by Katy Regnery
Dr. Grant clears her throat, looking back and forth between us. “I didn’t realize...um. My goodness. Glenn?”
He shakes his head. “Seriously, Sheila. She’s overdramatizing everything like I told you she would.”
“So...you didn’t sleep with her?”
“We’re both over eighteen and it was consensual.”
“But not very ethical,” points out Dr. Grant. “I know you went to Alaska. I covered your advisees while you were gone.”
“I was there for an Iditarod meeting in Anchorage,” says Glenn, “and went skiing with some of the other vets up there for the meeting.”
“So you didn’t see Miss Sanderson?”
“It doesn’t matter,” says Glenn.
“I think it does,” says Dr. Grant. “Please answer the question.”
“I’m not going to dignify it with a response. This was a mistake,” says Glenn, looking at me, his eyes furious. “I thought I could take the high road and help you complete your fellowship project—”
“Oh, my God!” I blurt out. “That’s it.”
“What’s it?”
“It was never about me,” I say, staring at Glenn in a new light. “That’s what I got wrong all along. It was about my study, wasn’t it? You wanted...what did you want?” I ask, narrowing my eyes as I think. Then it comes to me. “Oh, my God! I bet you wanted a cowriting credit!”
His face instantly reddens. “What? No. I don’t need credit on some undergrad paper. I’m a respected—”
I grin at him because he’s so transparent now. “You wanted a cowriting credit on my paper so that you could claim to be an expert in the field of sled dogs and racing. But you didn’t want to do the work and research. You just wanted a ride on my coattails.”
“That’s ridicu—”
“Ridiculous? No, it isn’t. You wanted to attach your name to my research and claim it for your own.”
“Fuck you, Juliet.”
“Glenn!” cries Dr. Grant. “Leave my office immediately! I’ll be reporting this incident to the university oversight committee. Expect an investigation into your conduct...soon.”
Glenn gives me a scathing look before crossing the office to leave, but he pauses at the door, looking at me over his shoulder. “You were a shitty fuck.”
“Your nose looks great,” I snark as he ducks out the door.
I turn back to Dr. Grant, who rushes to apologize. “I’m so sorry about this, Juliet. I had no idea.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I don’t think he’ll be bothering me again.”
“I’ll make sure of it.” She finally realizes my printed study is a disaster. “What happened?”
“I slipped in the hallway.”
“Well, let’s get it all back in order,” she says. “I’ll take it with me and read through the final version. I’ll also stay on as your advisor to see you through the publication of your study, Juliet. Even if I have to do it from home.”
“Thanks, Dr. Grant,” I say.
“If my suspicions are right, it’ll be good enough for any major veterinary journal, and many more mainstream publications, as well.”
“I’m really happy you think so,” I tell her, feeling a true burst of pride and happiness in my work.
“And when it’s published,” she says, “there’ll only be one name listed as researcher and author: yours.”
***
Valentine’s Day.
Ugh.
If there’s anything more depressing than being twenty-five hundred miles away from the man you love on the year’s most romantic day, I don’t know what it is.
With my study submitted to four veterinary journals and six other respected news outlets, Dr. Grant assures me that we should be receiving some good news any day. She even believes someone might be willing to pay me for my account of training for a major sled dog race. It’s exciting. The only major excitement on my horizon.
I called Cody tonight to thank him for the dozen red roses he sent me, but after two weeks of not speaking at all, it took a few minutes to find our footing, and I think that depressed me more than anything. We’re already losing a certain amount of intimacy, which scares me.
Viola is still alive, though Cody thinks the end is near. He falls asleep on the floor beside her most nights, watching her sleep, looking for signs that it’s time to call Jonas to come and put her down, but she’s still eating a little, and until she gives up on food, he won’t make the call.
“Keep me updated about her,” I tell him.
“I will,” he says, sorrow heavy in his voice.
We talk a little more—about his daily training schedule and how I’m looking forward to moving home—but everything feels strained, like there’s so much missing, or lost, between us. It doubles my grief about our separation and fears for our future.
“I love you, Juliet,” Cody says toward the end of our conversation. “I think about you every day. All the time.”
“Me too,” I say. “I love you, too.”
“But, God, this sucks, Juliet. It’s...so awful. Being apart.”
“I know,” I say, sniffling as I try to choke back tears.
“I’ll try to come visit you in the spring,” he says. “Once you’re back in Montana working at your dad’s practice.”
“I’d love that,” I say, but he’s still talking about two or three months from now, which feels like forever. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too,” he says before hanging up.
I hug my pillow and cry, which is how Silvia finds me.
“Enough is enough!” she declares. “You’re coming out with me tonight.”
“On a date? No way!”
“I don’t have a date,” Sil says. “To have a date, I’d need a boyfriend, which I don’t. What I do have is an invitation to the single’s event of the year.”
“I’m not single,” I say.
She gives me a look which says different, but before I can protest, she says, “Whatever. It’s a VD party.”
“Sil,” I moan, “the last thing I want to do is go to a Valentine’s Day party!”
“No,” she says. “It’s not a Valentine’s Day party, it’s a Venereal Disease party. You dress like your favorite disease in celebration of all the people who are getting infected today. I’m going as the clap. You can be herpes.”
“I don’t want to be herpes!”
“Chlamydia?”
“No!”
“Just dress up in all red. We’ll say you’re a tumor.”
A testament to my current state of mind is that I actually end up dressed in a red skirt, red T-shirt, and red lipstick, and when people ask, I say I’m a fucking tumor.
“Clever,” says a guy by the punchbowl dressed in regular clothes.
“Says the guys who decided not to dress up.”
He lifts his shirt a little higher than necessary to showcase cut abs and a preppy belt with needlepoint crabs. Crabs.
“Okay,” I say, chuckling. “I get it.”
“You know what I don’t get?” he asks me with a flirty smile.
“What?”
“How you’re single. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you out celebrating with a significant other?”
“Because my significant other lives in Alaska.”
“Long-distance relationship, huh?”
I nod. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“Open, by any chance?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is your relationship open? Can you date other people while you’re apart?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I don’t—I mean, no. I’m with him. I love him.”
He grins. “Can’t blame a crab for trying. Not every day I come across a tumor as cute as you.”
I roll my eyes. “Thanks...I guess.”
He winks at me before disappearing into the crowd.
A second later, Silvia appears by my side.
“What the heck just happened?” she demands.
/> “Huh?”
“That total hottie just hit on you!”
I shrug. “I’m taken.”
“You need a reality check,” she announces, taking my elbow and pulling me through the kitchen and outside, onto a back deck. “Your so-called boyfriend is thousands of miles away. You have no plan to see him again—”
“He said he’d visit in April—”
“—no plan for the future. You’ve been a wreck since you returned. Sincerely, I’m scared for your mental health. You cry all the time. You moon around. You’ve lost weight. If you’re not working or studying, you’re miserable. This is crazy, Juliet. You need to snap out of it!”
“How?” I yell. “How do I stop loving him? Tell me, Sil, how to make that happen!”
“Let him go for now! And—and if he’s the one, you’ll find him again...somewhere down the road of life. You’ll reconnect when you’re ready. But this? Living like this day in and day out? It sucks, Juliet. It’s painful to watch!”
“Painful for you? Jesus, Sil, be more self-centered! You think I choose to live like this? You think I want to feel like a part of me is missing? You think I like crying myself to sleep, living in this—this terrible fucking limbo where the person I want to be with is so far away from me I can’t—I can’t bear it...Fuck this.” I shake my head, blinking back more useless fucking tears. “I’m going home.”
“Juliet, wait! Come on. Don’t go. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I shove my red Solo cup at her and stomp down the porch steps. “Have fun.”
“I shouldn’t have yelled at you! I was trying out some tough love...”
Her voice fades the farther away I get, until I’m halfway home and wondering if there isn’t some logic in her awful advice. Maybe we break up for now, live our lives, and then—when and if the time is ever right—we will find each other again.
***
Cody
Viola dies on Valentine’s Day.
After I hang up with Juliet, I go outside and feed my dogs, and when I return I can tell. I just...know.
Lying on the bed that Juliet made for her, my Viola is still. Her chest doesn’t bob up and down with her breathing. Her eyes don’t open to see me. Her tail doesn’t wag to greet me. She slipped away while I was outside. She’s gone.
I kneel down beside her, wailing with the full measure of my grief: not just for losing Viola, who was the loyalist friend I’ve ever known, but because I feel so goddamned alone, it’s viscerally painful.
My father wouldn’t acknowledge me.
My mother didn’t love me.
My sister wasn’t interested in a relationship with me.
When I lost my hands, I lost my friends, either because I alienated them, or they were uncomfortable at being whole in the face of my brokenness.
And then there was Vi. She came along and saved my life. She loved me. She saw a me I’d barely dared to hope existed. And from her love, came more dogs. And because of those dogs, eventually, came Juliet.
Now I’ve lost them both.
Viola is gone forever.
And Juliet is far, far away.
I lie down beside her still-warm body and sob, wishing my girlfriend was here, spooning me from behind, anchoring me to her life the way I once anchored her to mine. I don’t wish her to miss out on graduation or anything like that. I know how much she loves being a vet; I would never take that away from her.
I just...fuck, I just miss her so much it hurts.
It’s been a month since she left, and I keep waiting for it to get better or easier—to assimilate her absence into my daily life, still knowing that she’s out there somewhere loving me, but as time trudges on, it’s harder and harder. I keep her shampoo in the shower and use it once in a while, closing my eyes and breathing deeply the smell of her hair. I go upstairs and sit at her desk, looking out on the kennel of dogs she so loved. I visit with Jonas and Rita, who are worried about me; I can see it in their eyes.
Everything is wrong.
Nothing is right.
Apparently, I’m not a man who can love deeply and live apart from his woman. Some men can, I know. I’m not one of them.
Because it’s after midnight in Minneapolis and I don’t want to risk waking up Juliet with a phone call, I decide to email her to tell her about Vi’s passing. She was expecting it. It won’t be a shock.
Waiting for me in my in-box, however, is an email from her.
Glancing at the time stamp, I realize she sent it about an hour ago, and it piques my interest. I click on it with anticipation, but what I read knocks the wind out of me.
As if today wasn’t already bad enough.
Cody,
I’m staring at the screen, hoping the right words will come to me, but I can’t think of any “right” words for what I need to say.
Let me start with what’s important: I love you.
I know now that I was never in love before I fell in love with you. I didn’t know how love felt—how it bound one life to another in more ways than I could have possibly guessed. I didn’t know that being apart from the person I love would be this painful.
I miss you so much, it aches all the time. I cry and I can’t sleep, which leads to headaches and trouble concentrating. I’ve lost weight and I’m sad all the time. I’m making myself sick. I’m driving my roommate crazy. I’m starting to worry about myself.
I’ve heard about love sickness. Lately, I’ve been reading about it too. We’re born with the chemicals that make falling in love wonderful. We’re also born with the chemicals that make being apart unbearable. We’re genetically coded to want to be with our mate. I want to be with you.
And I know we can’t be together right now. We both have things to do in different places. It’s just that...maybe, if you weren’t my mate anymore, my longing would gradually subside to a place where I could bear it.
Tonight, Silvia suggested we break up for a while. She said that if our love is real—which I fervently believe it is—we will find each other again down the road of life. Maybe, if we’re not hanging on so tightly, being apart from one another will be more bearable. I don’t know how. I just know that we have to do something, because the way we’re living now isn’t healthy.
I love you, Cody.
Juliet
I read her email once, then twice, then a third time.
Then I pick up Viola gently, take her out to the truck and drive to Jonas’s house.
***
“Cody,” says Jonas, opening the front door of his house. “Everything okay?”
“Viola passed,” I tell him.
“Oh,” he says, putting an arm around my shoulder. “Come on in, son. Come sit down.”
“Cody! I was just putting on some decaf—” Rita comes bustling out of the kitchen in her bathrobe. “Oh, no. Vi?”
I nod. “She passed in her sleep tonight.”
“I’m sorry, Cody. She was a good dog. You brung her here?”
“She’s in the truck.”
“We’ll take her to my office before you go,” says Jonas.
There’s a crematorium at the highway department that Jonas is allowed to use for pets. I’ll scatter Viola’s ashes around my property, where she loved to run when she was younger.
“Let me get us some coffee,” says Rita, heading back to the kitchen as Jonas and I take a seat across from each other in the TV room.
There’s a game show on—the host is asking a contestant about Lady Gaga’s songs, and it feels utterly surreal that life is going on as normal everywhere else in the world when mine is, literally, falling apart.
My dog is dead.
And my girlfriend—whom I love more than anyone else in the world—is wondering if we should break up.
“Tough blow to lose a good dog,” says Jonas, picking up the remote and turning off the TV. “I know you’ll miss her.”
I nod, because he’s right. I will.
“Juliet emailed me tonight.”
&n
bsp; “Oh, yeah? How’s she doing, then?”
“Not good,” I say.
Rita returns with a tray holding three coffee mugs, cream, sugar, and Oreos. I take the coffee gratefully, but I have no appetite for food. Like Juliet, I’ve lost weight since we parted. I’m never hungry, even when I train for hours, and absolutely, positively should be.
Lovesick. Yeah. That sounds about right.
“Did I hear you say that Juliet’s not doin’ good?”
“We miss each other.”
Rita nods. “Eat some Oreos.”
I ignore the cookies and keep talking. “She wonders if we should break up for a while. You know, take a break. Find each other again down the road.”
“Oh, yeah?” asks Jonas, his eyebrows furrowing. “Why’s that?”
“Hurts too much to be apart.”
“Mmm,” hums Rita, stuffing a cookie in her mouth. “’Cause you’re training for the Iditarod and she’s in school.”
“Yeah,” I say, taking a sip of coffee. It’s hot and strong and I burn my tongue. “I have money saved for the race.”
“That’s good. Ain’t cheap to run a big race like that,” Rita observes.
“Ten thousand dollars. It’ll get me and my dogs to Anchorage. Lodging. Spruce up my sled. Drop bags. All of it. I can afford it.”
Jonas nods. “We’ll be waiting for you at the finish line, son.”
“If I...If I didn’t race,” I say, “I could use that ten thousand to fly to Anchorage, buy a dog box, a cheap truck, and drive to Montana.”
Jonas stares at me. Rita freezes with a second Oreo halfway to her lips. I feel like I catch her lips twitch in the glimmer of a smile, but I’m not certain.
“Oh, yeah?” asks Jonas. “Didn’t know you were considering a move.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I mean, I wasn’t, but now...I mean, I wouldn’t move to Montana forever. Just for the spring and summer. I’d come back in the fall to start training again.”