A New Leash on Life (20 page)

Inside, everything whispered “rich” and “comforting” with white and cream color schemes giving way to a deep combination of chocolate brown and gold and hints of Art Deco.

The main deck provided a saloon with a sociable seating space and a dining area with an oval table big enough for twelve. A walkway with a highly-polished teak floor and large windows led to a galley where a chef wearing a white apron and sporting a mustache that had to have been more than two years old prepared our dinner.

Moving forward from there, an impressive, light-filled passageway ran along the centerline to the galley and crew mess. It had a high-gloss varnished teak floor, white painted walls and tall ovoid windows on each side.

We retreated to the upper deck and sat on loungers. A man dressed in a white tuxedo carried a tray with champagne flutes. Chloe handed me a glass and saluted it with her own. “Cheers to you and the fabulous work you’re doing every day.”

Everyone clinked glasses and cheered.

We sipped lots of champagne as the yacht set off from the ramp and onlookers from the dock waved us off. Above us birds circled and beside us boats sailed. As I waved, I couldn’t help but think that the money invested in this night could’ve fed the shelter pets for a year. I mentioned this to Chloe mid-wave and she placed my heart at ease by telling me one of her clients owned it and wanted to treat all of us to a grand night to thank us for our efforts.

After learning this, I slipped into the night like I would a set of satin sheets.

We ate ceviche and figs wrapped in bacon, and then crab dip with asiago bread, rosemary-encrusted potatoes, and prime rib. We laughed as a team and dreamed up a world where all animals had a home and a lap to curl up on as we stared out at the setting sun over the harbor.

Before long, Chloe and I stood arm-to-arm, looking out over the rippling water, cocooned in a moment together. I didn’t care what the world dumped on me later, for that moment in time, I surrendered to the flutters, to the love swarming, undeterred by needless anxiety of the moments that would follow when she rejected my flirts and showered me in only friendship. Under the bright blanket of stars, under the spell of ever-flowing champagne, under the blessing of her adoring eyes, I resisted the fears of loss and hurt. I let go of everything but the moment, breathing it in, embracing it, savoring it.

We laughed, we tickled each other, we teased. I let my guard down, if for no other reason than I wanted her to reciprocate. I opened up to her about the past thirteen years of my life, and how I became the passionate vet. She genuinely listened to me hanging on my words like they were prisms dangling and flirting with her. She asked me about vet school and how I survived the grueling studies. She asked me about the first day I worked as a real vet at Pet World. She asked about my first surgery and about the first time I had ended a dog’s misery on earth. She wept along with me when I told her about the time I had to put my sweet cat, Honey Bear, to sleep, and how peaceful she looked when she drifted to a place far better than this one.

Somewhere in between talks of anatomy class, dog baths, nail trimming, and long dog walks, we bonded again, and my walls slowly started to crumble from her bright and sunny interest.

One moment I poured my soul to her, and the next we stood on the rails of the yacht, laughing and yelling out to the open Chesapeake Bay unaware of where everyone else had taken off to. The night turned cooler, the breeze blew stronger, and the scent of fish and sea air swam around us. New hope hung in the balance, sweet and fresh, untarnished.

I tapped her shoulder. “I’m glad you came back.”

She blushed. Chloe never blushed. She traced the back of her hand down my cheek. “Likewise.”

We stood arm-in-arm and enjoyed the last bit of the open bay before docking again, landing in the limo and eventually, reluctantly, calling it a night.

~ ~

When Chloe worked at the shelter, it ran smoother. The five of us handled the weekend tasks like a championship team, understanding each other’s strengths and working in harmony. Chloe faced each task with an expert eye, stepping up to even the most unpleasant ones with surety. The animals loved her. The clients loved her. The vendors loved her. During the week when she worked her other business affairs, the place crooked to the side like a hapless house knocked off its foundation. With the expansion complete, we were busier than ever. We had more floors to clean, more kennels to sanitize, more dogs to walk, more cats to groom, more birds to entertain, more ferrets and hamsters to feed and more paperwork to log.

We needed more staff.

The chaos overwhelmed me.

Then this one day, Melanie noticed just how overwhelmed I was. Trevor and I had been working hard at organizing a co-promotional event with a hair salon that just reopened since the storm months ago when she waltzed up front and stared at me with that motherly look, pointing her eyes at me in disapproval. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”

I waved her off and continued riffling through a layer of files on a mad search for the graphic designer I had hired a year ago to create some postcards for a photography fundraiser event.

“You need to get back into balance.” She pulled me towards the kennel area and back towards the shelter’s new reiki treatment room. The smell of lavender, bergamot, and citrus seeped from under its door tugging on my senses.

I stammered the whole way, pulling backwards like a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. “I don’t have time.”

She pulled me forward anyway. My feet skated across the shiny cement floor.

The dogs barked and howled as we passed by their rows. Melanie stopped in front of Max’s row. He stared at us, head hung low, expecting a treat no less. “Did Natalie tell you about how the owner came back for him?”

I snapped my hand back from her and readjusted my ponytail. “No. She didn’t. That owner was an idiot. I’m glad to see Max still here.”

“Me, too. Apparently the guy’s cat got run over by a car the other day, so now he thought it was okay to come back and get him.”

I stared into his warm, chocolate eyes. His short stub wagged as if powered by its own electrical circuit breaker. “How did Natalie tell him no?”

“Well, she called Phil for backup because the guy took off to the kennels after she told him about our abandonment and adoption policies.”

Not only did we need more handlers, but now we needed security, too? “Was Natalie okay?”

“You know Natalie. She chippered right up as soon as Phil escorted the guy out of the building with a stiff warning. She turned to me and asked if I wanted one of her brownie cupcakes.”

“I need to do some hiring,” I said. “I don’t have time for a treatment. I’ve got to get cracking on this to-do list. It’s out of control.” I rushed back to the front, and Melanie caught up. Just as I opened the door, she spun me around.

She swept the back of her hand across my burning forehead. “You’re hot, which means you’re fighting. The animals are agitated because you’re agitated.”

We stared each other down. I wanted to sit down on the cement, close my eyes and shut the chaos out for two minutes. She took my hands in her own and squeezed them. Dizzy and feverish, I surrendered to her healing touch.

“Fine. Make it better,” I whispered.

An easy grin stretched across her face. I followed her into the reiki room like an obedient dog.

We entered the new treatment room. It smelled like green freshness, with refreshing and transparent wafts of lotus and honeysuckle. She had painted the walls a serene whisper blue and hung pictures of beach scenes—Adirondack chairs with flip flops and oversized beach bags sunk in the sand alongside them, tall sea grass swaying in the breeze, the sun rising up over a tranquil morning, seagulls swooping in over a fresh low tide. Breathing in the vanilla lavender candle scent from a trio of them on a silver tray on the Formica countertop, I slipped into a relaxed state.

She dimmed the overheads and turned on the small lamp on the counter. She raised the table, typically reserved for large dogs. “Take off your shoes and lay down on your back.”

I obeyed my friend, tossing my sneakers to the side and sidestepping the buildup of tasks, of stressors, and of barking, agitated dogs. The table, not more than six inches off the ground at its lowest setting, cooled my hand. I sat on it and then spread out, exhaling a lifetime worth of kinks.

Melanie lit a stalk of sage and began her cleaning ritual, waving it around the room to rid it of my stress. She hummed, and circled the table, raising it up to her hip level. “Try and relax. Breathe in. Hold it. Now exhale, long, steady.”

I stretched out on the table, staring up at my holistic friend through narrowed eyes, trying hard not to giggle at the sight of her strange room-cleansing routine. “The cat and dogs really relax?”

She ignored my question and headed to the sink, dropping the burning sage stick in it. She turned on some gentle music of birds chirping, a harp, and a hooting owl. She rubbed her hands together, and then stood above me at my head. She rested her hands an inch or so above my forehead and circled them. She started at my head and carried her circles down to my feet with small, but dramatic patterns.

Within a minute, I began to relax, allowing the music and the sage and her energy to take me off to lala land where no dogs were barking their stresses, and tropical birds were not screaming out their frustrations. The crickets and the rain filtered out of the surround-sound speakers and serenaded me while heat from Melanie’s hands caused a trail of sensations through my limbs.

In my reverie, I floated above all of this and drifted along energy pockets that allowed only free-spirited indulgences, the kind rooted in deep-breathing and healthy mantras that always started with
I am
and ended in some happy, joyful emotion.

Melanie stopped above each chakra point, steadying her hands and energy for several minutes, drawing energy to me, allowing it to release the pressure, and rebalance my system. At one point, when she circled her energy in my stomach area, it warmed and tickled under her healing hands. I saw purple light through my closed eyes and let the moment carry me away. I floated on a magic carpet ride away from the chaos, away from the concerns, vacationing for several necessary minutes in euphoria. I cried. The emotional turmoil of which I couldn’t control was being brought out of me and to the surface where it dissipated and allowed me the sweet release I’d been begging to come and wash over me ever since the storm, the increase in orphaned pets, and Chloe’s announcement that she had a boyfriend and had gotten on with her life. Melanie traveled her hands above my body, pulling the negativity out of my cells, on past my vital organs, and down to my feet where she pulled them out of me, leaving room only for healing energy, the likes of which tingled and cleansed me like fresh mountain rain.

I escaped into the free moment.

Chapter Thirteen

If it weren’t for Chloe, I would’ve surely earned the title of most boring high school student. Before becoming close with her, my idea of a fun Friday night consisted of completing a five hundred piece puzzle by nine o’clock, with the help of a couple of root beers and a bag of Doritos. But, once Chloe started hanging out with me, the puzzles landed under my bed and sugar-free soda and carrot sticks replaced the junk food. I started to care less about how delicious good sweet and salty food tasted and more about how that indulgence would land directly on my hips.

Chloe was a chiseled beauty. Her cheekbones arched perfectly. Her collarbone was sculpted expertly. Her arms and legs were artistically molded to show off the delicate balance of muscle and curve. As we began to sleep side-by-side I became increasingly aware of my body and I wanted it to be perfect for her so when she would caress it as I did hers, she would melt and fall into a fit of lust equally as powerful as I did.

So, every chance I could, I dove into leg squats, sank into crunches, pressed into pushups until finally the day had arrived when she circled my belly with her tongue and she stopped to admire the muscles I worked so hard to create. I’d never felt so alive and sexy as I did in that wonderful moment when Chloe stared into my eyes and told me I was beautiful.

I wanted to be a fun person, too. So, when she challenged me to climb the water tower with her after she’d heard Molly Sanford and the rest of the popular clique were going to be climbing it that night as well, I agreed like I’d wanted to climb that thing since the day I could walk. Her eyes grew large and her smile radiated from a place deep inside her. Chloe Homestead smiled at me like I was the coolest girl on the planet. So, off we ventured up the side of the water tower next to the Ford dealership, spray cans in our back pockets and bandanas wrapped around our heads like biker chicks ready to rock and roll and get crazy. A bunch of us girls mounted the side of that thing looking like a dozen secret agents on the hunt for criminals. My heart knocked around in my scrawny chest, sputtering as if fueled by bad gasoline. My knees buckled, refusing to cooperate like they had every time I bent down to squat for my dear Chloe. I flexed like Gumby, all elastic and rubbery, unable to press into the ladder rungs with much certainty. My fingers trembled, my head pounded, my stomach rolled against this plight to enjoy myself on a wild Friday night.

I never wanted to solve a puzzle as badly as I did on those last ten or so ladder rungs to the metal landing at the center of the water tower. I sandwiched in between Becky, the hot red-headed co-captain of the cheerleader squad, and my dear Chloe. The other girls were already hooting and hollering like a group of derelicts from atop their perch, and I clung to life, praying to God for his mercy that I might actually survive this wild trek to the center of the water tower. Five steps or so to my destination, I started promising things like,
If my feet land safely on the landing, I will study extra hard for three weeks straight. If I end up coming out of this without any injury, I will mow my parents’ lawn five times without asking for extra allowance.
And,
if I get out of this stupid adventure alive, I will never embark on another careless outing again, regardless of how Chloe might interpret the refusal.