Page 8 of There Is Also a Dog
On my own.
Without involving my scantily clad cabin guest who is a friend of a friend.
No matter how hot she is.
Even though she claims to be wearing a tiny camisole and boy shorts.
No matter how much I wanted to respond to her last text with:Well, now you wouldn’t recognize me because you’d be too busy staring at the massive bulge in my pants.
And then I was thinking of writing:The real true crime is that you aren’t sitting on my face right now.
Or:Put one hand on your tit and one in those boy shorts and tell me what you feel.
But then I realized she wouldn’t have a free hand to type, so I deleted that and started to type out:Something’s come up. Something big. Go to the bedroom, lie down on the bed like a good girl, and wait for me to bring it to you.
But I figured I should probably work up to that because Jesus Christ, we don’t even know each other, so I deleted it.
And then I had a dalliance with:Well, take off those boy shorts and put on your MAN shorts, baby, because a real one’s about to come over and rip them the fuck off of you.
But I wasn’t sure if that even made sense.
And then I choked.
What are you wearing?What a fucking cliché. I mean, I did want to know what she was wearing. But what I really wanted to say was:I like your eyes.
I know eyes.
I’ve been fascinated by them since I was a kid. Been studying them since college. I make a good living diagnosing issues, advising on keeping them healthy, operating on them. But I’ve been trained to see eyes medically.
One glance at Jillian Perry’s profile picture and those warm brown eyes, and I was fixated on what she was saying with them. Kind of like when I first saw Agnes at the animal shelter—I knew she needed me and I knew I wanted her and I wanted to take care of her. Except the other feelings that Jillian Perry’s eyes instilled in me were very, very different.
I saw through the cornea and the iris and the pupil and the lens and the vitreous humor straight into Jillian’s soul. I knew, somehow, that the man who took that picture was slowly breaking her heart, and she was strong enough to let him. I know that feeling and that kind of strength like I know the subtle signs of pediatric cataracts and strabismus. I can gently massage a baby’s blocked tear ducts to clear up that issue, but I never knew what to do about the feeling of impending loss of someone’s love—other than to have the feeling. I never knew it was possible to look into the eyes of the woman you married and see nothing but disappointment and regret. To watch the love light slowly dimming and then just…gone out.
I can’t stop wondering how Jillian Perry has dealt with it.
All I know is Maddie told me her friend could use a nice place to stay because her ex-boyfriend is getting married today. And for sewage water reasons. And I know that when I looked her up on Facebook, I almost instantly wanted to know her and that I wanted to help her, but I also wanted to rail her until her pretty, sad eyes bulged out of their sockets.
Which I could then fix for her because I’m an ophthalmologist.
And then I’d flip her over and make her forget every single thing she could ever be sad about all over again.
I blame Christmas for my sudden insuppressible concupiscence.
Marie would roll her eyes at me if she heard me say that and tell me to just saytotalhorninessif that’s what I mean.
And that is what I mean.
I’m totally horny.
My first love and ex-wife is now someone else’s wife and first love, and that has somehow released a certain kind of pent-up energy. The wistful, horny kind. I’ve been over Marie for a while, but it took longer to get over the loss of what I thought we were building together. I’m over the loss now, and I’ve been building a new life in a small town with a fantastic dog and no real dating prospects.
But it’s Christmas, and I’m not lonely. I just want to spend my favorite holiday with a human who isn’t related to me by blood. Preferably someone I can Christmas Netflix and Chill with.
There, I said it.
And I actually want to do the Christmas Netflix part.
But I blew it. With the only woman I’ve been intrigued by all year. Unless she thinks I’m a total badass for not replying right away.
