Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78364 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
I crouched down beside the enclosure, and he got up from where he was under a table and walked over. The lady standing there to corral the other dogs gasped.
“Is he not up for adoption?” I asked her.
“No. I mean yes. He is,” she corrected herself, her eyes filling instantly. “I just… He’s terrified of men, but he––” Gordo pushed his nose through the wire mesh to try and touch my hand. “Oh my God, please tell me you need a dog.”
“We came for a cat,” I told her as I reached over the top of the enclosure and petted him.
“Okay,” she said, her voice wobbling.
Bodhi joined me then, and Gordo took several steps back.
“Hi, buddy,” Bodhi greeted the dog. “You sure are pretty.”
Gordo tipped his head sideways, Bodhi did the same, and then Gordo charged forward and put his paws up on the enclosure to greet the man I loved.
“You know,” Bodhi said, turning to me, “I think he wants to come home with us.”
The lady in charge agreed wholeheartedly.
“Did those dog treats they were selling look edible to you?” I asked that weekend as we walked around the farmer’s market with Gordo who looked really good in his yellow bandana. So good in fact that people kept wanting to pet him which he was already better about as long as he could see us. “Why were they green?”
“They were filled with veggies,” he told me.
“Should dogs eat that many vegetables? Miro says Chickie spits out broccoli.”
He was chuckling and then said, out of the blue, “Maybe when you retire, and I resign so we’re out at the same time, we can figure out what we’ll do for our second act.”
“Where did that come from?”
He shrugged. “Just thinking about our future.”
I grinned at him because that was always good.
“Maybe we can move to some small town in Oregon and I can be the new sheriff and you can buy a bar and dispense life advice over beer.”
“Really?”
“What? It’s as good as me making pottery in my house on the lake,” he said cheerfully.
“I’m never telling you anything.”
But he laughed, and it was a really good sound, and when he took hold of my chin and turned me for a kiss, I simply couldn’t say no.
Gordo just sat patiently and waited, wagging his tail the whole time. He was a very good boy.
“Stop fidgeting,” Bodhi ordered me another two weeks later as he sat beside me on the couch in Dr. Nkosi’s office. Two days before, I’d had an MRI on my shoulder, and I was there for the results. I hoped it was good news, because I wanted to celebrate in ways that definitely required two hands.
“Juggling?” he teased me.
“You’re hysterical.”
He laughed at me, and I reached for his face, turning his head so I could look into his eyes. “Hey, I have something to say,” I told him, then kissed him.
“Mmmm,” he hummed, kissing me back.
“I want us to get married,” I said between kisses.
“Okay.” He sounded out of it.
I sat back and glared at him. “That’s it? Okay? No overwhelming feelings of joy and happiness? I get nothing?”
“I’m happy, you’re happy,” he told me, smiling crazily. “I love you, you love me, I know, you know, everybody knows. You’ve been wearing my ring for the last three, almost four years, so yes. Of course I’ll marry you. We should do it at your sister’s house when we go for Christmas. Small wedding, just us and her family. Is that good?”
I couldn’t even speak. It was perfect.
“You’ll have to wear the dumb octopus ring on your right hand after, because you’re getting a big gold one for the left.”
“Gold ring?” I whispered, because it was so simple and traditional and exactly what I wanted.
“Yes,” he answered, his voice husky with choked laughter.
“What’s funny?”
“You, thinking I wouldn’t know you want a thick band without any stones. It’s why we’re putting up a white picket fence around the yard—because you want the whole happily-ever-after with me.”
“I do. You know I do.”
He nodded.
“And the octopus ring is not stupid,” I made clear.
“I know. It’s how I knew, through everything, that we would eventually be you and me. You never took it off.”
“I couldn’t. It was the piece of you I could have.”
“I’ve always been all yours.”
And I’d hoped for that then, but more importantly, I knew it now.
Dr. Nkosi’s news that I would have two working arms to hold him for the rest of my life was the cherry on the top of the cake.
He was so happy after we got the news, practically glowing, and kissed me in the car in the parking lot at the hospital. It was different somehow, possessive, claiming, and his hand on the back of my neck held me still, his grip hard, taking what he wanted.