“I’ve never seen you like this,” she said. “Not ever.”
“Don’t read into it. I’m still me.”
“I’m not reading into anything. I’m just observing.” She looked at me sideways.
“She loves that dog.”
“I know she does.”
“And she tracked you down in twenty minutes and came ready to fight me over you.” She paused. “She’s not just a girl you’re messing around with.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
“Just make sure you know what you’re doing,” Raja said. Quiet now. The levity was gone and what was underneath it was just her, the version of Raja that had been walking around with loss in her chest for the better part of a year and had learned things from it that she hadn’t been looking to learn. “Make sure she knows too. Because that woman back there was not playing. And women who aren’t playing deserve to know what they’re actually signing up for.”
I heard what she was saying underneath what she was saying.
“I know,” I said. And I meant it in both directions.
I dropped her off back at Deuce spot. I was tryna give her a break away from the baby, and being stuck in the house, but this happens. I sat in the car for a minute after she went inside. Goldie had her head between the two front seats looking at me with those eyes that were always asking for something. I reached back and scratched behind her ear.
“You’re a lot of trouble with your cute self,” I told her.
Her tail went.
—
I gave Ivy three days without seeing her. But we still talked on the phone.
Not because I was done, not because anything had changed, but because she needed the space to let what happened at that parking lot settle into something useful.
She had shown up ready to fight over me. Had tracked me across the city using a method she refused to explain. Had stood there in a PetSmart parking lot crying and telling me to give her dog back and I had watched her face the whole time and seen what was underneath all the anger.
She knew what she was going to do. She just needed to get out of her own way enough to do it. I was counting down the days until she was fully mine. We spoke about her leaving, and she was making arrangements already. Moving her money to her own bank account, switching things out of his name that they shared jointly.
In the meantime I let her FaceTime Goldie every day. I would prop the phone up on the couch and let them have their conversation and sit back watching this dog go insane at the sight of her person on a screen, spinning and pawing at the cushion, and I would watch Ivy’s face while she talked to her and see the way it went soft in a way that it didn’t go for anything else.
She was good with the dog. That told me things about her that she probably didn’t realize she was showing me. If she was that good with a dog, she will be an even better mother. Seeing my boys have babies, that shook something in me. I wanted to be a father too. The way that babies cling to me, I knew that it was in the cards for me.
On the fourth day I was sitting on my back patio with coffee when I called her.
She answered on the second ring which told me she had been waiting.
“How’d you find me?” I said instead of hello. “At PetSmart. How did you know where I was. This is my second time asking you, now it’s bothering me, and I need an answer.”
Silence for a second. Then, “I’ll never tell.” She joked.
“Ivy.”
“Sources are confidential.” I could hear the smallest smile in it even though she was trying to keep her voice even. “That’s just how it works.”
I sat back in my chair and looked out at the yard. Goldie was moving around near the fence investigating something that probably wasn’t worth investigating. “You put something on my car.”
Nothing.
“How long has it been there? If I find out, you did something to my car. I’m gonna choke the fuck out of you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
