“It’s not your fault. I promise we’ll find her.”
“How can you keep a promise like that?” she said, pulling away to look into my face for the first time. Her swollen eyes and lips made me swallow and step away from her, feeling wrung out.
“Because you want her to, so she’ll come back. She’s going to come back to you. Okay?”
“I don’t think it works that way, Oliver,” she said with a hoarse voice, but she followed me into my apartment as I put down my bag, and we sat down at my laptop to make a flyer together.
Delaney
Oliver walked around the neighborhood, calling for Jenny as I posted the flyers I’d made with the only photo I had of her, from my phone, on the day I adopted her. In the picture, she was scruffy, one ear flopping up, the other down, her head tilted, her eyes confused.
I teared up just looking at it, as I stapled it to a telephone pole. I even got the sniffles thinking about the accidents she’d had and the corners of my coffee table she was damaging with teeth marks. Everything about her was filled with vignette edges and nostalgia, like my own personal Instagram of sorrow.
“No luck,” Oliver said, his shoulders sagging.
“I know,” I said. “I didn’t expect much.”
“You never expect much.”
“So?” I said too sharply. “There’s nothing wrong with low expectations!”
“There’s nothing wrong with hope. There’s a whole lot wrong with low expectations,” he said, and then he yanked on my ponytail like he was the one who was frustrated with an idiot, not vice versa. Idiot. “Let’s go knock on some doors,” he said, and I shook my head.
“I don’t want to.”
“But someone could have her in their house! She could be sitting there, waiting for you.”
“I just—” I swallowed, thinking of approaching all of those strangers, and them snubbing me before I even got to ask about Jenny. They’d never talk to me. I shook my head. I hadn’t even had the chance to put on real clothes, and my legs were showing their full glory. “I don’t like talking to strangers.”
Oliver tugged on my arm. “I’ll do the talking. You’ll just come with me. Come on. For Jenny.”
“Okay,” I said in a quiet voice, and went with him, my eyes focusing on the sidewalk instead of straight ahead.
Jenny was at the second house we knocked at, sitting in the backyard, suspiciously watching squirrels in the trees with a bowl of water by her. I snuggled her under my chin on our walk back, thanking Oliver profusely for his help. Oliver shrugged and stayed silent until I was opening my door.
“Thank you. Again. Thank you so much, Oliver. I can never repay you. You’re so nice. Thank you,” I said to him. I put down Jenny then and hugged him tight. He didn’t move an inch, and I dropped my arms and stepped away, embarrassed by the closeness I felt and he apparently didn’t. “Anyway,” I said, walking backward, “Thank you. You’re the best.”
His eyes fell to my legs and lingered there. I sensed an impending insult and decided to beat him to the punch. “My ex-boyfriend says I look like a Holstein cow. Isn’t that spot on? Ha! Spot!”
“What a keeper.” His voice shook as he said, “And no. Not funny.”
I put Jenny into the apartment and slammed the door shut.
Oliver
Every time I thought about Delaney, I had to close my eyes, swallow, and take a deep breath, and think horrible, untrue things about her, just to keep my balance.
Delaney
A few days later, Oliver knocked on my door, and I opened it to find him looking lively, if a little unkempt. His face was covered in dark stubble, which was already graying a bit near his sideburns, and he was wearing wrinkled khaki pants and a flannel shirt with his ugly shoes. “Laney,” he said as he strode past me into the kitchen. I watched him walk past with his long, rangy legs, in his awful clothes. He looked fantastic.
“Hello, Oliver. Come in. My home is your home. Go ahead and grab a cookie.”
He returned a minute later with an overflowing plate and a large glass of cold milk, and settled in on the sofa. He started eating and patted the spot next to him as I stared. “Come. Sit.”
“What?” I eyed him.
After he swallowed two cookies, he said, “I’m not working night float anymore.”
“Good for you.”
“So I can’t run with you any longer.”
“Ah, that’s where you were yesterday. Sleeping like a normal person.”
He stopped with a cookie halfway to his mouth. “You went running without me?”
“Of course.” I leaned back onto the couch cushions, tucking my legs underneath me as I picked up the remote control. “Want to watch something? I saved a documentary on the evolution of dogs for you.”
He turned his body toward me. “Laney, I thought you weren’t going to go running in the dark.”
“Why do you care?” I grumbled.
“I was going to ask you to switch to evening runs.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I like the mornings.”
“Laney.” He sounded like he was trying to keep exasperation out of his tone. “I’m trying here.”
“Yes, but trying to do what?”
“Be nice. For you. You’re a nice person, and so I’m trying to be nice, too.” He shook his head again and dipped a cookie into his milk as he leaned over the coffee table.
I softened at his words. “Okay, we can run in the evenings.”
“Thank you.”
“So, documentary?”
“Sure.” He put his feet on the table, and I immediately moved toward my laptop so he’d avoid kicking it. “Were you working?”
My cheeks heated as I remembered what I was doing online. “No. Emily was over earlier and she was just showing me stuff.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Showing you stuff?” His feet kicked off the edge of the coffee table and he leaned forward. “What kind of stuff?”
“Nothing.”
“Does it involve naked people?”
“God. No! Ew, no no no,” I said, covering my face with my hands. “Ew.”
He sat back again. “Your face got all red and you were vague. It seemed like the obvious conclusion.”
“Maybe for you.”
“Then what were you doing?” Oliver said.
“I was….” I trailed off. “I can’t tell you.” He stared and smiled. “Tell me. Please,” he said.
“Promise you won’t make fun of me? It wasn’t my idea.”
“I will make no such promise.”
“Fine.” I took a deep breath. “Emily wanted me to sign up for this online dating site. I was making a profile.”
Oliver stared at me for a second and then burst into a big guffaw, choking on the cookie he was eating. After a round of coughing, he started laughing again. “You online date?”
“No. No, I definitely do not. But I made the profile to shut Emily up.”
“Is that where you met Cliff?”
“No. I don’t date. Anyone. Ever again.”
“Sure,” he said, but his smile told me he was dropping it. “So, where’d you meet Cliff?”
I wrapped my arms across me and pulled my knees up onto the sofa. “Here. At the U. He lived in the same dorm as me.”
“Romantic.”
“We were just friends.”
“Until you weren’t.”
“Basically.”
“And then you fell in love and followed him to LA, and you both got jobs until you realized you were an independent woman and didn’t want a man like Cliff clouding your vision of the future,” Oliver said. “Did I get it right?” He looked smug, like he’d guessed everything correctly.
“Sure. You want to watch that documentary or what?” I said too quickly, reminded of my last night with Cliff before I left LA.
“Yup,” he said, and picked up the remote control I’d dropped. “Thanks for recording it for me.”
“Uh huh,” I said, nervously twisting a lock
of my hair as the show came on and Oliver leaned closer to me. We watched, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything except Oliver.
Oliver
Delaney fell asleep on me, and I told myself that it was annoying having her asleep on me. Then I abandoned that line of thinking and rested my hand on her back gently. Her phone rang on the table. It was Cliff calling.
I shouldn’t have picked up. “Hello?” I said.
“Uh, I think I have the wrong—” a deep, startled voice spoke.
“You don’t. You were calling Delaney, weren’t you?” I said, not trying to deny my soaring happiness at speaking to this jerk.
“Who’s this?”
“Not you, that’s who,” I said, and I hung up on him.
Delaney
“Cliff, calm down. That was just Oliver,” I said. I rubbed my eyes and laid back on my pillows. It was three in the morning, and Cliff was calling me, drunk and stupid.
“Who the hell is Oliver?”
“He’s my neighbor.”
“And?” he hissed.
“And what, Cliff? Do you realize how late it is?”
“Is he there right now?”
“Could we talk in the morning, Cliff? Honestly, this is a little dramatic, even for you,” I said. Then I added, “Kelsey wouldn’t like it.”
“Delaney, listen, about Kelsey—”
“Forget I brought her up. I’m not discussing her,” I said hurriedly.
“You don’t understand,” he said with a slur.
“I’ll talk to you in the morning,” I said, and then I hung up. I found a sweatshirt and wool socks, and then went across the hall to bang on the door until I woke up Jackass.
Oliver
I was playing Solitaire on my phone when someone started pounding on the door. I opened it and saw Delaney’s eyes widen. “You were awake?”
“I think my body’s just used to night shift,” I said, standing aside to let her in. Her long dark hair was tangled and sticking in every direction but down, she was wearing a gray hoodie and leggings, with sweat socks pulled over them, and there were pillow creases across her cheeks. She was hugging Jenny to her chest. She looked like a giant gray lump. “What are you doing? You look angry.”
“I am angry. Cliff just called me.”
My eyes fell. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh,” she said, putting a small hand on my chest and shoving. I didn’t budge. She wasn’t very tough. “What did you say to him?”
“Nothing. Just picked up your phone. That was all.”
“I have voicemail. You don’t need to pick up strangers’ phones for them.”
My lip curled. “Oh, you’re a stranger?”
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “It’s late, and I’m tired and now I can’t get back to sleep.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“I was hoping to spread the misery,” Delaney said, gently placing her dog on the floor and then flopping down on my couch and curling up on her side into the fetal position. She yawned and then said, “But I forgot that you were already full of misery.”
“That’s me,” I said, sitting next to her and pulling her legs in my lap, reached for the blanket on the back of the sofa, and covered us both. I patted her leg and said, “Go to sleep.”
She yawned again and said, “Fine,” and closed her eyes. I watched her eyelids flutter for a few minutes before I fell asleep too.
Eleven
Delaney
Ursula sipped her wine as she told us about Michael. “You wouldn’t believe how fantastic he is. He wants me to go home with him next weekend for some party his family is having.” She picked up a cracker. “I’m going to meet his parents and his sister.”
“You’re glowing,” Emily said with a flat voice.
“Don’t be jealous. She’s happy, and Michael seems like a decent guy, so we’re happy for her. Aren’t we?” I said as I handed her the plate of brie and apples.
“Whatever,” Emily said. “She gets the man of her dreams to fall in love with her in three weeks. She looks like a goddess. I’m allowed to be jealous.”
“How’s that different from you?” I asked Emily.
“How’s that different from you?” Emily asked me.
“It’s not. I’m a goddess, the kind who doesn’t need a man,” I said with a laugh.
“There’s some self-confidence I’ve never seen on you. It looks good,” Emily said, sitting back with a smile.
“Uh, I wasn’t serious,” I said.
“I know, but you should be,” Emily said, and Ursula nodded. “Anyway, how are you doing with Cliff? Can we have the three month postmortem?”
“It’s fine. We’re fine. We still talk on the phone, even. It’s really fine,” I said.
“You talk on the phone? What?” Emily asked. She put both hands palm down on the table and glared at me. “He has the nerve to call you after what he did?”
“We’re friends,” I said. “It’s fine! It’s good!”
“That man made you fall in love with him, took you away from us, and then left you. There is nothing good about Cliff. Cliff is a danger to society,” Emily said as she thrust a finger toward me. “I don’t want you to talk to him.”
I sighed. “Listen, he’s harmless. He lives two thousand miles away from me. He has a new girlfriend, and he calls to complain about said girlfriend. He has absolutely, positively no romantic interest in me. We were friends before we were together, and we’re still friends.”
“He cheated on you! He made you drop out of college and then he cheated on you! He destroyed your self-esteem!” Emily said.
“He didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I have free will.”
“You were vulnerable because of your horrible mom,” Emily said. “He knew that.”
Ursula piped in. “He knew you wouldn’t say no to him.”
I shoved an apple slice in my mouth and chewed, waiting for my anger at my friends to settle. “I wish,” I said in a whisper, “I wish you would trust my decisions.”
“Oh? Are you going to apply for a special collections job so you can work with the Jenny Edmonton collection?” Emily asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I don’t have any experience. I’d never get the job, so why bother,” I said.
“See? This is why we don’t trust you. You give up before you even try,” Emily said.
Ursula said, “Laney is right. We need to let her make her own mistakes.”
“Ursula,” Emily said with an edge to her voice. “I know you’ve found True Love Forever, or whatever, but don’t go all soft on us. Laney needs some backbone. She needs to be daring.”
“I have a backbone,” I said.
“No, you don’t. You’re practically gelatinous,” Emily said. She turned to Ursula. “And you. You’re in love with a guy you barely know. More importantly, we barely know him. He could be an axe murderer. He could be a serial killer.”
“He could be a Republican,” I said.
“He could be Cliff,” Emily said.
“Hey,” I said. “Oliver said Michael’s a great guy. I don’t think Ursula has anything to worry about.”
“Oh, Oliver. Jackass. Like I trust that guy,” Emily said.
“Oliver is a little bit brusque, but he’s trustworthy,” I said, thinking back to this morning when I’d woken up on his sofa with him sleeping on my legs. He’d stirred a few minutes later, and then gotten up. While I walked Jenny, he made us scrambled eggs, toast and coffee. Over breakfast, he read over a medical journal as I chewed silently, wondering if everything was going to be weird from now on. I left without even saying goodbye, and he didn’t look up once from his reading.
“He really is a good guy,” Ursula said. “And Oliver’s known Michael since med school. Eight years. I would have heard the horrible stuff if there was horrible stuff to hear.”
“I want the chance to size up and humiliate Michael myself,” Emily said. “I don’t believe
Jackass.”
“Fair enough,” Ursula said, and we sat around and made plans for when to grill Michael.
Oliver
When I woke up and saw Delaney looking at me with a smile, her eyes half lidded and full of sleep, stretched out on the sofa, I felt incredibly guilty.
After Delaney left, I called. “Mia?”
“Oliver?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said a little too desperately. “Please.”
“What do you want me to do? Drive two hours to meet you so you can…what?”
“I’ll come to you,” I said. “This is important.” I brushed my teeth, changed, and left.
Delaney
We met Michael at the Saturn later that evening. “So, Michael,” Emily said, “tell me about your arrest record.”
Michael choked on his drink and started coughing, and Ursula put a soothing hand on his back. “I don’t have one,” he said.
“Drug use? Alcohol abuse?” Emily raised her eyebrows and waited. When Michael reassured her he was as straight edge as they came, Emily said, “Okay, now for the real questions.”
“Those weren’t the real questions?” Michael asked with panic in his eyes.
“Sexual partners, history, positions,” Emily said.
“Okay! I’m going to go get another drink!” I held up my empty tumbler. “Anyone else want something from the bar?”
Oliver slid into the booth right then, looking exhausted. “You’re so innocent it’s sweet.”
“Where’ve you been?” Michael said. Oliver said, “Around.”
“So, are we grilling Delaney about her relationships?” Oliver said.
I looked down at my hands. Emily turned the heat off Michael to glare at Oliver. “You.”
Oliver’s eyes widened. “Me? What did I do?”
“No picking on Delaney. Ever,” Emily said.
“Too late,” Oliver said and I said, “It’s okay.”
Emily narrowed her eyes at Oliver. “I know you. I know how men like you work. You’re a predator.”
I patted Oliver on the back and said, “Oliver doesn’t think of me that way, so I think I’m safe. I’m going to go to the bar now.”
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