New Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

discernible
breed. A woman sat in a camp chair beside the enclosure. I couldn’t
resist joining the ring of people exclaiming over the pups and
leaning over the fence to pat them. Everything about them was
adorable, from the way the black-and-white one scratched his ear
with a hind paw to the bright eyes of the tan one, who kept a
distance from its siblings and seemed to study the people looking
at it. If I were in the market for a pet, the tan one would be the
one I’d choose.
    “Please! Daddy, please, ” a girl begged
her father.
    “Your mom wouldn’t like it.” The man smiled.
“Okay.”
    I frowned at the weekend dad treating the
commitment of getting a pet as a move in his divorce chess
match.
    I took one last look at the tan pup just as
it opened its mouth and yawned. A pink tongue unfurled over perfect
little white teeth. I reminded myself I was not in the
market for a dog, and then I asked the woman in the chair, “Is that
tan one a male or female?”
    Next thing I knew, I was buying a leash and
puppy chow at a store, with the puppy squirming against my
shoulder. Talk about impulse buying. I had no room to judge the bad
dad. But at least I was a single woman with no other obligations. I
wasn’t inflicting the dog on my significant other just to cause
trouble. Besides, the puppy was so damn cute I couldn’t resist her.
I named her Baby. Too cutesy, but all I could think of when I saw
her standing apart from her litter mates was, “Nobody puts Baby in
the corner.”
    She wasn’t leash trained yet, so when I tried
to lead her home, she balked and whined. I ended up having to carry
her all the way to my apartment. By the time we reached home, it
was almost dusk. I spread old newspapers on the kitchen floor and
blocked the doorway to keep Baby from wandering. Her cries followed
me into the bathroom, where I stripped and quickly showered. When I
returned to the kitchen in pajamas, Baby was howling, loud wails of
distress.
    “Shh.” I picked up her trembling body, and
she nearly wiggled out of her skin, she was so grateful. A pang of
new-mother love flooded me. “It’s okay. You’re going to have to get
used to being alone, you know. I have to work during the day.”
    If I was going to break in a new pet, I
should’ve gotten her on a Friday so we’d have a couple of days
together to acclimate. I hoped she wouldn’t howl all day while I
was at work.
    The pup had spilled her water and food, then
tracked through both of them so the kitchen floor was a mess. I
cleaned up, got her interested in eating her chow, then started
making my own dinner.
    Baby sat on my lap as I curled up on the
couch with a dish of vegetables and pasta. She nearly knocked the
bowl from my hands in her eagerness to see where the delicious
smells were coming from. I was a hair’s breadth away from feeding
her from my hand but forced myself to practice tough love and train
her not to beg.
    Cuddling with my new pet, I wondered what had
kept me from getting a dog before now. The adoration in those brown
eyes was a wonderful thing. A dog was a truer companion than most
men I’d dated. Baby was a good antidote to the pervasive sense of
loneliness I’d been feeling lately.
    But later, lying in bed with my new little
buddy curled beside me, my mind wandered back down other channels,
better-to-be-forgotten corridors polished by a dark-eyed janitor
with a quirky smile.

Chapter Five
    Working a second-shift job leaves a lot of
daylight hours free, assuming you don’t sleep half the day away.
Without much money to spend or friends to do things with, filling
those empty hours can be hard. I have a vague memory of being busy
all the time with school and sports, hanging out with friends,
partying. But after the accident, that old life and those friends
fell away like dead skin sloughing off. Many of the things I used
to do aren’t possible for me anymore. Simple functions I once did
with a fraction of my attention take much longer and