A New Leash on Life (10 page)

Fully accustomed to shelter life now, I lathered him up in the doggie sink. Earlier that day, he had skidded into some mud while chasing a tennis ball in the fenced yard. I created a sink full of bubbles as I scrubbed his belly, laying the suds on thickly. He stood proud, relaxed, happy as ever to be loved. He’d be a great friend, and I prayed he could prove it to someone worthy. I scrubbed his back, splashing suds all over the place and he shook them, soaking me in bubbles from my head down to my ankles.

Natalie bounded towards me from the reception doorway. “You’ve got a visitor, Olivia.”

“Is it the insurance adjuster?”

“She doesn’t look like an insurance adjuster.”

“She?” I backed away from Tucker, sudsy and wet. “Can you take over?”

A moment later, while tidying my ponytail and looking down at my sudsy apron, I opened the door to the waiting area. I looked up from my suds and locked eyes with Chloe. My breath stopped midway up my throat.

I’d played this scene a million times in my head since the last time we saw each other, but never did I imagine it with my face flushing and my heart racing and my throat getting dry and chalky all over again. Somehow, she still managed to tie my heart up into a knot and squeeze it just hard enough to take my breath away.

Chloe Homestead looked every bit as stunning as she did the last time I saw her. She shined with her black hair, slicked back into a tight, short ponytail, her lips glossed with the color of a red delicious apple, her hips curved in just the right places, accentuating her taut waist and her grapefruit-sized breasts. She smiled and her whole face lit up. I hated that she looked so hot.

She opened her arms and I just stood staring at her, shocked to be locking eyes with the girl I promised myself to never see again. “I’m sorry to just show up here like this.” She moved in closer, placing her warm hand on my arm. “I saw you on the news.”

The room hazed. My fingers and toes tingled. The protective barrier I’d built so carefully over the years melted within seconds, exposing me to familiar tummy rolls and flutters. Her eyes, soft and concerned, pulled me in. Her hand hot against my skin, dizzied me. “You didn’t have to come down here.”

“I want to help.”

The room narrowed and vanished into a steamy mist. Chloe always managed to sweep in and chase away reason. She could incapacitate me with a wink or a curve of her lip. “I don’t have time for this right now.”

She dropped her hand and fidgeted with her oversized Coach bag. “I just want to help.”

The dogs barked above our silence as I faced off to her. She cheated on me. She hurt me. She toyed with me. She broke our trust. “We’re fine. The shelter’s fine.” She smelled like a tender bouquet of lilies and marigolds. I inhaled deeply to steady the spinning and to calm my pounding heart.

She nodded and looked down at her sandals and red toenails before meeting my eyes again. “I saw the segment, and you’re not fine.” She inched in, sharing my air, my space.

I tore away from her gaze and cringed at my baggy cargo pants and muddy sneakers. Of all days for her to march in to my shelter acting like my savoir, toying with my emotions. I exhaled and reminded myself that I stood at a much better place now, a place where pretty girls with flippant ideals could no longer numb my brain in sensory overload and control my life, my destiny, my purpose.

I was strong. I was successful. I was not Olivia with the senseless need to toss aside my own goals to catch a ride on the air of lust and orgasms. Too many people and animals depended on me now. I couldn’t afford to play this schoolgirl game. I faced her, looking beyond the concern in her eyes by pretending she had just dumped her pet off to me. “Why are you here, really?”

She didn’t break the stare. “Because I can help you.”

I crossed my arms over my sudsy apron, clutching tight, angry at the wetness that pooled between my legs. I searched her face desperate to uncover that selfish girl who stomped on lives and expected people to fold up in her lap like obedient Pomeranians. She hid that girl behind a thick layer of peace.

I snapped away. I was stronger now. I didn’t need her. I’d built this shelter from scratch, and I would build it back up with bloody, bare hands if I had to. I raised my head up higher and peered down on her. She spoke to me without words, reassuring me she intended harmony.
Those eyes.
“Why do you want to help me?”

She turned and eyed the paw-printed cardboard donation box that Natalie had crafted. She walked over to it, traced her manicured fingers along the cute red bows and black paw pads. “Have coffee with me, and I’ll explain,” she said. Her finger, long and slender, circled the words ‘donations appreciated.’ My spine tingled imagining that same finger circling my nipple as it had so many times before.

The dogs continued their howling and barking in between my palpitations. Her bag slipped down her shoulder, teetering on the edge of her pretty blue scalloped t-shirt. She waltzed in there expecting me to drop everything, to ignore the dogs barking wildly, to forget the piles of paperwork on the desk. She powered the situation and expected me to follow like a lost soul. “No,” I said. “I really don’t have the time.”

Her eyes flew open wide. “You don’t have half an hour?” A chuckle rested on the edge of words.

I lost important ground. I gripped my conscience, but slid down a hill anyway, clinging to weeds and branches and roots to stabilize me. I wrapped my arms tighter around my chest. “I’m just busy.”

She pouted and my stomach flipped.

Control yourself.
“I appreciate that you want to help. But, we’re managing fine.”

Curling her lips up and dousing me in her sexy vibe, she tilted her head and shrugged. “Okay, I’m not going to beg you. If you want my help, you got it.” She reached into her bag and handed me a business card. “Call me anytime.”

I put the card in my apron pocket without glancing at it. I needed her to leave. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” I inched away from her and headed over to the kennel area door, glancing back at her. I caught her arched eye, judging me as if I was the bad person here. “You don’t get to do this,” I said, flinging open the door. “You don’t get to just barge in here with this notion that somehow you get to save the day after all of this time. Friends do that. Family sometimes, even. Not an ex.”

Her forehead creased. She backed away towards the front door. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to help.” Suddenly, she appeared naked and exposed, fumbling for cover against her vulnerable state. Regret steamed across her face, leaving in its wake a tuft of desperate anguish, the likes of which could only be erased with reprieve. If I let her walk out of the door with me being the bitch, then she’d win. The world would tilt and nothing would taste right or come easy. I wouldn’t let her unravel what I’d spent thirteen years building up. I needed to control this.

“I appreciate your offer. I’ll keep your number in case I need your help.”

“Okay, then.” She smiled and pulled in her fleshy bottom lip the way she used to do when I’d bring her breakfast in bed or massage her feet at the end of a tough cheerleader practice. “Please do.”

The dog barking heightened. “I’ve got to go.” I turned and closed her off, promising myself to never cave and call her. I would figure something less desperate out. I walked back to Natalie half mad and half elated that my stomach fluttered out of control.

~ ~

“Chloe popped into the shelter today,” I said to Josh.

He stopped pouring wine and angled towards me. “Why?”

“Said she saw me on the evening news and wanted to help.”

Just then, Thomas came running out from the hallway wearing superman pajamas and flinging an airplane. “Buddy, please go fly that down in your room for a few minutes.”

“But, it’s boring down there. I want to play in here.” He skirted around the couch and leaned onto his dad’s shoulders. Josh softened and squeezed his son’s scrawny fingers. “Bridget,” he yelled out. My sister-in-law emerged from the kitchen with a polka dotted apron and a mixing bowl in her hand. “Can Thomas help you?”

“Thomas, come in here and help me bake this cake,” she said, opening her free arm for him.

He launched himself over the couch and landed at his dad’s feet. “Can you help us, too?”

“I have to talk to your auntie right now.”

He looked up at me and shrugged. “You can help, too.”

A miniature Josh stared up at me, only a much sweeter version than his father at that age. “I’d love to. I just need a few minutes to talk with your dad.”

“Fine.” Thomas stomped off to greet his mother. “Can I lick the bowl?”

She wrapped him in her arm and carried him off into the kitchen. “Of course.”

Josh poured the half-filled glass of wine in his mouth and resumed pouring. “So she just popped into the shelter?”

“Pretty much.” I reached out for the wine. I skipped the glass and gulped it from the bottle. “That girl still gets my stomach all in jumbles.” I emptied a great deal of the wine down my throat.

He took the wine from me and followed suit. He exhaled after finishing the bottle, dropped down in his chair and said, “Don’t get involved.”

“I don’t plan on it.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not sure.” I sighed, shedding my weakness at my twin brother’s feet. “She said she can help me. I certainly could use some help. With the overflow of animals, I don’t have time to fundraise.” I exhaled and sank. “It’s hard, you know. On one hand I hate her for leaving me, for lying about why she left, for coming back to tell me years later she’s got a daughter. And on the other hand,” I stopped, reflected on the empty wine bottle.

“There is no other hand, Olivia. You don’t need that in your life right now.”

I depended on Josh to guide me. Ever since our parents died, he’d been my rock. I had spent many nights zonked out on his couch after watching movies with him and Bridget and little Thomas. They invited me over constantly and watched over me. They protected me from all those empty nights at first that used to crawl up and attack me, paralyzing me in a deep sadness that only a twin could understand. Being around him and his family brought me comfort and brought me back from the initial shock.

“My wise, twin brother. You’re right. I don’t have the time or the energy to deal with any woman right now.” I lounged back. “I wonder what she really wants?”

“To get in your pants.”

“She’s not like that.”

“Why do you care?” He punched my knee. “Hmm?”

It shouldn’t have mattered what she wanted. I didn’t have time for her to come in and start messing with my emotions. “I really don’t.”

“Bullshit.” He punched me harder, this time on my arm.

I did care. Since she came in to the shelter earlier that day, I couldn’t stop fantasizing about her. I saw her pretty face everywhere. Those hazelnut eyes pulled me into her, dancing on my heart, pounding their power into me, rendering me incapable of focusing on much of anything else. I could even smell her delicate fragrance still, lilies and marigolds rolled into one intoxicating scent purposed to mess with my head. Flashbacks of her caressing me in my apartment that day beckoned me to replay the waves of pleasure over and over again. Funny how those were the things I embraced, washing right over the cheating, the kid, and the abandonment.

I popped up. “I seriously don’t care.”

“Let it be. She’ll burn you all over again.”

Josh got me. He knew just what to say when someone pissed me off. He knew how to make me laugh after a bad day. He knew how to pick me up from the heartache I suffered when I realized again and again that my parents were dead and never coming back. He just got me.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“I’ll help you. I’ll ask around and see if anyone’s willing to help out.”

“By the way, that reporter was a total bitch.”

“She said you were cute.” He winked.

That did not excite me. “I’d rather roll around in a pool of snakes.”

He laughed. “She’s a bit over the top. You still have to call me if you get a litter of puppies, though.”

“I don’t think I trust her with puppies.” I plucked at the knitted wool blanket on his couch.

“You don’t trust anyone.”

“Do you blame me?”

He tossed a pillow at me. “Get over yourself.”

I whacked him with the pillow and he squirmed like a little girl, kicking his feet up in the air, screaming.

“You’re pathetic.” I threw the pillow down beside him.

“You won’t think so when I get you the help you need.”

He intended to provide hands-on support, but seldom followed through on things that required action. He got the procrastination gene. When Josh offered to help me put in the dog wash, I waited a month and figured it out myself through watching a YouTube video. When he promised to swing by the shelter and feed the dogs the night I attended Melanie’s sister’s wedding, I arrived to find he had forgotten to refill the water bowls. “Well, see what you can do.” I said this even though I knew no one had spare time to just come and help some girl fix a leaky roof when houses were flooded out and disintegrating before their eyes.

He rose. “We need more wine.” He headed for the wine holder on the dining room hutch. “Red or white?”

“Whatever’s strongest,” I said, wishing my brother could dole out some advice I could actually follow instead of numbing my mind with cheap wine.

~ ~

I decided after waking up on my brother’s couch with a hangover that I would avoid two things. One, I’d never drink wine straight from a bottle ever again. Well, at least not three bottles. Two, I would throw away Chloe’s business card. I needed to focus, and I couldn’t with her card calling out to me in the deep, lonely pockets of the night. I couldn’t become that helpless fool who fell for some pretty girl’s charm a third time around.

~ ~

The news report went viral a few days after Chloe showed up at the shelter, thanks to Josh. He called me all proud. “I worked my magic and got everyone I know to share it on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. You’re famous.”

“I’m shocked.”

“You shouldn’t be. The segment sold itself.”