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“Because she was scared and hungry.”

“Yes.”

“And so you just… took her in.”

I feel the corner of my mouth twitch. “I learned it from you.”

She closes her eyes. Opens them. Looks at the dog, who has put her head down on the throw blanket and is watching Ruby with large, brown, slightly worried eyes. One ear up. One ear flopped.

“She ate my shoe,” Ruby says.

“She relocated it to the water bowl. I’ve recovered it.”

“Is that my bra on the couch?”

“She was using it as a nest. I didn’t want to disturb her sleep.”

Ruby presses both hands over her face and breathes through her fingers, and I can hear it—the laugh building behind her hands, leaking out in small, compressed bursts that she’s trying very hard to contain.

“Aiden.”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“I didn’t name her. I thought that should be your decision.”

She drops her hands. Looks at the dog. The dog’s tail wags—once, tentative, like she’s not sure she’s allowed but she’s hoping.

Ruby walks to the couch. Sits down. The dog immediately crawls into her lap—all thirty pounds of damp, flour-dusted, alley-rescued mutt—and pushes her face into Ruby’s neck, and Ruby’s arms go around her, and I watch the woman I love hold a stray the same way she held me, and my system does the thing it always does when Ruby is kind to something that needs her.

It goes quiet. Full quiet.

“She’s a mess,” Ruby says into the dog’s fur.

“She’s perfect.”

“She destroyed my apartment.”

“I’ll fix it.”

“We don’t have dog food.”

“I’ll acquire some.”

Ruby looks up at me over the dog’s head, and she’s smiling—the real one, the whole-face one—and her eyes are bright and the dog is licking her chin and the apartment is a disaster and none of it matters.

“Biscuit,” she says.

“What?”

“Her name. Biscuit.”

I consider this. A baked good. Like the dog biscuits I make in the bakery. Warm, simple, the kind of word that feels like home.

“Biscuit,” I repeat.

The dog’s tail wags again. Harder this time.