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“What about the fifth day?” The question came before I considered an even bigger and more obvious one: what would happen when I moved out in a couple of weeks? Kiefer’s apartment wasn’t a permanent solution, just a temporary shelter while I got my life back together.
“Eh, I can probably stay home all five days,” Mila said. “It’s not like they’re going to fire me. As long as I’m getting my work done, the worst they can do is give me a talking to. If I can show that I’m more productive at home, they might not even care.”
Bagel lunged towards the squirrel, but I caught her with the leash and directed her to keep walking.
“This is very kind of you,” I said, and that was the other issue. We were barely even friends. We’d just met and made out — though it wasn’t clear we’d be talking about that any time soon — there was no future for the two of us outside of the doctor/patient relationship we’d established and would keep going until, with any luck, Mila got pregnant and had her baby. “How much would you charge?”
She laughed. “Are you kidding? For me to get to spend the workday with Bagel? I should be paying you.”
I wasn’t comfortable with people doing me favors. Never had been. “I need to offer you something,” I said.
“I make a salary that’s comfortably six figures,” she told me. “I don’t need to bring in whatever you’d be giving me from a dogsitting gig job.”
“But still…”
“Okay,” she said. “How much do you think a dog sitter costs?”
I wasn’t sure. “$30 a day?”
“Great,” she said. “Donate $30 a day to the shelter you got Bagel from. Fair?”
She got me. “Yes,” I said. “That’s perfectly fair.”
She put out a hand to shake and right before I accepted it, I added, “And I cook you dinner.”
I expected her to pull away with the last minute addition, but instead she reached forward and grabbed my hand. “Deal.”
* * *
The problem with the plan, which we realized when we returned to the apartment, was that I hadn’t had a chance to go to the grocery. I also didn’t have any kitchenware. I was a more than competent cook and only a bad builder blames his tools, but I needed something to work with. We opted for a raincheck, and I ordered from a local Chinese restaurant Mila recommended instead.
They told us it’d arrive in 45 minutes to an hour, which meant we could just hang around and talk a little bit more, which was fine because I’d enjoyed talking to her. But history had a nasty habit of repeating itself. Bagel wanted to play, so we had to put Puppy Palace on again, which instantly put my sweet girl to sleep after her long, exhausting walk.
And, maybe if Mila’s lips hadn’t looked so irresistibly kissable, I could have resisted. Or if her eyes weren’t begging me to get closer to her. Or if she didn’t instinctively put her fingers on my bicep after laughing at a joke I said which was, in retrospect, not even especially funny.
But her lips did look irresistibly kissable, and her eyes were begging me to get closer to her, and she did touch me after that joke, which I couldn’t even remember even ten seconds after I’d said it. Still, it was a bad idea, and I stopped myself.
“Sorry,” I said, but I didn’t move my head back.
“Yeah,” she said.
“And I’m sorry about last night,” I said. “I didn’t know what had come over me. It was inappropriate.”
“Very inappropriate,” she said, keeping her eyes locked with mine.
“And unprofessional.”
“Extremely unprofessional.”
“And I can’t let that happen again.”
But curiosity got the better of me.
“In a different life,” I said, “if I was just your neighbor and not your doctor, would you have…?”
She smiled. “I think I probably would have.”
At a time when I felt lonely and worthless after leaving my controlling ex behind, that was the kind of boost to my ego that I needed.
