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I shake my head. “That’s where you’re wrong. Beauty is in the chaos—in those little imperfect moments where we just are.”
She purses her lips, fighting laughter, but after a moment, she can’t hold it back anymore. “You sound like an infomercial or maybe like a poet. You really break the stereotype for jocks, and I kind of dig it.” She winks at me.
I chuckle. “You dig it, huh?” I smile in thanks at the waitress when she sets our glasses in front of us. I’m more than grateful to have something to drink.
“Yeah, I do. Even if you are a pretty big dork at the end of the day.” She shrugs, taking a sip of her water.
“A dork? What makes you say that?”
She gives me a look that says I’ve clearly lost my mind. “You read The Great Gatsby for fun the other day and before that you were reading Hamlet. You’re a dork.”
“Well, you’ve got me there,” I agree.
She smiles and her laughter fills the air. Making her smile and laugh is one of my favorite things, and I’ll never grow tired of it.
Our food is brought out and we grow quiet, too hungry to talk. I stuff my face with eggs and bacon, barely pausing to breathe. Apparently, sleeping in the vet’s office makes you ravenous.
We finish eating, pay for our meal, and head down the road to the nearest pet store to get everything we need.
I push the cart and Thea strolls along beside me. “What about this?” She picks up some sort of purple rope toy.
“Put it in the cart.”
She looks at me, fighting laughter, and twists the rope around her fingers. “You’ve said that about the last five toys I’ve asked you about.”
I shrug. “I don’t know what Prue will like so we have to get a bit of everything.”
“All right.” She drops the rope in the cart. It joins the pile of balls, a squeaky bone, some sort of Frisbee thing, and a Chewbacca chew toy. She picks up a few more random toys and adds them in before we start down the aisle with leashes and collars.
I pale. “Why are there so many choices?” I pick up the one nearest me, a plain black collar, and ask, “This works, right?”
She snatches the collar from my hands and puts it back on the display. “That’s so boring, Xander. You can do better than that. She’s a girl. Pick something girly.”
“You pick then.” I sweep my hand to encompass the aisle.
She shakes her head. “She’s your dog. You should choose.”
“She’s our dog,” I remind her.
She laughs. “Then we’ll pick together.”
She moves in front of me and scans the aisle before picking three collars. “I like these, which is your favorite?”
I appraise them. One is pink with a flower thing on it, another is purple polka dots, and the last one has daisies on it. I point to the last. “That one seems more like Prue.”
Thea nods. “That was my favorite too.” She puts the others back and grabs the matching leash, dropping both items in our quickly filling cart.
We move to the dog food aisle, and end up asking for help since I have no fucking idea what kind of dog food to get, and then we head to the checkout where we also pay for a nametag.
Once we have that, we load everything in the truck. I know we should head home, but instead, I swing back by the vet. I feel bad for poor Prue there all by herself. It would have to be scary.
“They’re going to think you’re a psycho,” Thea tells me when I park in the lot.
I shrug. “I don’t care. Prue’s more important than what people think of me. Besides, I want her to have one of her new toys.”
I hop out of the truck and open the back door, rummaging thr
ough the bags to find what I want. I pull out the little brown bear toy and head inside with it.
