I put him back in the kennel, tucked him in with his squeaky squirrel, fought back any and all not-okay feelings, and latched the latch. I was fine. I was great. I was not a person who could be toppled by a run-of-the-mill goodbye.
When I turned around, Dr. Addison was waiting to walk me back to the front.
“Thanks again so much,” I said, smiling like a just-fine person.
“I have a question for you,” Dr. Addison said once we were outside.
“What’s that?” I asked.
He finished turning the lock and turned to face me. “Would you like to go on a date with me sometime?”
Ten
WELL, THAT WAS sudden.
In the way that something that should’ve already happened can also be sudden.
I mean, sure—I’d already decided that we were fated to wind up together. But even for fate, this was pretty fast.
“Can you date patients?” I asked, in lieu of shouting Yes! Let’s get married!
“I mean, I can’t date Peanut,” he said. “But you’re not a patient.”
Ah. “Good point.”
“What do you think?” he asked.
What did I think? Hello! I was ready to plan the honeymoon.
That said … I hesitated.
It was one thing to charge boldly forth toward my happily ever after with my dashing veterinarian in theory. It was a whole other thing to make an attempt like that in reality.
In my current reality, especially.
I mean, come on. I was a mess. I had surgical scars in my hair. I was bursting into tears at random intervals for no reason. The whole world was a faceless blur. And every single thing that mattered in my life was disintegrating around me. Would this storybook perfect man want to date—or be anywhere near—a total disaster like that?
Definitely not.
I mean, I didn’t even want to hang out with me these days.
So how on earth could I expect this dreamy, perfect, animal-rescuing man to be any different? Was I, in this moment, in any way someone who would be attractive or appealing or fun to date?
No. No, this would never work.
Could I have just been honest with him? Could I have just told him what was going on? He was a scientist, after all. He might have found it medically fascinating. I’m sure he saw weird, crazy stuff all the time in his line of work.
But … he didn’t date that weird, crazy stuff.
Dr. Addison shifted his weight.
My answer was taking too long.
So I gave the best reply I could think of: “I would love to go on a date with you,” I told him. And then I added, “In three weeks.”
I felt his frown. “In three weeks?”
I nodded like this was a totally reasonable request. “I am a portrait artist,” I told him, cherry-picking selective facts about my life to not blow my cover. “And I’m a top-ten finalist in a hugely prestigious juried portrait show three weeks from now—and so I’m really directing all my time and energy into completing my submission.”
How did that sound?
Dr. Addison gave me my answer. “You’re a finalist in a big competition?”
I nodded, like, Yep. “Top ten out of two thousand entries.”
“That means you beat out one thousand nine hundred and ninety other people.”
Told ya he was perfect. “That’s exactly what my best friend said.”
“Nice,” he said, and I could feel him admiring me.
“But now I have to win,” I said. “So I just can’t have any distractions right now.”
Dr. Addison nodded like that made perfect, logical sense.
I thought I was in the clear.
But then he said, “Of course if we just happened to run into each other at the same time in a coffee shop, that wouldn’t be a date. That would just be both of us self-caffeinating in close proximity.”
Ah. He wasn’t going to make this easy.
When I hesitated, he added, “Only if you want to, of course.”
Was it a test? To gauge if I wanted to?
I wasn’t waiting to find out. “I want to,” I said.
I could feel a smile take over his face.
So I added, “You have to caffeinate, right?”
And there it was. If I had to go on a coffee date with the world’s dreamiest veterinarian, then I guess I just had to.
* * *
ONCE I’D GIVEN in, I planned our wedding the whole way home.
We had an appointment for simultaneous coffee now. And, somehow, not calling it a date made it feel even more like a date. Did that mean we were dating?
Pretty damn close! Right?
And, of course, once you started dating someone, you inevitably got married.