Chapter Fifteen

The dog, whom Orion was steadfastly calling Gizmo and I was just as steadfastly calling Scraps—even though I actually thought Gizmo was a cute name—slept with me that night in a toasty little bundle on the couch. I curled around her on my side, a little worried that she'd get too hot like that, but instead she seemed to love it.

So now I was falling for not just the dude but also the dog. Great call, Cleary, really nailing this whole First, don't fuck up any more than you already have principle of uninvited guesting.

I'd waited for him to go to bed before pulling the stuff out of the dryer and leaving it neatly folded on the kitchen counter, which I'd cleaned already. Along with the pot and the other stuff he'd used. It seemed like the thing to do, even if we weren't really talking again. He'd cooked, I'd cleaned. He'd put the laundry in, I folded it. I was as unobtrusive as I could be.

In the morning I reveled in a cup of fresh tea and a change back into my own clothes. Just getting up and putting on jeans felt so much more normal. Scraps was still asleep when I went to make tea, but when I came back into the living room, she was squatting in the corner.

"No!" I shouted, way too loudly.

She scurried under the armchair. I didn't understand how she fit under the little gap at the back, but apparently she did.

"Sorry." I got down on my stomach and offered my hand to the darkness. "Sorry, Scraps. Didn't mean to scare you. Just didn't want you peeing on the floor. Come on, I'll take you outside."

I felt a sniff on my hand. Then a lick. Ugh, I was a monster.

"Really, you don't need to be scared. Come on."

It took fifteen minutes to coax her out from under the chair. I bundled her up in my coat and brought her outside. She was totally unwilling to pee on pure snow, so I finally cleared out a spot right next to the porch where the snow was way less dense (though it did put me right under the gutter, which was leaking in steady drips on my back as I umbrellaed over her), and when she could smell the grass or dirt or whatever it was, she squatted again and peed. And then pooped. And then used her back legs to kick muddy snow at the issue until I scooped her up again.

"Oh, no you don't, missy. I'm not showering with you again, you hear? Usually I make someone buy me dinner first." Naturally when I looked up to judge our path up the iced-over-then-snowed-on porch steps, Orion was staring at me, eyebrows raised. "What?"

"You'll shower with anyone who buys you dinner?"

"Not what I said," I grumbled, and I would have brashly pushed past him except I was too worried I'd accidentally slip and squish Scraps.

Actually, that wasn't a bad thought. I pushed the dog at him. "Your turn. I took her to the toilet; you can feed her."

"And so the cycle of life continues," he intoned, but he pulled her in against his chest and led the way inside.

My tea was very, very cold. "Is this what parenthood is like? Cold tea all the time?"

"I'm not sure you're supposed to take a baby into the snow to pee."

"Don't know why not. I would have loved that as a kid."

"Fair. Might be good incentive. More fun than peeing in your diaper."

"Right? I should write a parenting book. ‘Train your kids to pee outside and save yourself the nonbiodegradable waste.'"

"You don't think there might be more cleanup? They'd probably be peeing all down their legs and on their feet." He paused. "And on each other. Probably."

I sighed. "I guess I'm not destined to be a parenting expert. Alas."

"You could start a podcast. That seems to be where everyone who thinks they're an expert goes to spout nonsense."

"Harsh." I somewhat sadly reclaimed the sweatpants I'd slept in and changed back into them, hanging my jeans, now wet between the top of the boots and my knees, over the heating vent in the bathroom.

When I came out again, Orion was mixing something up in a saucer and saying soothingly, "Just remember that's your name. Gizmo. Right, Gizmo? You like that name best, don't you?"

"Scraps," I countered.

"Gizmo."

The dog ignored both of us, her eyes on the saucer.

"What's for breakfast?" I asked, taking my tea out of the microwave. Ick. But needs must.

"Tuna and olive oil. I don't think tuna will have enough fat for her, so I'm adding some."

"Yummy." I patted her head on the way to the table. "It's not snowing. Do you think they'll plow today?"

"Hmm." He looked out the window and stared at the sky, which to the untrained eye just looked like a regular gray sky. "I don't know. It still looks like it's going to snow again. But it's early. Maybe the snow will hit soon and then stop for good."

I frowned. "See, you say that, but it doesn't seem like you believe it."

"Well, no. And even if they did bring out the plows, they'd do downtown first, so there's a clear way to the fire station and the Cal Fire outpost. We're not really the highest priority."

"Why? How? Argh. How can you live like this? I mean, you've been to civilization. You know what it's like to live where the cell phone towers don't just stop working because weather ."

He set the saucer on the floor beside the quiescent woodstove and said, "Where are you from? This magical place without weather."

Yikes, I really didn't want to get into that thorny topic. Oh, you know, just the place where you were about to be super successful before I ruined everything. "We have weather," I said instead. "Just none that destroys all communications. And the internet! How do you not have the internet right now? Shouldn't that be underground?"

"Not here. It runs along the phone lines. We don't have high-speed cable yet, just DSL."

I blinked. "Seriously? In the 2020s you don't have cable broadband?"

He shrugged. "I don't need cable broadband. Though I do miss being able to see movies in decent resolution. Anyway." He nodded to where Scraps was scarfing down her food. "I'm the king of dog breakfast."

"It's a very narrow area of royalty, but I'm sure it's quite the achievement."

Annnnnd ... silence. Not wholly awkward, not wholly comfortable. He drank some water. I drank my tea. He leaned against the cabinet. I sat at the table.

"You have a lot of old Sports Now s," I said. "I mean, ones that are older than you."

"I used to collect them. When I was a kid, like ten, eleven, that age. Other kids were collecting comic books, but all I wanted were old sports magazines." He offered a rueful smile, his gaze still on the dog. "I always dreamed about being on the cover."

"I always dreamed about writing the big feature article," I admitted. "With the picture on the cover." It might've been too far. But it was true. And it felt like another odd area of overlap between us, too tempting not to at least attempt a connection, even if it was dead and buried in our separate childhoods. "Plus," I added, laying on even more risk, "didn't you get on the cover?"

"The team did, yeah. When we won the North American title, but before we got creamed by Paraguay." He smiled slightly, like getting creamed by Paraguay was a fond memory. "Those guys were incredible. You couldn't even see their feet touch the ground—it was like playing against people with freaking wings ."

"It was a fantastic game." The championship series before my last year of college. Before I screwed up both of our lives. "I obviously wanted Conquistos to win, but you couldn't really watch the game and wish it had gone differently."

"Tell that to Bram Hunter. He's still pissed about the whole thing. Or—he was the last time I talked to him." A cloud passed over his expression.

"But you got on the cover. Didn't it feel good?" I was trying to distract him, which seemed right, but I might've been distracting him in the entirely wrong direction. Aside from bringing up the dog again, I wasn't sure what else to do.

"Oh yeah. And we had a lot of fun. More goes into those photo shoots than you realize, until you're doing them. The lighting and makeup and a ton of people behind the scenes making sure we were on the right patches of the pitch where the grass was thickest and the sun exposure was perfect. But no, I mean, I'd always imagined being the guy . Like when they'd put Rickey Henderson on, or Magic Johnson. Abby Wambach, you know. I wanted the whole cover to myself. Like a selfish prick."

"Like a kid who wanted to be a famous athlete," I said. "Nothing wrong with that."

"Except that it sets you up to fail pretty hard when it doesn't happen."

It still could. Do this campaign with me. Reach out to all the little kids like we once were, and tell them they can have the stars. It didn't feel like the right moment to offer him the futures of a bunch of kids on a platter. Especially since I'd shown zero evidence of being able to do anything but shatter futures into thousands of shards.

"I guess so. Though I don't think I'm ... I don't know." I considered it carefully before speaking so I wouldn't instantly put my foot in my mouth. "I was really driven to go after that dream I had for a while. Years. I worked super hard to be a better writer, to do more with fewer words, to ... hone my craft, I guess. And even though I stopped writing, I think all that work was still good for me at the time. I don't regret that dream I had, even though I'll never see it happen."

Orion was staring at me. Intently. "Why did you stop writing?"

"Um. Because I destroyed your life?" I couldn't hold his gaze. I tried to, but I turned to the window instead. Gray, yeah, slate gray, steel gray, gunmetal gray. A sky in the palette of watered-down ink in different ratios, but all based on black, all based on darkness.

He picked up the saucer and placed it in the sink. "I think I'll chop the rest of the wood I have over there today."

"All right." I watched him go to the closet, put on his snow boots, his coat. He went out. I listened to his footsteps on the porch, then the scraping of snow in his daily ritual of clearing a path down the stairs.

I rose and watched out the window as he un-tarped the logs he was chopping. He was a very good-looking man. He went at the wood with gusto, and I tried not to think he was imagining splitting open my skull on his stump, though it was hard.

This time I did not go out to help. I curled up on the couch with an issue of Sports Now and made space on my lap when Scraps hopped up to sit with me.

The next time I looked up, it was snowing again.