen. It had never even occurred to me that I might like girls. I’d been so focused on boys because that was all my other friends talked about. And then there was Taylor, quietly confident as she told me she was gay. And more than that, she’d already had her first girlfriend, another girl in her class.
I’d been floored by the revelation, had felt naïve by comparison. I’d never even thought about kissing a girl, and suddenly, it wasallI could think about. And not just any girl. I’d started daydreaming about kissing Taylor. I had romantic notions about us being more than friends, soulmates, even. Just like that, my best friend had become the only person I could imagine myself being with, the only person I wanted to kiss.
It didn’t happen for several long, dramatic weeks, afternoons filled with unnecessary touching and near misses as we fumbled our way toward our first kiss. We’d been sitting side by side on my bed, right here in this house, looking at something on my laptop, when we both turned our heads and our lips collided.
Something came to life inside me that I’d never felt before, a heat and a longing I hadn’t known was possible and had certainly never felt with any of the boys I’d spent so much time trying to impress at home.
After that first kiss, Taylor and I spent the rest of the summer sneaking every moment alone that we could. We’d spent endless hours making out, touching and exploring each other over our clothes. At sixteen, neither of us had been ready to go all the way with our bodies, but we’d given all of our hearts, professing our love every chance we got.
