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Sometimes the things you want the most bring you hell.
But as soon as I pack a duffle bag and head for the F-train, my heart sings a happy song.
I’ve watched enough movies to know that this is what it feels like when you go to a summer camp as a kid, to a prom with your crush as a teen, or on a dream road trip with your best friends in college.
Growing up an orphan in a group home, I’ve never had those experiences. But heading to Dumbo feels like I’m setting on an adventure. And my partner? The Brooklyn “It Girl,” beautiful Lucy Moor.
I should pay more attention to the warnings in my head. Instead, I feel like I won the trip of a lifetime.
6
LU
A bark snapsmy head in the direction of a corner store two blocks from Goldsling Towers.
There’s that cute dog again. A pit bull, I think.
“Huh,” I muse.
The sight of him briefly brings back the memory of the night I was picked up by my new roommate.
In the daylight, the dog looks so lonely and unclean that my heart aches at the sight.
“Hey, cutie.” I smile, walking up to him, then sit on my haunches and stretch my hand out to pet him.
He sniffs my yellow boots, then my green pants, licking my knee, and then my hand.
“You like colors, huh? Can’t see them but can smell them,” I tease him.
He has one blue eye. The other one is gouged out but properly healed. It makes his furrowed brows look even more precious. There’s no collar on him.
I click my tongue to lure him into the store and ask Nick, the cashier, about him.
“I see him now and then.” He shrugs. “No, no owner. I should call the local Animal Care Center.”
“I’ll take him in for now and put an ad,” I announce hurriedly, already excited about the new project. “You are stuck with me, little muffin,” I coo to the dog.
When I walk out, he follows me like I’m a rescuer, hurrying on his short legs. I smile, crossing the street and talking to him so he doesn’t lag behind.
Light pink inside his ears. A brown mouth and nose. He is so stinking cute that I want—no,need—to paint him.
“He’s coming with me,” I inform the Goldsling Towers’ doorman and the concierge as the dog loyally follows me into the elevator.
“What shall I call you for now?” I ask him twenty minutes later as I give him a bath with my peach-scented shampoo.
He likes my touch and closes his one eye as I rub his ears.
“Pushkin. Yeah, that’s it!”
Not sure Russia’s most beloved poet with a less than desirable reputation would’ve appreciated a dog being called by his name. But now I have a cute reminder of my Eastern-European heritage in my house.
“Hi, Pushkin,” I whisper as I rub the foam into him, splashing him with warm water and running my hand through his slick coat. “Poor thing.” I study his gouged eye. “Who did this to you, you cute muffin?”
I’ll take care of him. How can I not when he looks so adorable with puffs of shampoo foam around his head and cutely sneezes like a baby?
Then his ears prick. A tiny growl escapes his throat as his head snaps toward the bathroom door.
“What is it, cutie?”
