The Dating Debate

by Chris Cannon

  Gidget pulled her head out and turned to look at me.

  “You’re kind of big to be a lap dog,” I said, like she might understand what I was saying. She must’ve misinterpreted the message because she stood, turned in a circle, and jammed her head behind my shoulder, shoving me forward.

  Nina laughed.

  “Your dog is weird.”

  “Have you ever had a dog?” Nina asked.

  “No, but Matt and Charlie do, and none of them ever acted like this.”

  Gidget pulled her head out, pressed it against my chest, and whined. Big brown soulful eyes stared up at me. I caved and petted her. She snuffled against my chest and then sighed. Something wound tight inside of me relaxed. Even though there was a giant dog sitting on my diaphragm, it felt like I could breathe a little easier.

  “Behold the magic of dogs,” Nina said in a quiet voice. “They unravel the stress in your soul.”

  I paused. “Did you read that on a pet store sign?”

  “No, I found it on Pinterest,” she said. “And I’d love to have it on a coffee mug because it’s the absolute truth.”

  A jagged streak of lighting flashed through the sky followed by the crash of thunder. Gidget whined and looked at me like I was supposed to make the storm stop. “Sorry, I can’t turn off the thunder.”

  “Hopefully, it will end soon,” Nina said.

  We watched people hold on to ledges with their fingertips and run straight up walls for half an hour before the thunder stopped. Gidget finally relaxed enough to jump off the couch and go lie on her dog bed beside the coffee table. I was relieved, until I saw that half of Gidget’s fur remained on my shirt and pants.

  “Don’t panic,” Nina said. “We have fur rollers.”

  She scooted over, opened the drawer on the end table, and pulled out one of those sticky tape rollers.

  “Do you have ten of those?”

  “Probably. We buy them in bulk.” She peeled the cover off and handed it over. “Give it a shot.”

  There was no way this thing would work, but it was my best option for the moment. I dragged the roller down the front of my shirt. In two swipes, it was full. I repeated the process and went through ten sticky sheets. “How is she not bald?”

  “I ask her that question every day. And we asked the vet. Yellow Labs shed a lot.”

  “I think that’s an understatement.” Blonde strands of fur were still sprinkled across my shirt. I pulled at one piece. “It’s like the fur imbeds in the fabric.”

  “It will come out in the dryer. Just be sure to empty your lint trap.”

  A disturbing image came to mind. “Your lint trap is full of dog fur, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  And she wasn’t the least bit upset by that fact. Just the idea of all my belongings covered in fur gave me the creeps. “You should distract me from the impending dog fur freak-out,” I said.

  “Maybe you should come this way a little bit.” She reached over and put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me toward her. I met her halfway. Wrapping my arms around her and pulling her close felt natural. Everything about Nina felt soft and warm and right. Maybe there was something to her fate theory. Maybe we were meant to be together.

  Chapter Thirty

  Nina

  We’d been kissing for a while when Gidget barked and ran to the front door. Reluctantly, I pulled away from West. “That must be my mom.”

  Sure enough, the door opened and my mom came in. Gidget did her happy homecoming dance.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hello, dear. Hello, West. How’d Gidget do with the storm?”

  West snorted.

  “She sat on both of our laps,” I said.

  “There are more lint rollers in the pantry, West, if you need them.”

  West brushed at the front of his shirt, which was still sprinkled with blonde fur. “I was thinking more along the lines of a Shop-Vac.”

  My mom smiled. “It’s a small price to pay for all this love.” She ruffled Gidget’s ears. “Come in the kitchen with me, girl. I bought more chewies.”

  Gidget trailed after my mom into the kitchen. West scooted forward to the edge of the couch cushion like he planned to stand.

  “I should go,” he said.

  “Okay. I had fun tonight.”

  “Me, too.” He stood and held out his hand. “Walk me to the back door.”

  Living next door to the person you were dating made saying good-bye interesting. I let West pull me to my feet, and we walked to the patio door. I peered outside. “The rain isn’t too bad.”

  “And it’s not like I have far to go,” he said.

  Part of me wanted to ask him if we were officially dating…like a couple. He’d window-shopped with me, and we’d discussed plans for our anti-Valentine’s Day weekend, so did that indicate we were a couple? What if the question freaked him out?

  He glanced toward the kitchen where my mom had gone. Her being home must have spooked him because he barely brushed his lips across mine before pulling away. “Good night, Nina.”

  “Good night.” I opened the glass sliding doors, and he darted out and across the yards to his own back door. I watched until he went inside. When I turned back around, my mom was sitting on the couch next to Gidget who was gnawing on a rawhide bone.

  “Did I chase him off?”

  I shut and locked the door. “I think it was a combination of dog fur and you coming home.”

  “Sorry.”

  I crossed the room and sat down beside her. “No big deal. We had a great night.” I recapped the dinner and our window shopping experience.

  “It sounds like he’s making an effort,” my mom said. “That’s a good sign.”

  “I thought so, too.” The fact that he thought I was worth making an effort for gave me a warm fuzzy.

  …

  Sunday afternoon I went shopping with Lisa. It was stock-up day at her house. She hit Target, while her mom did the grocery shopping. They called it the divide-and-conquer technique.

  My mom or I shopped randomly throughout the week, whenever we needed food or toilet paper, which worked for us.

  “I don’t know where you have room to store all this stuff.” I helped her wrestle a twenty-four pack of toilet paper onto the bottom of the cart.

  “There’re two of us in a three-bedroom house, so the third room is like a giant storage closet.” Lisa pushed the cart down the aisle. After we finished buying enough paper products and laundry detergent to last a month, we went to a teahouse for lunch.

  “So, now that I’m dating West instead of not-not dating West, do you want me to ask him about Matt?”

  Lisa stirred sugar into her tea. “Matt is cute, and he seems like a good guy. I had fun talking to him at Bixby’s, but I think if he were interested, he would have asked me out already. I get the feeling he’s waiting on someone who isn’t available.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He mentioned his sister’s best friend Jane more than once. And his face kind of lit up when he talked about her.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “No big deal. Like I said before, I’m enjoying a drama-free period right now.”

  “I can’t remember a time when my life was drama free,” I said. “Though lately, at least, it’s been good drama.”

  After lunch, we drove by the Hilmer Library, which now sported a sign that read: Hilmer Recycling Center Coming Soon.

  “I guess a recycling center isn’t a bad thing,” she said.

  “It’s useful, but it’s not magical like a library.”

  “It keeps stuff out of landfills, which is kind of magical,” she said. “But nothing is as magical as a library or a bookstore.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  West

  Sunday afternoon, while my mother sat reading in her room and my father went grocery shopping, I snuck into the living room to empty out some boxes. I climbed into the small area I’d cleared in the middle and opened one of the u
nmarked containers. My dad hadn’t started using a Sharpie on everything until the furniture was covered, so I had no idea what I’d find, which was slightly frightening.

  Inside the container, I found cardboard tubes from rolls of paper towels and a small wooden chest. That was odd. Why put a box in a box? I opened the chest to see doll clothes, which was weird since no one in this house had ever played with dolls. Must be something my mom had picked up at a garage sale. I shoved the cardboard tubes in one bag and the clothes in another. Since the clothes looked brand new, I’d drop them off at Goodwill.

  “West, what are you doing?”

  I froze. How had my father crept up on me like that? “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “It looks like you’re trying to bail out a sinking ship with a teaspoon.” He chuckled like it was a joke. I didn’t think it was funny.

  “I have to try.” I met his gaze. “One of us has to try. She doesn’t even know what’s in these tubs. So why keep this crap?”

  “It’s not her fault,” he said.

  “I understand, but we shouldn’t have to live like this.” I pointed toward the area where I thought the couch still was. “We should be able to sit in the living room, like normal people.”

  “You won’t live here forever,” he said. “You’ll go away to college, and then you’ll have your own house. Live your own life. In the meantime, don’t upset the balance of your mom’s life…and mine.”

  We’d never talked about college. “True, but I haven’t heard back from any of the scholarships I applied for, so I don’t even know if I can go to school.”

  He blinked at me like he didn’t understand what I’d said. “We never talked about this, but I thought you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “You have a college fund. We started it when you were born. It won’t pay for Ivy League, but it will get you through a state school.”

  I was caught somewhere between relieved and angry. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He waved his hands at all the boxes. “I was a little preoccupied.”

  “Right.” I could be mad, or I could accept this as the gift it was. I slumped back against a stack of boxes. “Thank you. You have no idea what a relief that is.”

  “You need to put those back.” My dad pointed at the frilly dresses.

  “Why would she want doll clothes?”

  “Those aren’t for dolls,” he said with a catch in his voice. “Those were meant for your sister.”

  The room seemed to shift around me. “Sister?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at the floor. “You were too young to realize what was going on at the time, but your mom…she miscarried when you were two years old. We tried again after that, but things didn’t go as planned. We could have gone to specialists, but your mom refused. She said if it was meant to be, it would happen.”

  This was way out of my league. I had no idea what to say except, “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded. “Me, too. Anyway, I’m making spaghetti. Why don’t you put all of that back and help with the salad.”

  The dresses I folded and put neatly back in the wooden chest before replacing them in the box, but the bag of cardboard tubes I kept out. “I’m going to put these in the recycling bin.”

  “It’s not worth upsetting your mother,” he said. “Just put it all back.”

  I needed to tread lightly. “I have a recurring nightmare that while I’m sleeping, the house sinks into the ground because there’s so much junk in it. And I’m trapped…we’re all trapped underground with all this garbage…and we can’t escape.”

  “You will escape,” he said. “Put those back and come help with dinner.”

  Feeling defeated, I shoved the cardboard back in the storage box and snapped the lid shut.

  Once dinner was on the table, I hollered for my mother because there were times I couldn’t face seeing her perched on her bed amid the chaos. In the kitchen, she looked sort of normal, or I could pretend she did.

  She joined us, smiling a normal-person smile. I’d take that for now.

  I ate my spaghetti while I thought about the news my dad had given me. I didn’t have to win a scholarship. There was money to get me out of this house. The relief I felt at the thought of escaping this place made me feel guilty.

  When my dad smiled and talked to my mom, he looked at her the same way he’d always looked at her—with love. Could my mom see the frustration on my face when I spoke to her? I hoped not. Maybe I should work on that—just accepting her as she was.

  “How are things with Nina?” she asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

  I smiled. “Things are pretty good.”

  “She has such a cute dog,” my mom said. “I’ve seen them playing Frisbee.”

  “That’s Gidget.” I told my mom about how the dog was afraid of thunder.

  “They sound like a nice family,” my mom said.

  My dad was quiet.

  “Does it still bother you that I’m seeing Nina?” I asked.

  “As long as she doesn’t hit your car again, I’m okay with it,” he said.

  …

  Monday morning I sat in my car and waited for Nina to join me. She seemed to constantly run ten minutes late, no matter what we were doing. I’d finished my most recent book, so I was Googling ideas for anti-Valentine’s Day, which was coming up this Friday.

  Apparently, there were a lot of angry women in the world because there were multiple suggestions on how to make voodoo dolls of your ex and suggestions for picture-burning parties. Funny, but this weekend, I’d realized how much my dad still loved my mom. It made me want to try harder to help him. Not that I wasn’t counting down the days until I could go away to school, but while I was here, I’d make more of an effort to be sympathetic.

  The car door opened, and Nina smiled at me as she climbed in. “You look happy this morning.”

  “Don’t I normally look happy?”

  “No.” She set her bag on the floor and put on her seat belt. “You always look like you’re brooding or focusing on something, like you’re trying to solve a problem.”

  Huh. Do other people see me that way? “Maybe I don’t look that way today because one of my problems has been solved. My dad and I talked about college and apparently, I have a college fund he never mentioned.”

  Nina’s mouth dropped open for a second. “Why didn’t he tell you about that so you wouldn’t stress about scholarships?”

  “I think he thought I knew. And at first I was mad about not knowing, but now I’m just happy the money is there.”

  “I’m so happy for you,” she said. “Do you know where you want to go?”

  I wanted to escape, but suddenly and surprisingly, I also felt the need to be close, in case my dad needed me. “I’m still not sure.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Nina

  I was happy for West, but the idea of him moving away made my stomach hurt a little. Our relationship, whatever it was we had, probably wouldn’t end up as a happily ever after, because that only happened in fairy tales. Knowing for sure he was going to run away as soon as possible wasn’t something I wanted to think about. But worrying too much about the future would only destroy what we had now. I was back to my “Be more like the dog” mantra. I needed to live in the moment and take things as they came.

  On that note, I said, “Valentine’s Day is this Friday.”

  “And all those times I said we weren’t going to the dance, I was right,” he gloated. “Because we’re going to the movies, instead.”

  “Okay, technically you’re right, but we’re still actually doing something together on Valentine’s Day, which I think is what you were objecting to in the first place, so I think I’m right, too.”

  “You have to argue about everything,” he said, “don’t you?”

  If he’d said it in an angry tone, I would have been upset, but he was smiling so I knew he was teasing me.

  “It’s not arguing.
” I moved toward him. “It’s debating. And it’s fun.”

  “It is?” He leaned toward me.

  “Yes.” I closed the distance between us and kissed him. He kissed me back. Unfortunately, we had to go, so I ended the kiss and put on my seat belt.

  West pulled out of the driveway and headed toward school.

  “Back to Valentine’s Day,” I said. “Maybe we could go to the chocolate exhibition and then go to the movies. Because even though I’m anti-Valentine’s Day, I am pro-chocolate.”

  “They sell chocolate at the movie theater. You can buy a three-pound candy bar and eat the entire thing, if you want.”

  That didn’t work for me. “I could, but it wouldn’t be fancy chocolate.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Giftable chocolate.”

  “Giftable?” he asked.

  “Chocolate in a pretty box,” I explained, “for a special occasion.” Which also meant they were for a special person.

  “So we could go to the show, buy chocolate, and I could stick a bow on it,” he said.

  “Not the same.”

  “Chocolate is chocolate.”

  “You could be stuck with a girlfriend who demanded flowers and jewelry for Valentine’s Day,” I said, “so you’re getting off easy.”

  West didn’t respond. He just turned on the radio. I decided not to push the issue because it wasn’t worth debating at the moment. Once we made it to school and parked, he gave me a strange look.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” He turned the car off and reached for his door handle.

  What could I have said that would have flipped the switch on his mood from happy to crabby? And that’s when it hit me. “Are you freaking out because I used the word girlfriend?”

  He wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  “Oh my God. Seriously?”

  “It’s stupid,” he said. “Just forget about it.”

  Like that was going to happen. “Me thinking of myself as your girlfriend is stupid, or are you referring to the fact that you’re freaking out?” I needed some clarification before I became crabby.