Hey, can we talk? I think I need to say sorry, and I don’t wanna do it over text message.
Eliza.
Tessa stared at the message almost as long as she had over quitting her job, not sure what she was supposed to do with it.
Eventually, slowly, she replied. Sure.
The answer came almost immediately, as if Eliza had been watching her phone since she sent the message an hour ago. I can swing by and pick you up for your interview. Two?
Tessa blinked, for a moment startled by her knowing about that, then remembering that she probably told her — and even if she hadn’t, Eliza had access to Dr. Dale’s schedule and probably already knew. That’d be great, thanks.
I’ll see you at two.
Eliza was nothing if not punctual — the wheels of her car touched Tessa’s driveway as the clock on her oven snapped from 1:59 to 2:00. Tessa hurried out to the car so she didn’t have a chance to ask to come in.
“Hey,” she said as Tessa crawled into the passenger seat.
“Hey.”
They were quiet for a moment, not moving from the driveway. They had a few extra minutes anyway.
Eliza hesitated, swallowed hard, didn’t meet Tessa’s eyes. “So … about Saturday.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m…” She licked her lips. “Not always.”
Tessa didn’t snort or smile, though the urge was halfway there, only nodded slowly. “It happens.”
“But I shouldn’t’ve … I mean, you didn’t deserve anything that I said to you. I was … angry. About other things. And I took it out on you. And that wasn’t right.”
“Are you okay now?”
“I will be.”
“Then that’s all that really matters.”
She looked at Tessa, really looked, in a way that she hadn’t done before, like she was suddenly gaining some sort of insight that she didn’t expect to have. “Why’re you so okay with this?”
Tessa shrugged. “Life’s too short to hold grudges over stupid things. You’re sorry. That’s all I need to hear.”
“I’m sorry.”
She smiled. “I know. It’s okay.”
“But, like … it’s not. It’s bad. I didn’t mean to say we weren’t friends. It’s bad that I did.”
“It’s fine. We all say stupid things when we’re upset. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person — it means you’re a human.”
She pulled out of the driveway and got them onto the road before she answered again. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“So, we’re good?”
Tessa smiled again, a bit more sincerely this time. “We’re good.”
“And we are friends. I can’t believe I ever said otherwise.”
“I know. I mean, I’d been kind of wondering that, too. When does an acquaintance become an actual friend?”
Eliza smiled. She had a nice smile, bright and pleasant, the sort that wrinkled her nose and scrunched up her eyes. “I think when they buy you pizza.”
“Oh? That soon?”
“Well, what’s your metric then?”
It was probably a decent question, and one that Tessa wasn’t entirely sure of the answer to. She shrugged. “I guess when they have the ‘are we friends’ conversation.”
“That settles it then. Because that’s exactly what we’re doing right now.”
“True.”
“So. Friends.”
Tessa nodded. “I like that.”
Eliza pulled them into the parking lot outside of Pretty Paws, nabbed a space, and turned off the car. Then, slowly, she turned to Tessa and smiled. “For what it’s worth, I like that, too.”
“It’s all the way worth,” Tessa assured her.
She nodded. “Friends.” Another smile, shier than her usual, crept across her face. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone who freely called me a friend.”
“You can’t say that anymore.”
Her grin turned teasing. “How will I cope?”
Tessa responded in kind. “You’ll have to manage.”
They both laughed. Then Eliza got out of the car and waved one hand toward the Pretty Paws main entrance. “Ready?”
Tessa left the car, too. She was dressed nicely — not in a pencil skirt and heels, though, since Dr. Dale had mentioned a “working” interview, but khakis and the black leather clogs she hadn’t worn since her waitressing days but for some reason toted with her across three different moves anyway.
Still, the change from her usual jeans or fleecy pajamas made her painfully aware of how much the next couple of minutes or hours mattered.
It was the final chance at the final hurdle. If she fell this time, there was no more getting up.
She’d quit her job this morning. If this didn’t work out, Tessa no longer had anything else to fall back on.
She pulled in a steadying breath and, ignoring the way her hands shook, opened the door into Pretty Paws.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Leslie greeted them at the desk with a smile, too sympathetic for Tessa’s liking. “Tessa. How are you?”
She refused to stutter, and she made a point of making sure her voice didn’t pitch up at the ends. “I’m okay. A bit nervous.”
“Nothing to be nervous about. There’s no one going to bite you here.”
Except the dogs, perhaps.
Tessa didn’t say that, though.
Leslie gestured toward the chairs in the lobby and stood. “I’ll let Dale know you’re here.” She hurried out from the lobby toward the back of the building.
“I’m nervous, too,” Eliza whispered with something like sympathy in her tone.
Tessa’s heart pounded. Her palms were getting slick. Her vision threatened toward blackout.
No, no. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t risk another panic attack. Not here. Not now.
Deep breath in, out. In, out. She focused hard on the feeling of her lungs expanding and contracting in her chest, in the cool dry air moving into her nose, the warm wet air pushing out through her mouth.
You’re safe. You’re all right.
In. Out. In. Out.
Don’t you dare fall at this final hurdle.
“Tessa? You okay?”
Tessa raised one finger at Eliza, asking her to be quiet and not interrupt, or maybe to not expect an answer right away.
She quieted.
In. Out.
Irene was sure she could do this. Livy believed in her. Princess believed in her.
Even if none of them were here, Tessa could still somehow feel that belief pressing through the racing of her heart, the spiraling of her thoughts.
She wouldn’t let them down.
In. Out.
Breathe. Focus.
Don’t fall.
Slowly, slowly, her heart rate calmed, and while Tessa couldn’t dismiss the adrenaline zipping cold and sharp through her veins, the black hole that could suck her down into mindless terror never quite opened up in her head.
She opened her eyes and smiled dimly at Eliza’s frown. “Okay. I’m okay.”
She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she let it drop.
They were quiet, and the time stretched out between them like an old rubber band desperate to snap. Tessa shuffled her feet, and Eliza tapped her fingers against her thighs. She, too, was dressed a little more formally than Tessa had ever seen her — black slacks, collared green blouse that set off the red in her hair, curls rippling down her back. The gentle music playing through the lobby suddenly felt as loud as a front-row seat at an orchestra.
Tessa nearly jumped out of her seat when Dr. Dale came in from the side door and let it clack shut behind him. He smiled. “Are you ladies ready?”
Ladies? Both of them?
Eliza nodded.
Oh.
Oh, no.
It all clicked then. The way Eliza mentioned she was nervous. Ladies, plural. Even the particular care of Eliza’s wardrobe, the obvious choices of s
omething a little more formal than the jeans and long-sleeved tees Tessa had always seen her in before, suddenly made sense.
He was going to be interviewing both of them at the same time.
Eliza had known, and she didn’t bother to mention it.
Tessa pulled in a breath, and it whistled through her lips like a gasp. A rip, a thin sliver of dark and inescapable gravity, cracked open inside her.
No. No, she couldn’t go there.
Breathe. Focus. Don’t fall in.
She stood and was grateful that the khakis, boot-cut and loose enough to be comfortable, hid the way her knees shook. Dr. Dale opened the door again, still smiling warmly, and gestured both through it.
Tessa followed Eliza, eyes down, smile plastered firmly on her face to prove she was okay, and used the short hallway we walked through to get a grip on herself as best she could.
She didn’t want to be working beside Eliza. She was nice enough, sure, and had never given Tessa any reason to dislike or resent her, but she needed this externship the same as Tessa did for completing her own Harper Jones course, and she was already a volunteer here.
Dr. Dale knew her. She’d been helping him out as much as she could for … well, they knew how long, even though Tessa didn’t. She was experienced. She knew her way around Pretty Paws.
Tessa was none of those things.
She’d wanted this for all her life, yes, and she had the same education as Eliza did, yes — they were in the same program, after all — but experience? Familiarity with the job? With the animals and the veterinarian and the office they were applying to?
Eliza had all those things, and Tessa didn’t, and there was no way Dr. Dale wouldn’t consider that in his choice. He’d be a fool not to. Experience and familiarity was never not a plus, even if it wasn’t, strictly speaking, a requirement.
She’d known from the first minutes of stepping into Pretty Paws that Eliza was interested in the externship position Tessa was looking for; she’d always been perfectly upfront about that, excited, even, to hear that they were at the same point in the same program. She knew she was, in some sense, her competition, and perhaps rightly so. But she hadn’t let herself linger on that fact because she knew just how underqualified she looked beside Eliza, and to think about it was to invite that black hole to open up inside her.
She knew, but she tried not to.
And now, at the most important point in this whole process, Dr. Dale was going to force her to confront it. And then he would see with blinding clarity how she wasn’t the right choice.
Eliza would get the externship, graduate, and get her certification.
Tessa, left without any other options for where she could extern, would fail out of the program altogether.
The hope and excitement that had bloomed so bright and eager as she wrote those final words to her boss that morning withered and died in the six steps between the Pretty Paws lobby and its clinic.
The clinic was a quiet little space, separated from the kennels by enough doors and halls that the barking of dogs wasn’t audible. Slightly wider than it was long, with faux-granite counters spanning the entirety of the left and forward wall, boxy old machines that Tessa took to be for blood work, and an equally boxy old desktop beside them. There were two doors set into the right wall, both open to reveal separate surgery and X-ray rooms.
Even as she still looked around and worked to get her bearings, Eliza went over to one of the counters and began fiddling with the small boxes set there. “What do you need?”
“Put those away, would you?” Dr. Dale answered.
Eliza hurried to comply, and her unspoken familiarity with everything, the clinic space and the boxes and even Dr. Dale himself, screamed volumes about how Tessa didn’t stand a chance.
She swallowed and pressed her hands against her thighs, determined to not let either of them see how they were shaking.
She half-wished that Dr. Dale would just put her out of her misery here and now, thank her for taking the time to come and interview, but his choice was clear, and send her home to lick her wounds in private.
But instead, he turned back to her and smiled. “Come in, Tessa. Don’t be shy.”
So Tessa took a breath and stepped further into the clinic.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Princess was surprised to hear her door open — not the one at the front of her kennel, but the one in the back, stuck into the wiring between her outdoor run and the play space beyond it. She almost never went out into the play space, and definitely never during the day.
Curious, she wandered out to see an unfamiliar face smiling down at her and holding the door open for her to come out. She had a few other dogs out with her, mostly littles, none of whom seemed particularly interested in her.
Princess stepped out into the play space. It was concrete, more of an extension of the parking lot on the other side of the building than a proper park, and fenced in high and solid enough that she couldn’t see anything above or through the walls.
“There she is,” the stranger said, still smiling, as she joined her on the other side of her kennel. “I knew you wanted to come out.”
Remembering what she’d decided about being a better dog, she wagged her tail.
It wasn’t as hard as she feared it might be. The woman was soft-looking, friendly, and her smile was bright. The sort of person Princess might want to be with, and having already made the decision that she wasn’t going to be resentful that no one would ever be Tessa, the better behavior, a cheerful tail wag was almost an unconscious gesture.
The woman crouched down and held out her hand. “I don’t think we’ve ever officially met,” she murmured when Princess sniffed at her proffered knuckles.
They hadn’t. The shelter rotated through people, sometimes rather quickly, so it wasn’t unusual to see new faces pushing the meal cart or gathering beds to wash, but most of those strangers didn’t interact with her.
She half-suspected that Leslie or Dr. Dale warned them not to. But Princess was determined now to change that.
The more strangers she met, the more she saw how good strangers could be, the easier time she’d have showing that she was a good dog now.
This woman patted her head. Princess shifted so that her fingers would hit the itchy spot behind her ears, and she rubbed there almost instinctively, and her tail responded in kind.
She smiled again and straightened back up. “You’re a little sweetie, aren’t you?”
Princess flicked my tail in another burst of acknowledgment, and this pulled a soft laugh from her throat.
“Of course, you are.”
She moved away from the kennel door, back out toward the rest of the dogs that were scuttling and sniffing around the concrete play space. Princess followed her, working hard to keep her gait loose and unafraid. Most of the half dozen other dogs she had out were barely bigger than she was, and while they all looked up at her as she passed them, only one came forward.
She was another terrier, mostly Jack Russell based on the large brown splotches across her otherwise-white back and face. Her approach was careful but friendly, her ears and tail loose, her steps slow but comfortable. She eyed her with curiosity but no fear or aggression, so Princess wagged her tail and cocked her head back at her.
She dropped immediately into a play bow.
Princess had never played with another dog before. Before coming here, she’d been separated entirely from even the thought of other dogs, and even since being here, she’d been kept apart, first due to her illnesses and all the nasty little bugs that made her skin and ears itch, then because she wasn’t trustable around other dogs.
It was a fair assessment of who she had been, and she didn’t resent the decision that had been made about her — how could she when it was the truth? — but it had left her without anything more than instincts when relating to other dogs.
And her instincts weren’t bad. She knew this dog was asking to play, just as surely as she’d k
nown the dog at the dog park the other day was fixing to attack either her or Tessa. But they were untrained, rusty, left alone for so long that Princess wasn’t totally sure how to answer the little Jack Russell in turn.
So, she mimicked the motion, bending into her own, less certain, play bow. A friendly dog asking nicely for something should be answered in kind — that was only fair.
The Jack Russell leaped at her. Her teeth caught around Princess’ throat, and her momentum knocked them both to the concrete ground.
Every fear, every instinct, every fiber of her being, reared up at the movement. Her teeth nibbled against Princess’ skin, barely a moment away from clamping down and cutting off the flow of her air, the pulse of her veins. She had Princess on her back, exposing her belly — a submissive, vulnerable position.
This wasn’t friendly. This wasn’t play. This was deceit. An attack disguised by the comfortable gait of a liar.
Princess snapped at her.
The Jack Russell, her treachery exposed, immediately stopped pretending to be anything but vicious. Her teeth clamped down hard, cutting into Princess’ skin, and a snarl ripped up from her throat.
Princess answered back, flipping herself onto her feet with enough force to knock her loose. But the Russell didn’t stop, even as Princess’ hackles went up and she proved to her how much bigger she was than her.
Dimly, Princess heard the sound of the human’s voice cutting through their snarls, but she couldn’t make out words. All her attention was focused on the other dog, her bared teeth slightly pink with blood and the vicious noise spilling from the both of them.
The Jack Russell launched herself at Princess again, and this time she met her attack, got her teeth into her before she was able to do it to her. Princess had her by the neck, and she forced her down, pressing her into the ground like she’d just had her, and seeing that now the tables were turned on who was on top, she immediately went from aggression to panic.
Squeals replaced snarls from her mouth, and she screamed like Princess was killing her. The other four dogs in the space took notice and were all barreling in to get a piece of the action, but before anything could escalate further, before Princess had to defend myself against five dogs, hands landed on her hips and tore her backwards, away from the Jack Russell.
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