“Yeah, everyone has an attachment type. Like their childhood affects how they treat relationships now.”
“What attachment type are you? Desperate?”
“Ha ha. There’s three types: secure, insecure”—he glances at me pointedly—“and avoidant. Alex is avoidant too.”
Alex is Kit’s best friend—well, his other best friend. Kit went to college and they were roommates their freshman year. As it tends to happen when one goes off to college, Kit and I didn’t keep in touch like we used to, and at the time, it was hard for me. I was already feeling the sting of being left behind, and then to have Kit choose to work in Albany for a while after college hurt. And then, when he quit his job, he worked on Alex’s farm for a few months before coming back home.
I have a lot of complicated feelings around this—the lack of funds to go to college or even to get away from Here didn’t help. But now I’m glad I didn’t, and Kit’s back, so our friendship is back and stronger than ever.
“How’d you break through to Alex?”
Kit pauses. “Mostly I hugged him until he gave in. So, smother her with affection?”
I put the last plate in the dish drain. “Already do that.”
Kit screws up his face. “Well, alcohol probably helped too. A few nights wasted and a few days hungover really cement a friendship.”
“You’re not helpful at all.”
He shrugs and tosses his cleaning rag in the laundry pile. “I can’t help that I’m more lovable than you.” He puts his hands on his hips. “We done here?”
I turn off the water and put the sponge in the trash, the sink now sparkling clean. “Yup.”
“Good, we need to talk.”
Now it’s my turn to mock gasp. “Are you firing me?”
“No, but let’s sit down.”
Kit digs around in his backpack and pulls out a manila folder, the likes of which I haven’t seen since the bar’s hiring process went digital ages ago.
He joins me at the dining room table and pulls one piece of paper out. “This is a nondisclosure agreement. My dad looked it over and says it’s all pretty standard. I need you to sign it for the job tomorrow.”
“Mysterious,” I say, and sign the paper, because Kit’s dad is a lawyer and I trust him.
Kit puts the paper back in the folder and leans in. “Wednesday, we’re going to do the Cosmopolitan package for none other than?—”
What?
Did you think I was going to tell you? I just signed an NDA. Nice try.
Kit drops me home after our talk and I’m instantly on alert. There’s an unmarked van outside my curb, and Princess does not greet me at the door.
The van is probably nothing—a neighbor having a handyman swing by or a friend visiting. Princess’s absence could mean one of two things. She could have escaped. Unlikely, but possible. The second option is more likely, though.
She’s gotten herself in trouble.
More than once I’ve come home to find Princess hiding because she’s made a mess. Twice I discovered she’d stolen food off the counter. Once she accidentally closed herself in the guest bedroom. And three times I came home and she’d gotten her head stuck in the lid of the trash can.
I have a different style of trash can now, so I’m wondering if she ate a loaf of bread off the counter—plastic and all (it’s happened before).
I step inside the back room and hear Princess scrambling from wherever she was.
“Owwwww,” a voice says.
Princess didn’t grow a magical voice box. My dog bounds through the house, her whole body wriggling in pure joy. She looks up at me, prancing in place, while I begin toeing off my shoes, and then she darts away, back to the rest of the house. When I take too long, dropping my keys on the table and hanging my jacket up, Princess reappears at the doorway again wearing a concerned expression. Dad, are you coming? Dad? Dad!
She disappears again, and a moment later she whimpers.
