She never made me feel weird about it. Never pushed or teased or told me I was being ridiculous.
Instead, she had started texting me.
Heads up, taking Meatball out in five!
We’re on the stairs, coast will be clear in two minutes.
Meatball’s on leash, you’re safe to exit.
Small kindnesses. The kind that cost nothing but meant everything.
But right now, Candy was nowhere in sight, and Meatball was looking at me with those big, soulful eyes, and his tail was wagging so hard his entire back end was wiggling, and he was starting down the porch steps?—
I moved fast. Faster than I’d moved during my entire run. I got my key in the lock, shoved the door open, and slipped inside, pulling it shut behind me with a click.
Safe.
Through the door, I heard Meatball let out a howl—long and mournful and desperately sad, like I’d personally broken his heart by refusing to be his friend.
I leaned my forehead against the door and closed my eyes.
The thing was, I didn’t want to be afraid of dogs. I didn’t want to flinch every time I heard a bark or cross the street to avoid a golden retriever.
I knew Meatball wasn’t going to hurt me. He was probably exactly what Candy said he was—a giant softie with resting murder face and a heart of gold.
But fear didn’t care about logic. It lived in my body, in the memory of teeth and the crack of my face against pavement.
It lived in the scar tissue, invisible but permanent.
Maybe someday I would get there. I would be the kind of person who could scratch Meatball behind his ears and let him lick my face and not feel like I was going to die.
But not yet. Not today.
I pushed off from the door and headed for the shower, leaving Meatball’s sad howls behind me.
Warm from the shower, I sat on my couch and pulled up my banking app.
The repair amount stared back at me. Obscene. Impossible.
My savings account, carefully accumulated over four years of living frugally and picking up extra shifts and saying no to vacations and nice dinners. All the little luxuries other people took for granted, looked suddenly pathetic in comparison.
I transferred the full amount.
Every cent.
Watching the number disappear from my balance was physically painful. I actually made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan, as my financial security evaporated.
Months of sacrifice. Gone.
But I refused to give him the satisfaction of weakness. Of being exactly what his friends had always assumed I was: a poor girl who couldn’t keep up with their world.
There. Done. Paid in full.
Let him choke on his money.
I closed the app and sat back, staring at the ceiling with its water-stain middle finger.
The apartment felt too quiet. My brain, freed from the distraction of financial calculations, immediately circled back to Jack like a moth to a flame it knew would burn it.
