Page 14 of I Will Always Love You (Maybe)

“She’s going to be okay. This is totally normal, but I know it can be scary as hell when it happens.” At the outdoor mat, I stomp the snow off my tennis shoes and step into the house, and whoa. A gush of something hearty and savory, with onions and beef, fills the air. My stomach immediately growls, and I definitely regret not finishing my leftover Thai takeout for lunch.

Colby takes off her jacket, and oh… okay. Swapping out her oversized hooded sweatshirt for a snug, white Henley makes my mouth water more than it should. Rounded shoulders, full breasts, taut stomach. Dear God. I had no idea all that was under there.

Cool, cool. Focus on the dog.

“Oh, sweet girl, what do we have going on here?” I say as I peer down and look at Kona’s inflamed, red skin. Colby’s crouching next to me, close, enough where I get a small whiff of that soft lavender scent. I shift away. “Can you grab Kona a high-value snack? Something that we can give her to take this antibiotic. And a few towels.”

“Yes. Be right back.” Colby hurries out of the room, thankfully, because I need to pull it together. I’m around her for exactly two minutes and getting some thoughts, and I should not be having thoughts.

I grab a few things out of my bag and line them up on the cedar coffee table, when Colby returns with several towels and a cheese stick. As I work on laying out the items, Colby stuffs the pill in the cheese, then gives it to Kona.

“This really isn’t too bad,” I say, looking at the area surrounding Kona’s stitches. “But I’m going to clean it a bit. Just so you know, you really shouldn’t do this on your own. Some people do hydrogen peroxide, soap, all sorts of things, and it makes it so much worse. The last thing we want is to make her infection worse by doing some sort of funky home remedy.” I dig out the sterile saline solution, gauze, and tug on latex gloves. “If you can just comfort her and keep her steady, we should be able to do this pretty quickly.”

Colby removes Kona’s cone and rests the dog’s head in her lap. She strokes her head and the top of her ears. We work together silently, with the exception of a small tune that Colby’s humming to Kona. I’m not even sure Colby knows she’s humming, but as I peek at her from my peripherals, a warmth fills me. The love inside this woman is so obvious, so massive, that my heart swells.

After I flush the wound, I soak the gauze in the sterile solution, and with the most tender touch I can manage, clean the infected area. Kona is an absolute champ and barely moves during the procedure. Once finished, Colby reattaches the cone while I clean up all the supplies.

At the farmhouse-style deep kitchen sink, I peek out the window at the woods in the backyard, at least as far as I can see, as I wash my hands. Endless amounts of trees span through the dark and falling snow. It’s so pristine, the outside holding a sense of calm that I really don’t see anywhere else. I stare for a bit longer when Colby moves into the kitchen, hands me a towel, and digs out a wooden spoon from the drawer.

“I’m starting to wonder if there is another phrase that I can use besides thank you,” she says as she lifts the lid to a large pot on the stove and leans in to smell the hearty steam. “I seriously owe you, and I don’t know how to repay you. Do you accept Venmo? Flowers? My left kidney if you may ever need it?”

I rub the towel in my hands, and grin. I get it, I really do. If someone were to do these things for me, I’d probably feel the same. And it’s impossible to explain in enough depth where the person will actually grasp it, that doing things like this—helping, being there, supporting—makes me feel good. It lifts my spirit in a way that it needs to be lifted, so much so that I often wonder if helping others is more of a selfish act than selfless.

“Seriously, Colby. It’s no problem at all,” I say as Colby tugs up her sleeves and stirs the stew. God, those forearms. Strong, tight, rigid muscles… Seriously, so much for my pact to not allow any indecent thoughts to ransack my brain. “I should probably get going.” I don’t want to go.

A slight frown appears as she taps the spoon against the pot and puts the lid back on. “Do you have somewhere to be tonight? Some extreme sport class?”

“Actually, I was going to try barre tonight, but I’m not going to make it in time.”

Colby’s face falls. “I’m so sorry.”

Oh, dang. I didn’t mean to make her feel bad. “Don’t be sorry,” I say as I reach out and touch her forearm, and dammit. I shouldn’t have done that. Her skin is warm, and smooth, and I immediately pull back. “I’m not sorry at all. It’s nice to see you, and I love seeing Kona.” I toss the paper towel in the trash under the sink and lean against the butcher’s block countertop. “Ever since I was little, I’ve always wanted a golden. They’re my favorite.”

“So why don’t you have one?” Colby asks as she reaches for two water bottles in the fridge and hands me one.

Such an innocent question that would take me hours to answer and a solid few months in therapy to really dive into the deeper reasons. I work with animals in my everyday life. I love animals, all of them, and taking care of them daily brings me more joy than I could ever explain. But I don’t feel responsible, or settled enough, to be the type of owner a dog would need. “I’m gone too much during the day and wouldn’t want to leave them.”

This is not a lie, obviously. But it’s not the entire truth, either.

“That absolutely makes sense. The few times when I leave Kona, I hate it,” Colby says, cracking the top open on the water bottle. “Codependency for the win.”

I sip back some water and wipe a few droplets from my lip. “When I was younger, we had a dog, Lucky Charms. He was this feisty but sweet border collie mix, and God, I loved him so much.”

“Was he with your family for a long time?” she asks.

It’s a fair question. Yes, and no, is the best answer. I think I was around eight or nine when we got him. I remember begging my dad for months that I wanted a dog, and one day he picked me up early from school and took me to the shelter. I’ll never forget strolling by the cages and pleading with my dad that we should bring all of them home. He’d smiled at me, in his kind fatherly way that I always loved, and said we couldn’t bring them all home. But we could bring one. So I picked the fluffiest dog out and my dad let me name him. And it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time to name him after my favorite cereal.

That memory is stamped in my brain forever. A core memory that hurts as much as it brings a sliver of joy. Just like I’ll never forget strolling the aisles with my dad, I’ll also never forget the look my mom gave us when we came home from the shelter, the arguing that broke out between my mom and dad, the hushed whispers and slammed doors. I was too little to understand why Mom wasn’t happy we “surprised” her by bringing home a dog. I didn’t get the extra burden it put on her and my dad, the other mouth to feed, the other entity that had to be cared for. And three years later, when my dad left all of us kids but took the dog with him, my heart split into pieces.

But Colby is probably not wanting to know this whole sob story, or the way that I blamed myself, thinking my dad left because I made him get me a dog, so I shrug. “Lucky Charms was with us for… a few years.”

A long silence follows, and she doesn’t ask any more questions. She lifts herself from leaning against the counter and stirs the pot one more time. “Do you have dinner plans tonight? If not, I’d love for you to stay. I made stew.”

My mouth is already watering. “Like real stew? Not the stuff from the can?”

A quick chortle leaves her mouth. “Definitely not from the can.”

I want to stay so bad, which means that I should be responsible, politely decline, and leave. “I’d love to,” I say and hand her a couple of colorful bowls resting on the floating shelf next to the sink. “I don’t even remember the last time I’ve had a home-cooked meal.”