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“I will be upstairs taking a bath,” I announced. My clothes were covered with white, crusty dog slobber. I turned and made my way through the living room with Frisky following behind me.
“Adrian, call him. Call the dog. Please. He’s following me.” I thought I heard the mailman on the front porch and I froze.
“Come on in here,” he called from the kitchen. “Both of you.”
r /> I listened as the mailman retreated down the stairs and called out a greeting to one of our neighbors. So far Frisky, who didn’t even know enough to bark at the mailman, was proving himself to be a useless addition to our lives. I would have pointed this out to Adrian, but I wanted the chance to peek at the mail without him knowing it had arrived, so I kept silent and went back into the kitchen with Frisky following closely behind me.
“Would you look at this dog. There are splashes of slobber everywhere he goes.” I pointed to the slippery, smeared splotches all over our floor.
“You’re not even giving him a chance. You and Frisky are going to have to learn to get along.”
“Adrian…” I began, not in any mood for one of his reasonable parent-child lectures. They were a part of our relationship I had never much considered, but now that I was being lumped in the child category with an animal, something was registering as wrong with it.
“I will admit, we might need to get a dog trainer,” he said. “But until Frisky gets settled, we need to do everything we can to help him adjust. Right?” He smiled at me, placing the stack of dishtowels in their drawer.
Right?
I shrugged. I didn’t know anymore. I didn’t know anything.
“Right?” He closed the drawer and raised an eyebrow at me. The juxtaposition of hot male artist and animal loving household chore doer was every woman’s pornographic fantasy. And here he was, all mine.
Was he my pornographic fantasy? Well no. Not usually. I could not remember the last time I had thought about him when I didn’t have to.
But that was normal. For married people. Right?
Right?
I’m sure he did not think about me either. I mean, what would be the point? I’m right here in front of him. It’s like living in Paris and thinking, “I want to go to Paris.” It wouldn’t make sense.
Just because you don’t fantasize about visiting Paris, it doesn’t mean you don’t love Paris. Or that you would want to move away from Paris. It’s just, if you live in Paris, you might as well fantasize about visiting Istanbul.
“So do you think you could try to get along with our dog?”
I nodded.
“Good,” he said. He sprayed some cleaner on a rag and wiped up some crumbs by the toaster.
Frisky whined. “Entertain me,” he was saying, having fully adjusted to his spoiled life when four hours ago he’d been living in a cement cell.
“So anyway, I really am going to take a bath now,” I said, sighing and walking away. Frisky stayed put and I decided I would not detour out to see what was in the mailbox. I thought of my mother’s old saying “If you go looking for trouble you will always find it.” I went straight up the stairs and didn’t look back.
So what was I to do? Adrian was so adorable, so tidy. Well sometimes. Other times he was a slob. I liked both sides of him. I ran my bath water, again wishing for a friend. A psychic, perhaps? That seemed like a good idea, actually. I added more hot water, mulling it over.
“Honey, mind if I come in?” asked Adrian, opening the door and coming in with a stack of towels.
“Not at all,” I answered since he was already in and organizing them on their shelf.
“You like these green ones to be over here, right?”
“Sure. That looks good. You’re doing so many chores today. I love it! What’s gotten into you?”
“I’m feeling really good about the fence, the dog, us.” He bent over the bathtub and kissed my forehead. “Love you, Sweetie.”
“I love you too,” I said back. I had noticed lately I only said it in response to him saying it first. He smiled as he was leaving and closed the door behind him with a comforting click, assuring Frisky would not be coming in. I settled back, sinking down into the hot water.
I’d apologized for overreacting about the whole naked picture thing. I came to realize that it was actually very romantic. Like he said, I should have just been flattered.
Any woman would want Adrian, but he was mine.
