Next I got down on the floor, crisscrossed my legs, cradled Peanut in my lap, and started feeding long, floppy pinches of pad Thai noodles to him by hand.
I thought Dr. Addison would give us a minute then, maybe go back to his office and do—I don’t know … doctorly things? What did medical professionals do when no one was looking? Examine charts? Study textbooks? Wear glasses and look important?
Of course, Dr. Addison didn’t wear glasses.
But I’m sure he wouldn’t let that hold him back.
Anyway, he didn’t go off to be doctorly. He lingered there. Watching Peanut devour that entire Styrofoam box of pad Thai, slurp by slurp, like a champion.
“He really does like pad Thai.”
“I’m telling you. He’s a very worldly dog. Gastronomically.”
“I believe you.”
I wanted to think I could take the chowing-down as encouragement that Peanut must be doing better. But I couldn’t discount the appetite stimulant.
“This is a good sign, right?” I asked as Peanut licked the empty container.
“It’s not a bad sign,” Dr. Addison said.
“I’m so glad he’s doing better.”
A little pause and then Dr. Addison said, “Are you doing better?”
I looked up. Bless that man—he’d just given me the perfect opportunity to say it: “I’m great,” I said, with all the convincing, perky, don’t-even-know-why-you’re-asking energy I could muster. Mentally I added: I am not falling apart. I am not standing slack-jawed and helpless at the sight of my life collapsing like a sheet of the polar ice caps. I am absolutely, undeniably, categorically okay.
“Good,” Dr. Addison said, seeming unconvinced. Then he added, “Great.”
Fine. All right. Maybe my two-word statement wouldn’t be enough. “We’re just … very close,” I added then. I mean, even perfectly fine people could get weepy if their dogs were on the brink of death! That wasn’t evidence of emotional pathology, was it?
“You and Peanut?” Dr. Addison asked.
I nodded. “Practically litter mates. My mom gave him to me when I was a kid.” Were you still a kid at fourteen? Close enough.
Dr. Addison nodded. “They really curl up in your heart, don’t they?”
That seemed like a very true way of putting it.
“Do you have any pets?” I asked then.
Dr. Addison shifted. “I’m between pets at the moment.”
“I guess you see enough animals at work.”
“That’s one way to spin it.”
There was a story there, for sure.
But it was getting late. “I’m sure you need to get home,” I said.
He thought about it. “I’m off to check on another patient after this, anyway. A Great Dane. She’s too sick to stay overnight here unsupervised, so she’s at a twenty-four-hour clinic.”
“I should let you get to that,” I said, giving Peanut one more squeeze.
Dr. Addison watched me clean up and then put my nose right in front of Peanut’s for one last nourishing drink of the sight of his little fuzzy face. “You be good for these guys, got it?” I said to Peanut. “If they tell you to get well, you get well.”
Peanut licked me on the cheek in reply with his flappy pink tongue.
I put him back in the kennel, tucked him in with his squeaky squirrel, fought back any and all not-okay feelings, and latched the latch. I was fine. I was great. I was not a person who could be toppled by a run-of-the-mill goodbye.
When I turned around, Dr. Addison was waiting to walk me back to the front.
“Thanks again so much,” I said, smiling like a just-fine person.
“I have a question for you,” Dr. Addison said once we were outside.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He finished turning the lock and turned to face me. “Would you like to go on a date with me sometime?”
Ten
WELL, THAT WAS sudden.
In the way that something that should’ve already happened can also be sudden.
I mean, sure—I’d already decided that we were fated to wind up together. But even for fate, this was pretty fast.
“Can you date patients?” I asked, in lieu of shouting Yes! Let’s get married!
“I mean, I can’t date Peanut,” he said. “But you’re not a patient.”
Ah. “Good point.”
“What do you think?” he asked.
What did I think? Hello! I was ready to plan the honeymoon.
That said … I hesitated.
It was one thing to charge boldly forth toward my happily ever after with my dashing veterinarian in theory. It was a whole other thing to make an attempt like that in reality.
In my current reality, especially.
I mean, come on. I was a mess. I had surgical scars in my hair. I was bursting into tears at random intervals for no reason. The whole world was a faceless blur. And every single thing that mattered in my life was disintegrating around me. Would this storybook perfect man want to date—or be anywhere near—a total disaster like that?
Definitely not.
I mean, I didn’t even want to hang out with me these days.
So how on earth could I expect this dreamy, perfect, animal-rescuing man to be any different? Was I, in this moment, in any way someone who would be attractive or appealing or fun to date?
No. No, this would never work.
Could I have just been honest with him? Could I have just told him what was going on? He was a scientist, after all. He might have found it medically fascinating. I’m sure he saw weird, crazy stuff all the time in his line of work.
But … he didn’t date that weird, crazy stuff.
Dr. Addison shifted his weight.
My answer was taking too long.
So I gave the best reply I could think of: “I would love to go on a date with you,” I told him. And then I added, “In three weeks.”
I felt his frown. “In three weeks?”
I nodded like this was a totally reasonable request. “I am a portrait artist,” I told him, cherry-picking selective facts about my life to not blow my cover. “And I’m a top-ten finalist in a hugely prestigious juried portrait show three weeks from now—and so I’m really directing all my time and energy into completing my submission.”
How did that sound?
Dr. Addison gave me my answer. “You’re a finalist in a big competition?”
I nodded, like, Yep. “Top ten out of two thousand entries.”
“That means you beat out one thousand nine hundred and ninety other people.”
Told ya he was perfect. “That’s exactly what my best friend said.”
“Nice,” he said, and I could feel him admiring me.
“But now I have to win,” I said. “So I just can’t have any distractions right now.”
Dr. Addison nodded like that made perfect, logical sense.
I thought I was in the clear.
But then he said, “Of course if we just happened to run into each other at the same time in a coffee shop, that wouldn’t be a date. That would just be both of us self-caffeinating in close proximity.”
Ah. He wasn’t going to make this easy.
When I hesitated, he added, “Only if you want to, of course.”
Was it a test? To gauge if I wanted to?
I wasn’t waiting to find out. “I want to,” I said.
I could feel a smile take over his face.
So I added, “You have to caffeinate, right?”
And there it was. If I had to go on a coffee date with the world’s dreamiest veterinarian, then I guess I just had to.
* * *