Like Cats and Dogs

by Kate McMurray

  “Sure. Or you’re throwing roadblocks in our way to sabotage us without giving us a chance.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me to love you forever.”

  Lauren angry-hissed and spun in a circle. He hadn’t seen her this genuinely angry in a while. Playfully angry, yes, but she was upset here. He felt a little bad about pissing her off, but this was also well-trod ground. Did she not understand him?

  “I know you have some baggage,” she said, frustration in her voice. “I know your divorce made you wary of trusting people. But if you don’t want to be in a relationship, don’t be in one.”

  Caleb opened his mouth to say he wasn’t, but he recognized that was a lie. He and Lauren had definitely crossed a line into being in some kind of relationship. He couldn’t deny that anymore. So the question now was whether it was a relationship he wanted to be in or one he should walk away from.

  He didn’t know.

  “It’s a risk,” he said, trying to sound calm. “If we decide this is a real relationship, that is a commitment. It’s a commitment to being with each other and seeing where it goes. And I don’t trust commitment. I once stood in front of my friends and family and committed to love Kara forever, and she still left me.”

  “You can’t let that rule the rest of your life.”

  “It’s not that I want to! It’s been less than a year, though, and I need more time. I can’t do a big commitment right now. I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t.”

  He watched the emotion play out on her face. She looked disappointed and angry and maybe a little relieved. Then she said, “Then what are we even doing?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “The limbo? It doesn’t work for me. We’re either going to be together in public, or we aren’t going to be together at all. Otherwise, it’s too strange. I don’t want to be your dirty secret, and I don’t want you to be mine. If I’m going to be in a relationship, I want it to be one I can talk about with my friends. I want it to be with someone who I can greet without worrying about giving something away. I want it to be with someone I can exchange PDAs with, someone who wants to get drinks at Pop and dinner at Elizabeth’s and be affectionate with me in those places. I don’t want to just eat takeout at each other’s apartments and have sex. That was fun for a bit, but it’s not fulfilling to me now.”

  Caleb understood where she was going with this. He didn’t want things to end, though. He just wanted more time to make up his mind. To see if there was the kind of potential between him and Lauren to make this into something that might be worth risking his heart on. Right now, he still didn’t know if the risk would be worth it.

  “I can’t give you what you want,” he said softly.

  “Well, then here’s where we are. Either you’re with me all the way, or you’re not with me at all.”

  That hung in the air for a moment. Being with Lauren might make him happy…until she met someone else. Until she grew frustrated with him. Until she dumped him. Given that they worked in close enough proximity to each other for things to get awkward, it would probably be better to end things cordially, so they could get along when they had to.

  Although they didn’t do a great job of getting along as it was.

  “I’ve enjoyed spending time with you,” he said. “We’re great in bed together, and we’ve had some fun. But we hardly get along out of bed at all. We still have dumb fights all the time. How can we possibly have a strong relationship if we’re barely friends outside of a bedroom?”

  “So that’s it then. You want to end things.”

  He sighed. “I don’t want to end things. I want things to stay as they are. But if that’s not enough for you, then maybe I should just go.”

  “You should just go then.”

  But he didn’t want to. His feet felt glued to the floor. “Why now?”

  “You really think we can just go on doing whatever it was what we were doing indefinitely? Having sex because we’re attracted to each other even though we clearly can’t stand each other?”

  “Is that still true, though? Seems to me we get along more often than we don’t.”

  “Except here we are, fighting again. A relationship shouldn’t be this…acrimonious.”

  “A relationship can be whatever we make it.”

  “Except a private affair.” Lauren sighed. “That’s not working for me. Was it working for you?”

  “It worked fine.”

  Lauren sat on the sofa finally. She rubbed her forehead. “You told me you didn’t used to be such a jerk. That you were jaded because of your divorce. And the last couple of weeks, I thought I saw some of the old you. We had fun together. You even seemed happy sometimes. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe you really are this cold, stoic jerk. You wanted to get your rocks off and nothing more.”

  “Come on, Lauren. It was more than that.”

  “But you’re not willing to give me much more than that. So just…whatever it was we had? You didn’t want it to be a relationship, so it isn’t. We’re done here. Please leave.”

  “Lauren…”

  “Don’t try to argue that this is anything more than it is. We had a good run. I had fun. No hard feelings. But get out.”

  “So you’re giving me an ultimatum. A real relationship or nothing at all.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing. And I hate to give you an ultimatum like that, but I can’t keep pretending the in-between is working. So I’m calling it off. We’ll each go off on our merry ways. You can go be bitter somewhere else.”

  “It’s over.”

  “If it ever even started.”

  Caleb nodded once. They got along great between the sheets but not out of them. That wasn’t something to stake a future on. Especially not when he couldn’t trust that Lauren wouldn’t one day break his heart just as Kara had. “Fine. Nice knowing you.”

  Then he let himself out.

  Chapter 23

  Caleb woke up to Hank licking his face. He laughed for a moment, then pushed Hank aside. “That’s enough, boy.”

  A quick glance at the clock told Caleb his alarm wasn’t set to go off for another fifteen minutes, but attempts at falling back to sleep proved futile.

  Lauren’s words from the day before echoed in his head. He’d made the right decision, though. She wanted to change the terms of their relationship, and he hadn’t been ready for that. He didn’t want to be in a relationship at all.

  Then why was he so sad?

  He got up and tried to shake it off. He went for a run with Hank, taking his usual route through the neighborhood, then around Cadman Plaza near the courthouses, then back home. He passed a lot of the same joggers he saw every morning, and in a lot of ways, the morning felt routine. But also totally different.

  After his shower, he got dressed in his typical work uniform of khakis and an oxford shirt. He slipped into his comfortable loafers—comfy shoes were a must for any veterinarian, since he spent so much time on his feet—gave Hank a few more pets, snapped the leash on, and then he and Hank walked out the door.

  He followed his usual route to work. He walked this way three or four mornings a week, and often passed the same people. He tended not to register people’s faces, but he knew all the dogs along this route. There was a black Lab mix with white feet that pulled an old lady in a housecoat around the neighborhood. There was a huge brown chow chow that looked like a bear; Caleb never saw the owner because he was always so startled by the dog. A teenage girl walked a Shiba Inu around Borough Hall every morning and a middle-aged guy who always looked tired walked a German shepherd closer to Whitman Street. Vet clinic patients stopped him on the street sometimes to say good morning.

  When he got to Whitman Street, he paused near the café entrance. He’d been getting coffee there the last few mornings so he could say hello to Lauren in the mornings, which seemed silly i
n retrospect. Since Hank was with him, he decided to take his chances with the coffee in the vet clinic waiting room.

  Hank made himself at home in the lobby. He nagged Rachel and the other vet tech on duty to pet him and entertained patients as they came in.

  “I used to work at a vet clinic that had a cat who lived in the lobby,” Rachel told him. “It’s kind of fun having a dog. You should bring him more often. He could be, like, our mascot.”

  “I might just do that,” said Caleb. He hadn’t thought through the decision to bring Hank today, he’d just done it, but he supposed he needed a little companionship.

  His morning included a cat with behavioral issues and a dog with a splinter in his paw. Everything felt very routine, except it didn’t, because he wouldn’t be seeing Lauren today and there was no potential for them to hook up tonight and he was quite disappointed by that.

  Well, more than disappointed, if he was honest.

  It was a cat-heavy day. He was giving a booster shot to a tabby cat that afternoon when the thought entered his head that maybe he’d been hasty with Lauren. Maybe he should have just done what she wanted and seen where their relationship might have gone. But, no, he’d been right, he wasn’t ready for that.

  This was verified later when a woman came in with an orange cat. Caleb didn’t recognize her at first, until she said, “I’m so glad I found you. You were the only vet Stanley could tolerate.”

  “You were a patient at the old clinic in Manhattan?”

  “Yes. Coincidentally, I just moved to Park Slope, and this is not so far from there. I was sorry to hear you closed. What happened?”

  “Ah, well, my wife and I got divorced. My wife-slash-business partner.”

  “Oh, right, the other Dr. Fitch. I never liked her. Stanley used to hiss at her something awful.”

  Caleb peered at Stanley. He sat with his paws tucked under him on the stainless-steel table, his eyes half-closed, looking perfectly calm. Caleb stroked his back.

  “I like this practice, though,” Caleb said, and he meant it. “The other vets here are all very nice and good to work with. Because this is a bigger practice, they have more resources.”

  “And you’re right next to the Cat Café. My friend, Nancy, and I have been going there once a week. It’s delightful. Have you been there?”

  “I have.”

  “The manager is super cute. What’s her name? Lola?”

  “Lauren.”

  “Yes. Lovely woman. Loves cats almost as much as I do.” The woman laughed.

  After that appointment, Caleb retreated to Olivia’s office for a few minutes to gather his thoughts before his next patient. He sat on the sofa. Hank trotted in after him and rested his chin on Caleb’s thigh. Caleb petted his head and took a deep breath. This was all a reminder how much better off he was now. He hadn’t heard from Kara since she’d left town, aside from one call from her lawyer because she was looking for her grandmother’s china, which he didn’t have. The china was, in fact, in a storage unit that was still in Kara’s name, a quick investigation turned up. And Caleb had decided if the woman he once loved with his whole heart was going to communicate with him only via her lawyer, well, it was well and truly over.

  And maybe there’d been a lot he hadn’t seen, warning signs he hadn’t paid attention to, things he hadn’t wanted to know about Kara. He hadn’t noticed her unhappiness, just like he didn’t notice the faces of the people who walked their dogs by him in the morning. And maybe she hadn’t been the person he’d thought she was, because that person never would have just left him.

  And really, it wasn’t that he didn’t trust commitment. He didn’t trust himself and his own judgment. He’d chosen poorly with Kara. How could he be sure he wasn’t choosing poorly again with Lauren?

  Caleb took Hank back to the lobby, where he immediately made friends with a huge mastiff who let out a heavy “woof” before he and Hank sat beside each other, their tails wagging wildly. Caleb walked to the back room to check on the animals being housed there. Olivia had tacked up a list on the kennel where Lauren’s kittens frolicked, each cat next to a person interested in adopting them. Caleb recognized most of the names as patients at the clinic, and of course, there was Diane listed next to Giant. In another week or so, these adoptive pet parents could come pick up their kittens, all of whom would likely grow into happy cats. Giant walked over to the edge of the pen and stuck his paw through the slats, as if he were trying to swipe at Caleb.

  Caleb probably deserved it. He knew he’d hurt Lauren. He hadn’t wanted to. He’d liked things being loose and easy. Why had she needed to qualify it?

  He walked over to a dog who’d had to have surgery to remove a benign tumor from his leg; currently he was snoozing in a kennel off to the side. He checked the wound, which was healing well. Poor guy had a cone of shame around his neck, though, since as soon as anyone took it off, the first thing he did was chew on his stitches. There was also a young cat who had just been spayed who was sleeping off the rest of her anesthesia before the owners came to pick her up.

  As Caleb updated the animals’ charts to show he’d checked on them, Rachel knocked on the doorframe. “Your four o’clock is here.”

  “Remind me what it is again?”

  “Elderly cat who has been vomiting a lot.”

  “Lovely.” He sighed. “Feels like a metaphor for my whole day.”

  “At least you didn’t have to hear about it from the panicked pet owner in excruciating detail this morning.”

  Caleb laughed. “I love my job.”

  Rachel smiled. “I know. Good luck!”

  ***

  The morning rush wasn’t enough of a distraction for Lauren not to notice Caleb pause outside the front window on his way to work. He didn’t stop in, though.

  Because they were no longer seeing each other.

  The rest of the morning played out the way many did. Lauren helped out at the counter by bagging pastries while Monique and Trevor, one of the new baristas, made espresso drinks and handled the cash register. The crowd petered out a little after ten, at which point Lauren went to check on the cats. A few customers drifted in through lunchtime. A few of the freelancers from the neighborhood had taken to working out of the café a few days a week, and a woman who lived up the block took over one of the sofas to read with a cat in her lap. Boudicca, the brave warrior cat, escaped the cat room, and Paige had to chase her past the counter but caught her just before she got to the other door.

  In other words, it was a typical day, but it felt atypical, because she had nothing to look forward to after work.

  And that was something that had somehow happened over the last few weeks. She either caught Caleb and invited him over, or she walked home with him after work, or they texted each other during the day and made plans to meet later, and she’d grown to really look forward to the time they spent together. Not just the sexy parts, although those were very good, but also the time they just spent talking over takeout.

  Caleb protested too much when he’d pointed out that they didn’t get along well outside of bed. They did, actually, or had been lately. They got along just fine. They sometimes got into arguments about things they were both passionate about, but she’d thought they both understood the arguments were playful at times, a kind of foreplay. They’d had the argument the day before about Caleb being rude, but that was part of the bigger issue, wasn’t it? She’d been upset because, had they been a normal couple, he would have come in, they would have greeted each other fondly, maybe exchanged hugs or quick kisses, and he would have done more than essentially dumping some food in the storage room before brushing her off to go back to work. The whole interaction had rubbed her the wrong way. That was why she’d been upset.

  But it wasn’t that she didn’t like Caleb. She liked him a great deal. She wanted to be with him.

  And that was the kicker
, wasn’t it? She’d sent him away, but she still wanted him.

  She was sitting at a café table and staring into space when Sunday hopped up on the table and lifted a paw to get Lauren’s attention.

  “Hi, little girl,” Lauren said, giving Sunday a few pets on the head. “Did you know I was sad? Did you come to cheer me up?”

  Sunday rubbed her head against Lauren’s chin, so Lauren took that as a yes. Cats were intuitive, in her experience. When she was home and not feeling well, either physically or emotionally, Molly would come out of hiding to sit with her, or snooze on top of her as she lay on her couch. And now that Sunday was giving Lauren attention, Sadie must have felt left out, and she showed up to rub against Lauren’s legs.

  “Thanks, ladies. I appreciate all the love.”

  Lauren laughed as Caesar walked over, his whiskers twitching as he sniffed and tried to suss out the situation.

  “You cats are not doing a very good job of keeping up your reputation for being snooty and rude.”

  Paige walked over. “Did you bathe in tuna today?”

  Lauren laughed. “You would think. Not sure what merited all this attention.”

  Paige sat and reached over to pet Sunday. “Monique wanted me to pass on that we broke some kind of record this morning. A hundred and fifty more dollars than yesterday, plus we sold out of nearly every pastry.”

  “Excellent. Not sure what we’re going to feed people this afternoon, but that’s very good news.” And it was. Lauren was buoyed somewhat by the business she ran doing well.

  “I can run over to Little Red Bird and buy them out of some of their cookies or something.”

  “Good plan.”

  “You doing okay, boss? You’ve seemed a little down today.”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Okay. I’ll go see what Little Red Bird has.”

  “Take some cash from the till. Maybe sixty bucks. Leave a note explaining how much you took and why so I remember when I’m counting it later.”