by Kris Ripper
* * *
“I’m fine, Charlie. Jesus, back off.” Jack growled at his older brother, who was hovering over him, one large, rough hand nervously stroking his beard, the other catching on the over-starched hospital sheets as he tucked them around Jack.
After hours of pain, insurance forms, and answering the same questions for every nurse and doctor that came along, Jack’s habitual brusqueness had morphed into exhausted annoyance.
“Yeah. When I got the phone call to meet you at the hospital after you’d been found crumpled at the bottom of a hill with your bones sticking out I definitely thought, ‘He’s totally fine,’” Charlie said flatly.
They looked alike—the same reddish-blond hair and hazel eyes; the same large, solid builds, though Charlie was bigger, muscles honed from his constant physical labor—and despite his brother’s droll reply, Jack could see a familiar fear in his expression, and in the way he stood close, as if he wanted to be able to touch Jack and check that he was all right.
Charlie had looked after him his whole life, worried about him his whole life. It would be useless to expect him to stop now. Not that Jack really wanted him to.
“Sorry.” Jack fisted his hands at his sides and closed his eyes.
Charlie eased his bulk down onto the side of the bed.
“I know I’ve been saying I wanted to see you more,” Charlie said, making his voice lighter. “But this isn’t exactly what I meant.”
Jack snorted and punched his brother a glancing blow to the shoulder. He hadn’t actually meant for it to be glancing, but it seemed his strength had left him.
On the table next to his bed something familiar had appeared: his sketchbook and three pens. His gut clenched.
“Where did those come from?”
“I brought them from your place. Boring in here.”
“I don’t want ‘em.”
Charlie’s sincere and puzzled expression deepened.
“What? You’ve never gone a day without drawing in your life. I thought especially in here you’d want—”
“Well, I don’t,” Jack bit off. He closed his eyes. He hadn’t told his brother that he hadn’t drawn in eight months. Not since Davis...
Clearly confused, Charlie picked up the sketchbook and pens, huge hand dwarfing them.
Jack swallowed down his rage and fear and disappointment. He felt like every shitty moment of the last eight months had somehow been leading up to this: concussion, broken leg, cracked ribs, lying in a cramped hospital bed, with absolutely nothing to look forward to.
Darkness swallowed him as he realized that now the one thing he’d taken pleasure in since his life went to shit—walking with the animals—was off the table for the foreseeable future.
“Fuck.” Jack sighed, and he felt it in his whole body. Charlie leaned closer. “What’m I gonna do?”
* * *
The app was called PetShare and one of the nurses had recommended it after a failed attempt to have Charlie smuggle the dogs into Jack’s hospital room had led the nurse to enquire about Jack’s situation. She’d taken his phone from his hand, downloaded it for him, then returned the phone and said sternly, “No dogs in a hospital. Obviously.”
Now, home and settled on the couch with a pillow and blanket after basically being tucked in by Charlie and promising he’d call if he needed anything, Jack fumbled out his phone and made a profile.
Username? He hated usernames.
JackOfAllDogs, he typed. Then, with a guilty glance at the cats, he changed it to JackOfAllPets. Then he decided that looked too much like Jack off and changed it to JMatheson.
At the app’s prompting he uploaded a photo of Bernard for his profile picture. Then on to the questions. He hated answering questions. When he got to the final box, which asked him to explain what he was looking for, he grumbled to himself as he thumbed too-small keys, wishing he could draw instead of type. He’d always been better with images than with words anyway. Somehow, people always took his words the wrong way.
That’s why it had felt so fortuitous when he’d met Davis, who seemed to pluck the words he intended from his drawings and put them on the page. A perfect partnership. Or so he’d thought.
He banished all thoughts of Davis from his mind and mashed the Submit Profile button, then shoved his phone back into his pocket.
PetShare matched pet owners with animal enthusiasts who didn’t have pets of their own. Some of the users were people like Jack who needed help with animal care. Others were just willing to let animal lovers spend time with their pets. But with four dogs (and a cat) who needed twice-daily walks, Jack wasn’t optimistic about his chances of being matched with someone, no matter how enthusiastic they were. He imagined he might need three or four interested parties to meet his animals’ needs.
Charlie had volunteered to walk them until he found someone, and he didn’t want to burden his brother any longer than he had to. Charlie had the hardware store to run, and he spent long hours there and on construction sites.
Jack flicked on the television. He’d never watched much TV before the Davis debacle. The worlds he dreamt up in his head and the world outside his door had always been preferable to any he’d found on the screen. But over the past eight months he’d learned the numbing power of flickering lights and voices that required no response.
Wanting something mindless and distracting, Jack selected Secaucus Psychic. Maybe seeing people who’d lost family members to actual death would put a broken leg in perspective.
Hell, who was he kidding. He didn’t want perspective. He wanted to sink into the couch and into his bad mood and sulk for just a little longer.
He’d banned Bernard from the couch because, though fully grown, the St. Bernard behaved like a puppy, flopping on top of Jack despite weighing nearly as much as him, and with a leg held together with pins and casting, and ribs and head aching, Jack didn’t think he could take a careless flop. So instead, Bernard had piled himself on the floor in front of the couch, as close to Jack as he could get, and lolled his massive head back every few minutes to check if he was allowed on the couch yet.
Pirate curled delicately in the crook of his elbow, though, and he stroked her back, making her rumble.
An unfamiliar ding from his pocket startled both Jack and Pirate. It was the notification sound for PetShare. Jack thumbed the app open and saw that he’d matched. Someone whose username was SimpleSimon and lived 6.78 miles away from him had checked the I’d love to! option next to Jack’s description of what he was looking for.
“I’ll be damned,” Jack said to the animals. “Either this dude is a saint or he’s got no life at all.”
Pirate yawned and stretched out a paw to lazily dig her claws into his shoulder.
“Fine, jeez, I know. I don’t have one either,” Jack grumbled, and resentfully clicked Accept.
* * *
It was a horrible night. One of Jack’s worst.
Because of his concussion, he couldn’t take a strong enough painkiller to touch the ache in his ribs and the screaming in his leg. He tossed and turned, and finally gave up on sleep, searching the darkness for the familiar reflective eyes watching him. After a moment, he lurched upright. The sudden movement shot pain through his head and chest and leg and left him gasping and nauseated, clutching the edge of the mattress until the worst of it passed.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Finally, having learned his lesson, Jack gingerly pushed himself off the bed and shoved the crutches under his arms. The pull of the muscles across his chest as he used his arms to propel him forward left his ribs in agony. By the time he got to the bathroom, usually just ten quick steps away, he was sweating and swearing, teeth clenched hard.
Then, the drama of lowering his pants.
“Can’t even take a damn piss without fucking something up,” Jack muttered. At least, that’s what he’d intended
to mutter before the pain and exhaustion stole the luxury of indulging in self-deprecating commentary.
Humbled and infuriated in equal measure, Jack gave up on sleep entirely. Coffee. That’s what he needed. Coffee was the opposite of sleep. Coffee was a choice he could make when apparently he couldn’t control a single other goddamn thing in his pathetic, broken life.
The trip to the kitchen was suddenly rife with unexpected hazards. A squeaky dog toy sent him lurching to one side, groaning at his wrenched ribs and the shock of pain that shot through his leg. When he could move again, his crutch clipped the edge of a pile of unopened mail that had sat for weeks, which cascaded across the floorboards like a croupier’s expert spread of cards.
Naturally, that got the attention of several animals and Jack stood very still while the envelopes were swatted at, swept by tails, and finally, in the case of the largest envelope, flopped upon by Pickles, the smallest of his cats.
Mayonnaise, a sweet white cat with one green eye missing slunk up to him on the counter and butted her little head against his arm.
“Hi,” he said, and kissed her fuzzy head. She gave him a happy chirp, then darted out the window cat door above the sink.
Everything took four times as long as usual and required ten times the energy. The crutches dug into his underarms with every touch, bruising and chafing the skin there and catching on his armpit hair. His leg hurt horribly and the longer he stayed upright the worse it ached as the blood rushed downward. His head throbbed and throbbed and throbbed.
Though he’d gotten up while it was still dark, the sun had risen during the rigamarole of making coffee and eggs. Jack scarfed the eggs directly from the pan, afraid if he tried to sit down at the kitchen table he wouldn’t be able to get back up.
He realized too late that he couldn’t bend down to put food and water in the animals’ bowls and began a messy process of attempting it from his full height.
His first try slopped water all over the floor. Swearing, he dropped towels over the spills, moving them with the tip of his crutch to soak up the water. Next came the dog food, and Jack practically cheered when most of it went in the bowls.
The cat food, smaller, skidded everywhere, and Pirate and Pickles looked up at him for a moment as if offended. Then they had great fun chasing the food all over the floor. When the dogs joined the chase it resulted in the knocking over of bowls of water, the soaking of food, the scarfing of said food by the dogs and a counter full of hissing cats.
Jack opened a tin of tuna and let them at it, staring at his ravaged kitchen. It looked like the forest floor on a muddy day and it stank of wet dog food. The prospect of trying to clean it up left him short of breath and exhausted.
Bernard, always one to lurk until the end of mealtimes, hoping to scarf a stray mouthful, shoved his face in the mess.
“Good dog,” Jack said. He’d meant to say it wryly, but it came out with relieved sincerity.
Louis, the least social of his cats—he only liked Puddles—poked his gray and black head out of the bedroom, sniffed the air, and decided that whatever he smelled didn’t portend well. He eschewed dinner with a flick of his tail and retreated back inside the bedroom. Jack made a mental note to leave a bowl out for him later.
Just as Jack sank onto the couch, the dogs started shuffling to the front door the way they only did on the rare occasions when someone was approaching. Jack groaned. He hauled himself back up and pretended not to hear his own pathetic whimper as he made his way to the door.
“Back up, come on,” Jack wheezed at the animals. Then, in a whisper, “Be extremely cute so this guy likes you.” Then he yanked the door open.
There, with one hand half-raised to knock, stood a man made of contrasts.
He was tall—only an inch or two shorter than Jack’s six foot three—but his shoulders were hunched and his head hung low, like he was trying to disappear. His clothes were mismatched and worn—soft jeans, a faded green shirt, a peach and yellow sweater, and a red knit scarf—but every line of his body was frozen and hard.
Then he lifted his chin and glanced up at Jack for just an instant, and Jack couldn’t pay attention to anything but his eyes. A burning turquoise blue that shocked him because after years of drawing he’d always thought blue was a cool color. But not this blue. This was the blue of neon and molten glass and the inside of a planet. This was the blue of fire.
As quickly as he’d looked up, the man dropped his gaze again, and Jack immediately missed that blue.
“Uh, hey. You SimpleSimon?”
His head jerked up again and this time there was anger in his eyes.
“On the app, I mean? I’m Jack.”
Jack held out his hand and Simon inched forward slowly, then shoved his hands in his pockets and scuffed his heel on the ground. He had messy dark hair that, from Jack’s view of the top of his head, was mostly swirls of cowlicks.
“You wanna come in and meet the pack?” Jack tried again, attempting to infuse geniality into his voice instead of the exhausted, pained, irritation he felt at every dimension of his current situation.
Simon tensed and scuffed his heel again.
“I won’t bite,” Jack said, shuffling backward to make room. “Can’t say the same for Pirate, though. She’s a little monster.”
Good. A dad joke. Great first impression, Matheson.
But Simon gave a jerky nod and followed him inside. When Jack reached to close the door behind him one of his crutches caught and slid to the ground. Jack swore and grabbed for it, avoiding wrenching his ribs at the last moment by deviating to grab the doorknob instead, knocking into the man’s shoulder in the process. Jack wanted to scream.
Simon immediately moved away and Jack had a moment of resentment until his crutch was retrieved from the floor and held up for him.
“Thanks. Damn things. Mind if we sit down?”
Jack dropped onto the couch with a groan but Simon didn’t sit. He hovered near the doorway to the kitchen and crossed his arms over his stomach.
Jack saw his nostrils twitch and begged the universe that Simon wouldn’t turn around and see the utter shambolic trough that was his kitchen floor.
They’d messaged last night to set up this meeting and their exchange had been perfectly friendly. All Jack could imagine was that his bad mood was so palpable that he’d put this guy off.
“So, uh. I’m Jack,” he tried again.
The man’s arms tightened around himself.
“Simon,” he said, voice low and very quiet.
When nothing else seemed forthcoming, Jack launched into introductions to the animals and watched Simon unfold.
When Jack gave the signal to allow Bernard to approach, the dog cuddled Simon so aggressively that Simon ended up sitting on the floor. Bernard licked his face and snuffled into his armpit and Simon huffed out a sound that might’ve been a laugh. Jack caught a flash of fire blue through his dark hair.
“This is Puddles,” Jack went on. “He’s a neurotic dude. Hates puddles. Seriously, you’ll have to pick him up and carry him over them.”
Simon held out his hand, head still bowed. Puddles placed his chin into Simon’s hand and then sat down right next to him, pressing himself against Simon’s hip.
“Hey, Puddles.” It was so soft Jack almost didn’t hear it. Puddles kept leaning into Simon.
“That’s Rat.” Jack pointed to the tiny dog whose hairless tail whipped across the floor. Rat jumped over to Simon, then bounded away after something only she saw. “And Dandelion.” The cheerful mutt wriggled happily when Simon pet her.
Simon was bookended by Bernard and Puddles, petting them both at once. His scarf had come loose and Pickles, who was one of Jack’s newer arrivals, made a beeline for it, batting at it until his claws tangled in the yarn.
“Shit, sorry. Pickles, no!”
Jack moved to stand, forgot a
bout his leg, and groaned, falling back onto the couch.
“Fuuuck my life.”
Pirate slunk single-mindedly from her perch on top of the easy chair, making her way through the room to Simon.
He reached out a hand for her to smell and she gave him a dainty lick on the knuckle. Jack thought he saw a smile behind all that hair, but before he could warn Simon, Pirate pounced on his scarf, too, wrestling with Pickles over it and nearly garroting Simon in the process.
“Jesus, this place is a mad house,” Jack muttered.
A creaky laugh came from the man currently buried under animals on his floor.
Simon unwound his scarf and wrapped it around Pickles and Pirate, hugging the cats to his chest with one arm. Then he got to his knees and slowly stood, patting Bernard and Puddles with his other hand. Jack could hear Pickles and Pirate purring in their swaddle.
“You okay?” he asked Simon.
“Mhmm.”
“Okay, well... Still up for it? I know they’re a lot, but...”
Simon shook his head and Jack’s stomach lurched at the thought of finding someone else who could help. But then Simon said, softly, “It’s fine.”
“Yeah?”
Simon nodded, all shoulders and dark hair and flash of blue eyes and slash of pale jaw.
“Oh, great, amazing, wonderful.” Relief let loose a torrent of words, and Jack hauled himself off the couch to take Simon through whose leash was whose and where they could and couldn’t go, what Puddles was afraid of in addition to puddles (sticks shaped like lightning bolts, grasshoppers, bicycles, plastic bags), which dogs they might meet that Bernard would try to cuddle to death and Rat would try to attack, what intersection to avoid because there was a fire ant hill, and why never, ever to grab Pirate if she tried to climb trees.
Simon nodded and made soft listening sounds, and every once in a while he’d jerk his head up and meet Jack’s eyes for just a moment. When Jack passed the leashes, treats, and plastic bags over to him, Simon paused like he was going to say something. Then he put the treats and bags in his pocket, wrapped his unraveling scarf around his neck, and backed out of the door, head down and dogs in tow. Pirate leapt after them.