It was the day before our five-week deal was up. For the past four weeks and six days, Ben and I had been spending all of our time together, but neither one of us was allowed to mention words like boyfriend, girlfriend, or more specifically, I love you. I was very much looking forward to tomorrow. We had spent the day in bed, reading magazines (me) and newspapers (him), and he had been trying to convince me that it was a good idea to get a dog. This all started because of the pictures of dogs for adoption in the classifieds.
“Just look at this one. It’s blind in one eye!” Ben said as he shoved the newspaper in my face. His fingertips were covered in gray ink. All I could think was that he was getting the ink all over my white sheets.
“I see him!” I said back, putting down my magazine and turning toward Ben. “He’s very, very cute. How old is he?”
“He’s two! Just two years old and he needs a home, Elsie! We can be that home!”
I grabbed the newspaper from him. “We can’t be anything. We aren’t talking about anything that would progress our relationship in any way, shape, or form. Which a dog most certainly does.”
Ben grabbed the paper back. “Yes, but that ends tomorrow and this dog might get adopted today!”
“Well, if he gets adopted today then he’s okay, right? We don’t need to step in and help him,” I said, smiling at him, teasing him.
“Elsie.” Ben shook his head. His voice turned purposefully childish. “Before, when I said that I was worried that the dog wouldn’t find a good home, I wasn’t being entirely honest about how I felt about this dog.”
“You weren’t?” I said, falsely shocked.
“No, Elsie. I wasn’t. And I think you knew that.”
I shook my head. “I knew no such thing.”
“I want this dog, dammit! I don’t want anyone else to have it! We have to get it today!”
We had been joking up until then, but I was starting to feel that if I said I’d go get it that day, he’d put his clothes on and be in the car within minutes.
“We can’t get a dog!” I said, laughing. “Whose house would it even live at?”
“Here. It would live here and I would take care of it.”
“Here? At my house?”
“Well, I can’t keep him at my house! It’s a shithole!”
“So, really, you want me to get a dog and you want to play with it.”
“No, I will take care of the dog with you and it will be our dog.”
“You are cheating. This is . . . this is progressing the relationship. This is a huge . . . just a huge . . . I mean . . . ”
Ben started laughing. He could see that he was making me nervous. The conversation had started to teeter on moving-in territory, and I was way too eager to discuss the idea. So eager that it embarrassed me and I did everything I could to hide it.
“Fine,” he said, putting one arm around me and the other behind him on the pillow. “I won’t talk about this at all today. But if Buster is still around tomorrow, can we discuss it?”
“Buster? You want to name the dog Buster?”
“I didn’t name the dog! It says in the ad that his name is Buster. If it were up to me, we’d name the dog Sonic. Because that is an awesome name.”
“I’m not getting a dog and naming it Sonic.”
“Fine, how about Bandit?”
“Bandit?”
“Evel Knievel?”
“You would end up calling it Evel for short. That’s terrible.”
Ben was laughing at himself. “Please don’t tell me you’d want to name a dog Fluffy or Cookie.”
“If I was going to have a dog, I’d name it something based on what it looked like. You know? Really take into account the personality of the dog.”
“Has anyone else told you you’re the most boring woman on the planet?” Ben asked me, smiling.
“They have now,” I said. “What time is it? We have to meet Ana soon, I think.”
“It’s five forty-seven p.m.,” he said.