Page 71 of The Good Boy

Chapter Twenty-Six

“I cannot tell you how much I don’t want to do this,” I tell Rory miserably as I stand in front of my bedroom mirror looking at myself in a black dress. When I got in from work, I looked at myself in the pink scarf and lipstick and felt stupid, like a kid playing at dress-up. So, I’ve gone back to black, and now I look like how an hourglass would look if it featured in an old-school animated Disney movie as a comedy sidekick. “I don’t want to go and have dinner in Miles’s house with the beautiful but terrifying love of his life. And Claudia.”

“Me either,” Rory says gloomily, sitting on my bed cross-legged with Diego in his lap. “I am down for dinner, but knowing there is a silent assassin waiting to kill me takes the edge off a bit.” He considers the problem. “Why don’t we get them to bring it round here? They could post it through the inexplicable hole in the door.”

“I have to admit I think Matilda is probably okay for a cat,” I say. Rory sits up. It’s like I’ve said the word “bath” or “vet.” “Only because she was really soppy when she sat on my lap, and she made the residents’ day at the care home. Besides, Miles really loves her. So I’m going to try and stop thinking of her as an agent of Satan, and more like a cantankerous old lady, when all of a person’s worst traits become borderline adorable.”

“It’s like I don’t even know you anymore,” Rory says, clutching Diego.

“Whatever happens, Miles is my friend and I feel about fifteen years too late, like I should make an effort to like the things he likes.”

“So, you are going to be nice to Claudia, then?” Rory asks. Maybe he really is forgetting how to be a dog because he’s got his human snark down perfectly. “And not tell Miles that you love him, even though telling Miles you are in love with him might be the key to getting me back to being a dog?”

“Telling a boy I like him is not my life’s purpose!” I protest. “My life’s purpose is me discovering the best version of myself and how to live the life I’m meant to, or something like that. Telling Miles I love him is at best a quest-adjacent quest. A side quest.”

“So, you’re just going to let Claudia have him?”

“He’s not a prize or an object! And, though I never thought I would say this, I like Claudia-from-work,” I say to Rory over the shoulder of my reflection. “She seems sincere, and nice. And it would be good for Miles to have someone. He deserves someone. So, you know, if Claudia is what he wants then that’s fine by me. It’s not like I haven’t had half my life to realize I am in love with him and do something about it and maybe missed my moment right at the last second, right? Maybe the right thing to do, the thing that helps me find my true purpose, is just to let it go. Let him go. Having someone, it’s not the be all and end all, right? Purpose comes from what you do, what you put out into the world. That’s purpose. And as long as I can find that, then I expect it will be totally fine living next door to the love of my life and his very nice new wife, Claudia-from-work.”

“I’m never going to be a dog again,” Rory says.

I hold up one silver stud earring against my earlobe and then a gold teardrop. Then I decide against earrings. Don’t want to look like I care.

“We’re obviously invited to dinner so that she can get to Miles through me, his female friend. And I must be honest, it’s a good strategy.”

“The way I look at it,” Rory says, giving Diego a couple of mournful squeaks, “is that there will be food.”

“Okay, you’re right, I suppose,” I say, as if he has said something wise and insightful, which he kind of has. “Miles has been a good friend to us these last few days. So we are going to be lovely to Claudia. Claudia is here, she is real. We just have to deal with it like adults.”

“Yeah,” Rory says, when I turn around. “But are you really wearing that?”

You have never been styled until you’ve been styled by a dog with an eye for color. When I say an eye for color, I mean a passion for all of the colors all at once.

“Is it a bit much...?” I ask. Nan was right, there was a time when I wore all the colors I could in one go, but now it just feels so... loud.

“It’s not enough!” Rory says. “When I have dog eyes all the colors are turned right down, but now everything is so bright and noisy and beautiful. Your human eyes are a total trip, so you should make the most of them. Give them something to look at.”

“Yes, but...” I look at my emerging outfit; the girl who loves this look is still in here, but she’s hiding.

The first thing Rory handed me was an electric-blue shirt my mum bought me the Christmas before last. I remember at thetime thinking that I would never wear it, and I never have. But now I have it on I see it looks pretty good against my light complexion and dark hair.

“And these...”

Rory picks out a pair of pillar-box-red jeans, a present from Nanna Maria the birthday before last—the one when I still thought wishes were pretend and so never came true. I’d asked for vouchers, so I’d been pretty annoyed at Nanna’s last not-so-subtle attempt to get me to “take care of myself.” As it turns out they are exactly the right cut for my shape, and if I half tuck in the shirt it flatters my curves.

“These...” Rory hands me a long string of bright yellow beads given to me by Kelly’s kids after I looked after them one weekend. I wind them twice around my neck.

“And finally...” Rory hands me a pair of leaf-green heels, only one of which is slightly chewed.

“Sorry about that,” he says.

“I look like I present children’s television,” I say, looking in the mirror. And yet... Tipping my head to one side, I examine myself. It’s actually not a terrible look—it’s even bordering on good. And if I look really hard I can catch a glimpse of that girl I used to be who was so excited to see what the future had to show her. Rory has managed to bring her into focus in my memory. Without really knowing why I take a pencil out of the pot on my desk, twist my hair into an updo and stick the pencil in it to secure it, and, unbuttoning the bottom of the shirt, I tie it into a knot to accentuate my waist, which somehow is still there, despite all the toast.

Then I notice it. An old photo of me that’s been stuck in the frame of my dressing-room mirror for so long I’ve stopped seeingit. Me in my first year at college, pink-lipsticked smile stretching from ear to ear, and wearing all the colors of the rainbow. Together we have brought her—me—back to life.

“Now you look like you,” Rory says.

“Now I feel like me,” I say. “Which is weird because I thought I felt like me before but... you know what? I didn’t.”

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