by Archer, Amy
He wasn’t giving me much choice, but I nodded again and tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “Okay. We’ll see you then.”
“Right outside,” Devin said, pointing to the door, then walked out of it without saying goodbye.
CHAPTER 3
I couldn’t stop thinking about the confrontation with Devin. All day, while running errands, while making myself a sandwich for lunch, while playing with Taco, I relived the experience in my mind. I hated the dark clouds that had come over Devin’s face when he had recognized his dog—and in all likelihood, I had to admit, Taco was indeed his dog. Had been, I corrected myself. Had been his dog.
It hurt to think of Devin looking at me like that, the happy-go-lucky goofball I’d come to know gone. I’d come to look forward to seeing him at the practice sessions. My mood lifted when he was around; even though I had no interest in him romantically, it was fun to flirt, or joke around, or whatever it was he was doing.
I was glad to have the distraction of seeing Caroline that afternoon. The interaction that morning had left a very bad taste in my mouth. I’d liked Devin, but over the course of just ninety minutes I’d lost respect for him—he was clearly a bad pet owner—and I was angry that he’d embarrassed me. I was dreading seeing him the next morning.
Caroline and I met at a bar I had never been to before, and I recognized my high school friend immediately. Caroline looked just the same as I remembered, with the same warm glow, straight medium-brown hair and an open, inviting face. I felt self-conscious that I was so much heavier than I’d been back then when she looked just the same. I hadn’t yet lost any weight since I’d started training for the marathon, though I was definitely building muscle in my legs.
“Wow, so good to see you!” Caroline said as we gave each other tight hugs.
It felt good to reconnect with her too. Within five minutes of meeting up, we were chatting and laughing like it hadn’t been almost a decade since we’d lost touch.
“What are you doing these days?” I asked her. “Where do you work?”
She made a face. “I’m a cashier at a grocery store,” she said. “It’s not exactly where I was hoping to be, but…” She shrugged. “Always looking for new opportunities.”
“You’ll find the right thing,” I assured her.
And then came the moment I’d been dreading. Caroline asked, “So I heard that you were dating someone pretty seriously. How’s that going?”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and took a tentative sip on my mojito. “Um. Actually, he broke up with me,” I admitted. “It’s been about a month.”
“Oh no, Soph, I’m so sorry!” Caroline said, looking like she feared she had made a horrible error in mentioning it.
“It’s okay,” I said, and then I found myself telling Caroline the whole story. I’d promised myself I’d only tell her about the breakup, not about expecting an engagement, but as soon as they sat down together Caroline’s warmth overwhelmed my desire to keep it inside, and I was suddenly spilling all the details.
Caroline was sympathetic, listening to the whole thing through to the end and saying only “Oh!” and “Really?!” and other sounds as I listened.
“That’s awful, Sophie,” she said when I had finished the story.
“Yeah, it hurt pretty bad,” I admitted.
“Hope you have a good vibrator,” Caroline joked.
“Actually…I don’t own a vibrator.”
Caroline looked shocked. “Wait, what? You don’t have a vibrator at all?”
“No,” I said. “Should I?”
“Uh, yes,” Caroline said, as though it were a given. “Every woman needs a good vibrator. Especially those who have just been dumped.”
I shrugged. “I had no idea.”
“But—you’ve had one in the past, though, right?” Caroline persisted.
It was strange how Caroline could say these things after not having seen me in almost a decade, and yet it somehow felt perfectly normal. But if someone I saw on a regular basis had said that to me, I would’ve been shocked.
Had I become more of a prude in the years since high school? I wondered.
No, I decided. It was just that these days, I spent most of my time with other elementary school teachers. Elementary school teachers didn’t talk about vibrators much. For one, saying something at the wrong place and time could get them fired, and most teachers of young children I knew had taught themselves to speak on their best behavior even in the teachers’ lounge so as not to get too comfortable with cursing or anything else that would get them in trouble once they were back in front of their students. For another, my friends had been more diverse in high school than they were now. Back then, I’d been friends with people who talked openly about vibrators, for instance.
“No, I’ve never had one in my life,” I told Caroline, feeling squeamish.
A devilish look spread over Caroline’s face. “Want to go shopping when we’re done here?”
I laughed and glanced around to make sure no one else in the bar was listening. “Sure, why not?” I said. Matt would’ve been shocked if he’d known what I was doing. We never had talked about sex much; we just did it.
We finished up our cocktails, then Caroline led me a few blocks down to a sex shop she knew of.
Inside, we got a welcoming nod from a woman restocking big, fleshlike dildos. I giggled uncomfortably. Funny, I thought as we browsed the rows upon rows of vibrators, cock rings, sexy lingerie, and a bunch of stuff I didn’t even recognize, how it was okay to be open about discussing sex toys, but even Caroline didn’t want to be seen as too into sex toys.
As we browsed, I slowly started feeling more comfortable, less self-conscious. There were small vibrators and big ones, ones with multiple speeds and ones with curved tips and ones with texture on the tips. As we browsed, I told her about Devin and Taco, the lump in my stomach starting to dissolve just by talking about it. Caroline was a good listener.
“It sounds like you did everything right,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve to get the dog back.” I smiled, grateful for the confirmation that I was in the right.
Finally, I stopped and looked around me.
“There are so many options!” I said. “How do I know what’s best?”
Caroline shrugged. “Depends what you like, I guess.” She must have seen the terror-stricken look on my face because she offered, “This might be a good one to start with.” She picked a clear plastic case off a shelf and showed it to me. I took it from her and studied it. The vibrator inside was bright purple and made of a flexible silicone.
“It’s so bright!” I said.
“You won’t be looking at it,” Caroline pointed out.
“Oh god. I’m so embarrassed to take this up to the register!”
“Oh, quit it! It’s fine. That’s what they do. All day, every day, the cashiers check people out who are buying sex toys. Most probably more scandalous than this one,” she added.
I took a deep breath and then went to check out. The woman was polite and friendly, and when we stepped back out into the misty fall day, I felt encouraged. I was now the proud owner of my very first vibrator. Who needed a boyfriend?
When I got home that day, I found myself holding my breath as I unlocked my front door. Would I find anything destroyed inside? I was starting to discover why the woman at the animal shelter had referred to Taco as “naughty.”
The first day it had been toilet paper, which he had unrolled and chased around the house. There was a telltale thin white paper path marking his progression around the house, half a roll strewn all over the living room and into the kitchen, the trail eventually leading into my bedroom, where I found the rest of the gnawed-up roll, completely destroyed, in the middle of my bed. Taco was on his bed, which I’d put on the floor in my bedroom, and glanced up at me sleepily when I came in and yawned, as though to say, “I don’t know what happened, I’ve just been sleeping here the whole time.”
The second time it had been
a bill I’d gotten in the mail. I’d left the bill, unopened, on the coffee table, which now stood next to the armchair since I still hadn’t gotten a new couch. I’d come home to find the bill covered in tooth marks in Taco’s bed, though this time he was asleep on the armchair.
“Taco!” I’d scolded. “Get off there!” The maroon chair was covered in light-colored hairs when he jumped down, and I discovered the downside to having a black and white dog: when he lay on light-colored surfaces, his black hair showed up. When he lay on dark surfaces, the white was obvious.
The third time he’d been naughty, I’d come home to find a head of broccoli I’d forgotten to put in the fridge on the kitchen floor. I’d left it on the counter still in a plastic bag, and he’d pulled it down, ripped the bag to shreds, and started in on the broccoli. Three-quarters of the head was still intact, but there was broccoli debris all over the floor.
“You’re not even supposed to like broccoli,” I sighed, and went to search “can dogs eat broccoli?” on the Internet. It wasn’t harmful, but I vowed to be more careful with other foods, for both Taco’s sake and my own.
I hadn’t realized when I’d adopted Taco that getting a dog would require babyproofing the house, and I certainly wasn’t in the habit of considering before I left the house in the morning what might be destroyed while I was gone. I was grateful that I was such a tidy person, but this required a whole different type of thinking.
But no matter how naughty he was, it was comforting to have a dog, and Taco and I had continued to bond over the weeks he’d been with me. He’d helped me through crying bouts, watched me rearrange the furniture to try to make it less awkward not to have a couch, and had been with me when Matt had come by for his mail and a few stray items he’d left around the house. Taco had barked at Matt, which made me smile even as I told him to hush.
I was also grateful to have someone to go on runs with. I was dedicated about running every morning, but it certainly didn’t hurt to have someone wagging his tail into the bed and staring eagerly up into my face as I opened my eyes for the first time in the morning. He was always eager to exercise, always happy to see me, and always in a good mood. That was more than I could say about most humans, so it didn’t take long before I could no longer picture my life without him.
Which is why I felt so unsettled by Devin’s revelation that Taco was his dog. Had been, past tense, I corrected myself—there was no way I was giving him back to his previous owner. All good feelings about Devin had dissolved as soon as I’d realized that he wanted to take away from me the creature who had helped me through such a difficult time. And I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how someone could not search for Taco, could let him run away in the first place, and then think he had a right to get his dog back.
Sorry, buddy, but that just wasn’t how life worked. Taco was mine now, and I was taking good care of him—even if I was still learning how to be a dog owner.
But I met Devin in the park the next day, as promised. His eyes had the same bleary half-asleep look that they’d had each time I’d seen him this early in the morning, and without meaning to I found it endearing. Come to think of it, he even seemed a little asleep still when we met for the 9 a.m. Saturday workouts, though he always perked up quickly once the workout started.
“Hey there, Paco!” he said, his face breaking into a grin when he saw Taco, and he tackled the excited dog with a full-body pat. “Hi Sophie, how are you? Get enough sleep?” His voice was not unkind, but it distinctly lacked the jovial, joking tone that he’d used with me in the past.
“I slept very well,” I said, thinking about how quickly I’d drifted off after trying out the rubbery purple vibrator for the first time. Embarrassed as I was to own such a thing, Caroline had been right: it did the trick.
I had expected that we’d start right in with a run, but Devin started playing with Taco instead, bouncing back and forth in front of him and landing with hands on his half-crouched knees while Taco went crazy, running back and forth around him.
He was good with him, I thought, but playing was only one facet of being a good dog owner, and he’d have to do a lot better than that if he was trying to prove to me that he deserved to have Taco back. Not that I’d consider it anyway. I was still irritated with Devin and not feeling particularly generous toward him right now.
“Why are you crouching like that after you jump?” I finally asked Devin, as much because I felt awkward just standing there while the two of them played as because I was actually curious.
He looked up at me as though he’d forgotten I was there. “It’s dog play behavior,” he explained. “You mimic the way dogs play with each other. See how he keeps getting down low on his front paws, like he’s bowing to me? That’s the signal dogs use with each other that they want to play.”
“Oh!” I said. “That makes sense. I thought he was just stretching when he did that.” He was like a dog himself, I thought, the way he bounded back and forth between people during practice, wanting to be friendly with everyone. And the way he made running a game. I remembered Devin doing a cartwheel in the middle of our run the first time I’d met him, and felt a quick pang of regret that things had gone south with him.
“Nope, it’s him communicating.” Devin continued bouncing back and forth in front of Taco a few times as the dog went wild, then abruptly shifted into going through a few commands with him. Taco looked confused at first, but was soon on the same page, sitting and lying down and shaking hands as though he did it every day.
“I had no idea he could do all that!” I said in amazement, and Devin cracked a quick smile my direction.
“Ready to run?”
I nodded gratefully, and Devin called to Taco, who had bounded away to investigate a squirrel, to follow them. We headed out on one of the trails leading away from the running store, and I breathed in the early morning air. This was my favorite time of day. I couldn’t understand how some people could sleep through it and get up only at the last moment before heading to work. Then again, I supposed I was lucky that I’d always been a morning person.
We wound our way around the park, and I hoped he wouldn’t try to talk to me while we ran.
He did, though, of course. “So what do you do with yourself when you’re not running or stealing people’s dogs?” he asked.
I bristled. “I’m a kindergarten teacher,” I said carefully. At least this sharp teasing was better than outright anger.
“Oh yeah?” he said. “So you’re pretty into fingerpaints and alphabet blocks?”
“It’s fun,” I said. “There’s not as much pressure as with the older kids to focus on one subject at a time, to work toward tests, to stay on task all the time. With the little ones the schools still understand that play is part of learning.”
“I’ve always thought it was a shame that kids are forced to stop playing in school when they get older,” Devin agreed. He seemed like he played all the time, I realized. He seemed like his whole life was play, to an extent.
“And what about you?” I asked. “What do you do?”
“You mean to make money, or what do I do in life?”
“Both,” I said with a smile.
“During the day I do marketing and social media for a startup. The rest of the time I try to get outdoors. I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Well, I like to go rock climbing, surfing, skydiving…”
“Skydiving, huh?” I said. The mere thought of skydiving terrified me. Way too dangerous. “I think that’s one thing I will absolutely never do.”
“Never say never,” he said with a grin.
“How did you get into that?”
Devin hesitated for a moment, as though trying to decide whether to say something, then continued matter-of-factly, “When my girlfriend dumped me a few months back, I distracted myself by getting my skydiving license. For a while I thought I might even work taking people on tandem jumps.”
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�Oh, I—I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “About your girlfriend.” So he wasn’t dating a perfect Les Etoiles waitress after all. At least not anymore. Why did it give me satisfaction to hear that he was single when I was so clearly not interested in him?
“It was for the best,” he said. “I just felt like I needed to bring some spontaneity into my life when she left.”
The statement struck me. That was exactly the opposite approach I was taking to Matt leaving. I wanted nothing more than to get my life back in order, back to the stability I needed.
“Did it work?” I asked.
“You mean did it help me get over her? Yeah, it did. It…I don’t know how to explain it, but it gave me a new perspective on the whole thing.”
Interesting, I thought. It occurred to me that in a way, his approach was actually very similar to mine—I had decided to take on a new hobby, running, and he had decided to take on a new hobby, skydiving. Both had had the intention of getting over our exes, but our logic on the way was completely different, with me wanting to find stability and him seeking the opposite.
And then my mind was off, thinking about Matt. It was still strange to come home and not have him there. I missed him in the evenings when I started to make dinner. He’d just been there for so long that it was odd not having him there. I was usually the one to cook, but often he’d help too, and I didn’t mind cooking on my own. He’d emerge from his bedroom when it was time to eat, and we’d have dinner together, and afterward would play a board game or he’d head back into his room for more video games.
That was all he did, I realized. He just played games all the time. When I was honest with myself, Matt and I hadn’t even spent that much time together in recent years, but it was still comforting to have him around, to know that he was there with me in the house. That he was mine. That I had a counterpart, someone to count on if I needed him.
