“I think it’s sweet that you care so much.”
“My exes wouldn’t agree with you.”
“Your exes are stupid.”
He laughed again. I loved the sound of it. How clear it was that he was happy and relaxed. That being with me put him at ease enough to let go and have some fun and just be himself.
“Tell me how you really feel.”
It was supposed to be rhetorical, and I knew that, but I wanted to take the bait and answered anyway.
“Your exes are stupid on two fronts. First, for being your ex and second, for being jealous about a busted couch in a vet’s office staff room. I mean, if they’d really been that pressed to see you, they could’ve come here. Or they could remember that not everything is about them and get over themselves.”
“You say that now, but wait until my phone goes off in the middle of dinner and someone is begging me to come save their dog.”
I paused and pretended to think about it. Tilting my head to the side, I tapped my chin with my finger. “Hmmm, nope. I wouldn’t be mad if you left dinner for that reason. What kind of a cold-hearted ass clown would be pissed about that?”
“It’s not that it happens once. It’s that it happens more than once, and they start feeling like they come second.”
I shrugged. “If it’s between watching you eat ravioli while we drink wine and gaze into each other’s eyes or you getting off your ass and saving someone’s best friend, then sorry, but I’m willing to eat alone. If they weren’t, they were just selfish, stupid, and cold.”
Rex didn’t seem to know what to say to that. I may not have any dating experience the way he did, but maybe that was a good thing. If people were out there acting like saving someone’s dog was a bad thing because it inconvenienced them, then maybe I’d dodged a huge bullet. The bar was on the floor, in Hell, and the floor was lava.
His patient today was a stray cat with a litter of kittens. The kittens were still very small and the mother was clearly malnourished so they’d been kept at the vet clinic so they could give mom the best supportive care until she started to put on a bit more weight. It was clear that her kittens were taking a lot out of her, but she was determined to look after them.
Rex picked up one of the little black fuzzy kittens and handed it to me.
“Oh, God,” I said, taking the tiny creature. I held it against my chest, cradling it with my hands. “Hi,” I said to it, lowering my voice to a whisper for some unknown reason. It must be some kind of instinct taking over. “He’s so little.”
“She.”
“She’s so little. How do you not have a million cats at home? I couldn’t do this job. I’d have half the city’s cat population in my apartment.”
“Mostly I do it by realizing that I can take care of a certain number of pets very well, and anything more than that decreases their quality of life. I’ve dealt with the aftermath of too many people who have hoarded animals.”
Rex’s mouth was tight and his brow creased. He looked like he was weighed down with a million bad memories. The realization that he must have seen so many terrible things swept through me like a flash flood. He’d seen hoarding situations. Abuse. Cruelty. He’d helped families grieve their losses, and he did it all and still managed to not fall apart.
Rex was kind and sweet and funny. He was happy in a slow, quiet way. He took the time to look at the world around him and appreciate it.
“I could never do your job,” I told him, meaning every word. “It would be too hard to watch people lose their best friends. Too hard to—” My voice cracked, and I cleared my throat. Blinking away the sudden rush of emotion, I kissed the top of the kitten’s head and stroked his fur as gently as I could.
“Some days are easier than others,” was all Rex said and I appreciated him for not calling me out on nearly bursting into tears. And for not blowing smoke up my ass and being all no, Perry, you can be anything you want to be if only you put your mind to it. Which was the usual shtick I heard when I said that I couldn’t do something.
What people sometimes failed to realize is that I had a very healthy, very realistic outlook. I was fully aware that I wasn’t capable ofanythingI put my mind to. For example, higher math eluded me, so no, I could never be a rocket scientist. And just because I liked something, like animals, that doesn’t mean I needed to make a career out of it.
“How long does momma cat have to stay here?” I asked, carefully reuniting her with her kitten. She immediately started licking her baby like she was trying to get the smell of evil, strange, dirty human off her child.
“I want her to gain a bit more weight before I release her to the shelter.” Rex closed the kennel door and then turned to face me. He had a weird look on his face as if he were trying to see inside my head.
And then he stepped forward, into my personal space. I loved that he was a little taller than me, that I had to lift my chin just a touch so I could look him in the eye properly. The air in the room was electrically charged and sparks flew when he pressed his lips against mine.
My hands had a mind of their own, and it was like the slightest touch from Rex triggered them to touch him. I sank my fingers into his hair and held on as we kissed, our tongues sliding and caressing in a slow dance.
He was the one to kiss me, and he was the one to pull away. He’d stolen all my oxygen, leaving me breathless.
“What was that for?” I asked, closing my eyes as his forehead rested on mine.
“For being here. For being you. For… okay, this is kind of… don’t be mad, okay. But I can’t get the idea of you and Quinn out of my head.”
