by Matt Dunn
“Yeah. Well, not always always. I mean, I flirted with the idea of being a rock star, then an astronaut, but you’ve got to be able to have at least a bit of musical ability for the first one... Anyway. Yes. I loved the five years of training. And I love my job. Apart from...” He lowers his voice. “Occasionally you have to put someone’s beloved pet to sleep. And it breaks your heart.”
“I bet,” says Julie.
“But mostly the job’s all about helping people.”
“You mean ‘animals’?”
“That’s a bit harsh!”
“No, I meant...” Julie stops talking, then punches Tom lightly on the arm, and although punching is normally a sign of disliking someone, I’m pretty sure this means the exact opposite.
“So why did you leave it so long?” says Tom, after a brief but comfortable silence.
“Leave what so long?”
“Before you called and asked me out.”
“I didn’t ask you out.”
I peer up at Julie, a little confused, then remember she’s probably getting him back for a similar exchange when he stitched me up after the Rambo Incident. Tom evidently gets it too, because he shakes his head, then mimes shooting himself in the temple. “Okay. Got me. Maybe I’m a bit rusty. That’s what comes of having been single for a year, I guess.”
“A year?” Julie makes a sympathetic face. “Because of...?”
“Exactly because of.” Tom nods. “It hit me pretty hard, I’ll tell you.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” He shifts uncomfortably on the bench, then puffs air loudly out of his cheeks. “Though would you believe it was with my oldest friend? He was the best man at our wedding. Turns out my ex thought so too.” Tom sighs dramatically. “I miss him,” he says, and Julie laughs, then perhaps realizes she shouldn’t have.
“Sorry. Shit.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
Julie half moves as if to take his hand, then seems to have second thoughts at the last minute, and instead, just briefly rubs his forearm briefly. “And since then, there’s been no one...special?”
“Nope.” Tom’s said it definitely enough, but he shakes his head too, as if to leave Julie in no doubt. “When you choose someone to spend the rest of your life with, and it turns out they’re not prepared to be that person, it knocks your confidence.”
“Too scared, in case it goes wrong again?”
Tom laughs, though it’s a hollow one. “Something like that.”
“Get us, eh?” Julie stares off into the distance, then she forces a smile. “Want me to tell you more about what a bastard Luke was?”
“If you think it’ll make you feel better.”
“I was hoping it might make you feel better.” Julie pretends to be fascinated by a spot on the table. “About us.”
“Right.”
“Might it?”
Tom wipes a line of condensation from his glass. “A bit.”
Julie stares at him for a moment, then she picks up her wine and takes a sip, and he does the same with his beer, and I snort, but neither of them seem to hear as they’re too busy trying not to meet each other’s eyes. “Oh, Tom,” she says, eventually. “This has hardly turned out how I hoped it would. Trying to outdo each other with our tales of misery. I’m so sorry.”
“Here’s a thought,” says Tom, suddenly. “Maybe it’s not us. Maybe we’re actually both excellent at relationships, and it’s just that the people we were with weren’t.”
“Huh?”
“I just realized. I’ve been spending the last year or so blaming myself that my marriage didn’t work out, that it must have been my fault she left me. But maybe... Maybe it was her fault, because that’s just what she’s like? And Luke—we know he’s a dick in relationships, treats his wife terribly, and you’ve met her, and she seems...”
“Nice,” says Julie, begrudgingly.
“Exactly!” Tom grins. “Proof if ever there was proof that ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ is true! But, you know, the other way around.”
“You think?”
“It’s a possibility, at least. I mean, just look at us...” Tom’s phone pings, and with an apologetic look, he picks it up. He stares at the screen, gives his head a little shake as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing, then leaps up from the bench to punch the air, nearly toppling the table over in the process. “He’s done it!”
Tom’s sudden exclamation has made us both jump. Meanwhile, he’s staring at his phone as if he hasn’t the faintest idea what it is, and Julie’s doing something similar to him.
“Who’s done it?”
“Doug!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Doug.” Tom beams at me, like a proud owner at Crufts. “He’s only gone and made it.”
“Made what?”
“His photo. It’s... Well, it’s him!” Tom’s talking in the manner of an excited five-year-old struggling to get his words out in the right order. “On here!”
“Do you need me to slap you?” says Julie.
“No, I’m fine. Sorry. It’s just...” He’s grinning like a loon, while pointing frantically at his phone. “We Rate Dogs!” he says, finally.
“What?”
Tom takes a breath, does a strange “top to bottom” gesture up and down his body with his hands as if centering himself in a yoga class, then smiles. “Doug’s been rated,” he says, calmly. “On We Rate Dogs.”
Julie peers at me, as if expecting me to confirm the news. “You’re kidding?” she says, after the few seconds it evidently takes her to regain the power of speech.
“Nope,” says Tom, perhaps a little unnecessarily given his actions of the previous thirty seconds. “See for yourself.”
Julie glances nervously down at his phone, as if it’s radioactive. “I can’t look.”
“Why not?”
“What if...” She lowers her voice. “What if it’s not a very good score? I don’t want him to be scarred for life.”
“He’s a dog, Julie. He’s hardly going to understand what’s going on.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Remember they all get good scores. So it’s unlikely he’s about to be traumatized...”
“Okay, okay.” Tom sits back down, and Julie picks me up from the pavement, then plonks me down on the bench in between the two of them so I can see. “Show.”
“Ready?”
Without waiting for a reply, Tom taps his phone’s screen, and as my inverted ears party hat photo appears, Julie lets out a short scream of delight. “What does it say?”
Tom scrolls down with his index finger, then clears his throat. “This is Doug,” he reads. “Having a bit of an ear-mergency on his birthday. Would totally turn them outside in again for him.”
Julie breaks into a wide grin. “And the score?”
Tom doesn’t say anything. Instead, he just lifts his phone up and positions the screen a foot or so in front of Julie’s face. She narrows her eyes, scans the screen, then her jaw drops open in amazement. “Fourteen!” she exclaims.
She angles the screen so I can see it. I’m still a little embarrassed by the picture, and I’m determined not to get too excited, but it’s hard not to get carried away by the mood.
“Told you!” says Tom. “And look how many likes he’s got!”
“Does that say...?”
“Ninety-seven thousand!”
Julie’s jaw drops even further open, so I imagine “likes” must be the human equivalent of “licks” in terms of what they represent.
Then something strange and wonderful happens. Tom and Julie leap to their feet and begin dancing madly next to the table as if they’re in some sort of competition, high-fiving each other every few seconds. I leap off the bench to join them, thoug
h I’m only able to run around in excited circles, since my leash is fastened round the table leg. Trouble is, as a result, I get it tangled round Julie’s ankles, sending her toppling into Tom.
She throws out her hands to break her fall, but Tom catches her instead. He holds her tight, and their faces are inches from each other’s, and... I’ll leave you to work out the rest.
Though I’m happy to report, there’s no humming.
34
“Morning, Doug!”
Tom, grinning from ear-to-ear, is the sight that greets me when my scratching on the bottom of Julie’s bedroom door finally provokes a response the following morning. And while I’m not so happy when he scoops me up off the floor, plants a loud kiss on my forehead, then plonks me unceremoniously back down, I still mark yesterday down as what is generally referred to as a “result.”
I cheerfully tail Tom into the kitchen, where he begins searching the cupboards, eventually managing to find most of the things needed for breakfast. By the time a bleary-eyed Julie appears in the kitchen doorway, there’s French press coffee, toast and jam, cereal, and even some fruit laid out on the table, along with a bowl of my usual on the floor for me too.
Julie catches sight of the spread, opens her mouth as if to say something, then evidently thinks better of it. Instead, she makes her way over to the table, and lowers herself gingerly down into one of the chairs.
Tom wheels round from where he’s been inspecting the contents of the fridge. “Morning! I didn’t know what you liked. For breakfast. So I did a bit of everything.”
“So I see,” she says, curtly.
“You must be hungry. I know I am! Although we could go out if you’d pre...”
“Listen, Tom...”
At Julie’s interruption, Tom halts midsentence, then he folds his arms. “Nope!”
“Pardon?”
Tom unfolds his arms, but only so he can stick his fingers in his ears. “I won’t.”
“Won’t what?”
“Listen.”
“What?”
“Isn’t that supposed to be my line? Seeing as I’ve got, you know...” He removes his fingers from his ears, pulls out the chair next to her, sits down, and begins buttering a piece of toast. “But no, I’m not going to listen. Because you’re about to give me the talk, to tell me that last night, while it was fantastic, amazing, and probably the best sex you ever had, has to be a one-off. That you’re just not ready for a relationship yet, or how you won’t be good for me, and I don’t want to hear it, because you’re wrong. We’re great together. And I think if you give it a chance, give us a chance, I know you’ll see that too.”
He cuts the toast into triangles, places one into Julie’s open mouth as if he’s feeding a toddler, then he puts a finger underneath her jaw and gently closes it. “So eat your breakfast, drink some coffee, I’ll take Doug for a walk, and you think about what I’ve just said, and if by the time I’m back you still think you and me are a bad idea, well...” He grins. “I’ll just have to think of some other way to change your mind.”
With that he stands up, kisses Julie quickly on the top of her head, says “Come on, Doug,” collects my leash from where it’s hanging in the hall, and the two of us head out through the front door.
And as I take a last glance back toward the kitchen, I can’t help noticing that Julie’s so stunned, she hasn’t even begun chewing.
* * *
Ultimately, Tom doesn’t get the chance to change Julie’s mind. Though to be fair, he doesn’t get to find out if it needs changing or not. Julie’s dad is there when we get back from our walk, which makes for a rather awkward encounter, especially because Tom’s bought flowers from the shop on the corner, which he presents to Julie’s dad by mistake when he answers the door. Then Tom splutters something about having come to take me for an early walk, to which Julie’s dad smiles and says, “I wasn’t born yesterday, son.”
Julie’s dad asks Tom if he’ll stay for a cup of tea, and Tom suddenly remembers he has to get to the office, even though today is apparently something called a “Bank Holiday,” which means neither he nor Julie need to go to work. When Julie and I escort him along the hall, though she promises him she’ll call, their awkward goodbye isn’t exactly that of two people who are on their way to falling in love. Especially since he’s so flustered, he forgets to give Julie the flowers, and ends up taking them away with him.
And while that’s not ideal, there’s an upside to it too. He’ll have to bring them back.
35
“I slept with Tom.”
Priya’s eyes widen, and she holds up a hand to high-five Julie, a move I know Julie knows how to do because her dad’s taught me to do it and takes the greatest pleasure in showing Julie whenever he gets the chance. But for some reason, she seems to have forgotten how to respond.
“When?”
“Last night.”
“And?”
“And what?” says Julie, blushing.
“How? Well, not how, obviously, rather how did it happen?” Priya’s mouth falls open, and she does that little head shake thing to indicate amazement. “Was it amazing?”
Julie picks up her gym bag and stuffs a towel into it. At Priya’s behest, the two of them are off to the gym this evening for a Zumba class. I haven’t been invited because according to Julie it’s nothing like Barkrun, and instead involves dancing, which Julie’s dad informs me isn’t something I’d apparently be good at since I do, literally, have two left feet. Instead, Julie’s dad has come around to keep me company, and so he can watch “the match” on Julie’s TV subscription service.
“Yeah,” Julie says, quietly, and Priya narrows her eyes.
“I’m sorry. Am I missing something? You’ve just had...” She lowers her voice. “Hot S-E-X with a hot V-E-T, and yet you look like your world’s just fallen in.”
“Sorry, P.” Julie retrieves another towel from the shelf, then remembers she’s already got one, so she hurriedly puts it back. “It’s just... This morning, when I got up, he’d made breakfast, then he took Doug for a walk, and when I tried to tell him we should maybe take things slowly, he wouldn’t hear any of it. He’d even bought me flowers. Not that he had the chance to give me them.”
“The bastard!” Priya grins. “Great sex, breakfast, flowers... So, the anti-Luke, basically. You couldn’t get him to have a word with Sanj, could you? Give him a few pointers.”
“I know. But after everything with Luke...” Julie shakes her head. “What if he’s the one?”
“Luke?”
“Tom.”
“Sorry. Now I’m even more confused.”
“That makes two of us.” Julie sighs. “I’m clearly not over Luke. I’ve got all this...baggage. And now I meet the most perfect guy, and I’m scared to...” She peers into her bag again, double-checks her towel’s in there, then zips it up. “I’m bound to ruin it, P, even though I might not want to. Tom has trust issues because of what his ex did, and the last thing I want to do is hurt him, though I’m probably going to, simply because Luke hurt me. And I know that doesn’t sound fair, or make much sense, but...”
Julie swallows so hard you don’t have to have hearing as finely tuned as mine to hear it, so Priya reaches across and takes both of Julie’s hands in hers. “Jules,” she says, shaking her head slowly. “What I’m hearing is, Tom could be the best thing that’s ever happened to you, but you’re making it sound like it’s the worst. Remember, Luke’s the cheat, not you, and, in fact, the amount of loyalty you’ve shown by sticking with him all this time means, perhaps in a perverse way, Tom’s probably got nothing to worry about in terms of whether he can trust you. And I know this probably won’t come easy to you, given that joke of a—” she does the bunny ears thing “—‘relationship’ you had with Luke, but d’you know what? You need to just go with it. See that going out with someone in the normal way is
fun. Exciting. Enjoyable. Because it can be. Despite what you may think after Luke.”
“I just don’t know, P...”
“But none of us do. That’s the exciting part!” Priya thinks for a moment, then she catches my eye. “Remember that time Doug ate that dead lizard he found?”
“Don’t remind me. He was as sick as—well, as a dog—for the best part of two days.”
“And has he ever eaten another one?”
Julie shakes her head. “Nope. Once bitten, and all that. If you excuse the pun.”
“Well, there you go. Luke was—is—that dead lizard. And you’re smarter than Doug—no offense, fella.” She reaches down to scratch the top of my head. “So you’re not going to make the same mistake again. Are you?”
I’m good enough at English to know those last two words are normally a question, but Priya’s tone has made them sound like a warning.
“No, P. I’m not,” says Julie, though not as confidently as she might.
“Besides, I don’t see you taking Luke out on Tom, and for one obvious reason.”
“Which is?”
“Mainly because it sounds like Tom won’t let you!”
Priya grabs Julie by the shoulders and steers her out of the kitchen, so I tail the two of them along the hall, hoping Julie knows that’s true.
And that I won’t let her either.
* * *
It’s halftime in “the match,” and Julie’s dad is just pouring me a bowlful of the usual while pouring himself a third beer, which he accompanies with a wink in my direction and a “don’t tell Julie!” when the doorbell rings.
I sprint off down the hall, barking as loudly as I can, determined to ignore Julie’s dad’s “Quiet, Doug!” as the scent I can detect from outside makes me determined to stand my ground. Julie’s dad raises both eyebrows at me, then—perhaps as a consequence of my frenzied barking—opens the door carefully.
“Can I help you?”
