“What kind of dates?”
Perry shrugged. “Dinner. Movies. Museums. There’s a new cat cafe we can check out. Now that I have Gumball, I’m at less of a risk of adopting the whole cafe.”
“Gumball?”
Perry’s eyes lit up and he pulled his phone out. “He’s my cat.” He opened his phone and showed me a picture of a long-haired black cat. He had his mouth hanging open and his tongue was sticking out. Gumball’s stare was vacant, like the lights were on, but nobody was home.
“He’s perfect. Look at him. Why is his name Gumball?”
“Because his brain is as smooth as a gumball.” Perry swiped to another photo. In this one, he was sprawled out on his back with his legs in the air. “He was raised by dogs, and he thinks he is one sometimes. He even pants like a dog. At first, it freaked me out. I was terrified that there was something wrong with him, but three hundred dollars later, the vet’s best guess was that he grew up with dogs and learned to pant from them.”
Perry tucked his phone away. “I showed you mine, now you show me yours.”
I pulled my phone out and opened it to the picture album. “The dog is Danish and the cats are Crash and Cookie.”
“Only three pets? I thought, you know, you being a vet and all, that you’d have a hell of a lot more.”
“Trust me, it’s hard to resist. Sometimes I’ll foster an animal while I try to get it a new home or get it placed in a rescue somewhere. Mostly, I try to leave the animals at work, but every so often my work comes home with me.”
“What was the strangest animal you ever almost kept?”
“A potbellied pig. The owners were unaware of how big pigs get and how smart they are. They were ill-equipped to handle him. I didn’t want to leave him in the kennels at work because not only are they not designed for pigs, but the noise bothered him. Piggles wasn’t a fan of dogs, which they discovered after they got a new puppy. He was tied to a fence post outside the office before we opened.”
“How long did you have him?”
“Three very interesting days before I found a farm to take him.”
“A real farm or a euphemism for farm? Did you put Piggles in the freezer?”
“No, that little piggy did not go to market. There was also the parrot that I took for a week while I waited for the owner’s son to come collect him. Animal control had found him in the home with his deceased owner and they didn’t know what to do with a parrot, so they brought him to me.”
“Aren’t there, like, rescues and organizations for stuff like that?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, but most of the time the animals need at least a basic eval first. It doesn’t happen often where I get stuck with a strange houseguest, so I don’t mind. Some of my exes minded.”
“That’s dumb. I’d be stoked if my boyfriend brought home a pig and was likethis is Stanley, he’s our son now.”
“Stanley?”
Perry looked at me and lifted one of his well-sculpted eyebrows. “Piggles?”
“Hey, I didn’t name him. He came with a note surrendering ownership of Piggles to the vet clinic.”
The more I talked to Perry, the more confident I became that I could do this. I could totally pretend to be Perry’s boyfriend. He was good company, compassionate, funny, and easy on the eyes.
“So, a date a week.”
“Minimum.”
“And some mild PDA for practice.”
Perry nodded. “That’s the idea. If we don’t get used to each other, we’ll look weird and awkward at the wedding, and they’ll either discover our lie or start asking uncomfortable questions.”
“I can do a date a week,” I told him.
He leaned closer, his brow furrowing. “Before we take this further, I have to know if you’re okay with what I do? Blue did tell you, right?”
I nodded. “I know what you do. I also know what Blue does. It’s not a secret, and it never has been. And for the record, even if we were dating for real, it still wouldn’t be a problem.”
