“Come on,” I said quietly. A beat. Then another. Finally, he followed me outside.
We got in the car and I cranked the engine, then handed him his drink. I’d just shifted into reverse when he said, “Hey, I need a bathroom break. Long ride ahead and all.”
“We’re already back in the car,” I said.
“I’ll hurry. Promise.”
I sat back. Quickly, he unbuckled his seat belt and hopped out, walking around the building toward the sign that said RESTROOMS.
I was just reaching forward to change the radio station (now an addiction for both of us, clearly) when the passenger door suddenly opened again and he tumbled inside. “Go,” he said. He was holding something in his arms.
“What?”
“Go. Drive. Now!”
It was only after I shifted into reverse again, for some reason blindly following this directive, that I looked over and saw that what he was clutching was, in fact, the dog.
“Ambrose. You stole that man’s dog?”
“I prefer to look at it as a rescue,” he corrected me as it wriggled wildly in my side vision.
I looked over my shoulder. “Are you serious right now?”
“I couldn’t just leave him there,” he said, as if I was the one acting irrationally. “Can you go a little faster? Just until we’re clear of the parking lot.”
I glanced in the rearview, but of course no one was following us. Still, I hit the gas hard as I pulled out, spraying gravel. The dog started barking again.
“See how happy he is?” Ambrose asked, as we picked up speed. He rolled down his window and the dog immediately stuck his head out, the wind ruffling the bursts of hair over his eyes. I looked over at both of them, then in the rearview, where now all I could see was flowers, bobbing in the breeze. Only then did I realize minutes had passed since I’d been thinking about Ethan and having to tell Ambrose that story. This should have made me happy, I knew, or at least relieved. But instead I felt sad. Sometimes forgetting was just as bad as remembering.
“Is that a dog?”
I’d been worried about catching flack for the peonies. But as I lugged them in the office’s back door, my mom didn’t even notice.
“Yep,” I said, brushing past her to put the bucket down. “Do you want these all here together?”
“Sure,” she said, watching Ambrose as he tied an old scarf I’d found in my backseat around the dog’s neck. The dog, who had not calmed down one bit during the hour drive, kept trying to lick him.
I walked back to the van, pulling open the other door and reaching for a bucket of tall gladiolas in bright pinks and purples. A moment later, Ambrose was beside me, removing the Gerbera daisies. “I think he’s thirsty,” he said to me. “You think I can grab him some water?”
“My mom’s not exactly an animal person,” I advised him. We both looked over at her: she was studying the dog as it gnawed on the scarf. “Whatever you do, I’d proceed with caution.”
“Right. Thanks.”
We went inside, putting the buckets down. Glancing into the conference room, I saw William at the table, unloading mason jars from a cardboard box. He called out, “Did you bring lunch? I’m starving.”
“One sec,” I told him. “We’re just getting the flowers in.”
He glanced around me, out at the car and Ambrose. “Is that—”
“Yes,” my mother, still in the doorway, told him. “They brought a dog back, too. Which was not on the list.”
I grabbed a bottled water from a nearby counter, along with a plastic thermos cup that had long ago lost its bottom half. When I went back outside, Ambrose was at the van, pulling out the sunflowers. “Here,” I said, handing them both to him. “Just try to keep things low key.”
“I always do,” he said cheerfully. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding.
I unloaded the lunch stuff, then left William and Mom at the table with their salads and went back outside, where the dog was now lapping water out of the thermos top. When he saw me, he stopped, lifting his dripping snout, and started wagging his tail.
“He likes you,” Ambrose told me.
“I smell like lunch,” I replied, not quite convinced. Still, I bent down, scratching the brittle hairs behind the dog’s ears.
The truth was, I wasn’t much of an animal person. I remembered a time, back in first grade, when I’d wanted a cat or dog more than anything. But my mom worked so much, and she claimed her former life on the farm had been quite enough animal caretaking, thank you, so eventually I stopped asking. It wasn’t that I didn’t like pets; I just figured they were for other people, like nose piercings and gluten-free diets.
Ambrose, however, felt differently. It was obvious by the way he was watching the dog drink, as if he was both adorable and genius. “I didn’t hear him get called anything, did you? Guess that means we can name him whatever we want.”
We? I thought. Out loud I said, “What’s Bee going to say about this?”
“Oh, she’ll be fine. She loves animals.” The dog finished off the water, then sat back and shook its jowls, sending droplets flying. “And anyway, she won’t have to deal with him. He’ll go everywhere with me.”
“On foot,” I said, clarifying. He nodded. “What’s going to happen when you crash at people’s houses, like last night?”
“This is a small dog,” he replied. “Compact. Won’t be a problem.”
“You’ll have to feed it. And take it to the vet, make sure it’s healthy. And what about in the fall, when you go back to school?”
He looked at me then. “You think way ahead, don’t you?”
“No,” I said, although I couldn’t see why this was a bad thing. “I just think. I don’t just take a dog and deal with the consequences later.”
“Right now, there aren’t consequences, though,” he replied. “There’s just a happy dog. What do you think about the name Jerry?”
The dog leaned down and began licking the empty bowl hard enough to make it scrape against the pavement.
“Why didn’t you ask me about what Mrs. Kirby said?”
It was like I’d both planned to say this, and totally had not. My discomfort earlier, when this discussion had seemed inevitable, had passed with all the excitement of the abduction and ensuing ride home. Now I didn’t feel like I just wanted to get it over with: instead, I was genuinely curious. Ambrose clearly had no problems traversing or outright bursting over any other boundaries in conversation or otherwise. So why not this one?
“You mean about your boyfriend?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Did you want me to ask?”
“No,” I said. “I never do. I hate talking about it. But that’s never stopped you before.”
“Are we already at a point where our relationship is in nevers?” he asked. “That was fast.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do.” He stood, the dog watching him, tail still wagging. “Look, Louna. I might be a dog stealer, as far as you’re concerned, but I am able to follow the basic rules of civility. If I was going to talk about a bad breakup, I’d want to be the one to bring it up. You did not.”