YESA
HER NAME IS MOLLIE Daniels. I did it! I hired my first employee. It’s only the end of February and No Place Like Home has grown so much that I had to hire help. I created a training booklet and sent her to a pet C.P.R. certification course. I added Mollie to the insurance plan and now we’re on our way. She’s a college student at Oxboro and has a flexible schedule. She’s a pre-veterinary student, too. I couldn’t have found anyone better. I have more than forty clients now and continue to add more each week. Mollie has shadowed me on a handful of pet sits and she has earned my trust. She’ll be handling the dog walks and pet sits that are scheduled for the days and times when I’m teaching kindergarteners. It’s perfect. I keep my cell phone on me at all times, so if Mollie ever has any questions or if any issues arise she can reach me.
It’s weird not to call my parents and tell them the news. To me, it’s huge. To them, they’re still ashamed of me. They still want me to redo the past. I called Trish on my lunch break to tell her. She screamed in delight, genuinely proud of me. It was enough to get me to stop sulking about my parents and get back to celebrating the growth of No Place Like Home. I miss her. Trish and Eddie are in Orlando now. Trish promised to email me some of her new photos from their travels. She has an online gallery where the public can buy her photography prints and said it’s going well. It reminds me that I want to order a few for my apartment. My walls are still bare. I want her to come home, to meet Travis for real. I know she met him the first night, the night I dropped my ice cream on his foot, but I want her to meet him now that we’re a couple.
Last night Travis came to my apartment for dinner. We played twenty questions at his suggestion, not mine. It wound up being fun. Although we’ve been dating for a little while now, I hadn’t realized how much we didn’t know about each other. It made me realize that with love, you just know. With love it just is or it isn’t. The little details of our lives, the things we think make us who we are, they’re just details. They’re just fillers. But without the chemistry, without the love, the rest of it doesn’t matter. I asked Travis:
“What’s your favorite part about work?” He’s a ghost writer which means he is commissioned by people who want to have their story told and he writes it for them. They tell him the story, he writes it and gets paid, but their name is on the book.
“That I’m a writer.” He said with a wink. “I’ve always wanted to be a writer and now I am.”
I followed up with: “What’s the worst part about your job?” It only seemed logical.
“That I’m a ghost writer. My name is never on anything. But one day that will change. This is all just practice before I start writing my fiction novels.” And I know he will do it. I know in my heart one day he’ll be a well-known fiction novelist. But instead of telling him that I just smile, nod and move on to the next question.
Eventually I asked the personal questions. “Have you ever been in love?” Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.
“Once.” That is all he gave. I raised my eyebrows, wanting the story.
“It was at the end of high school. She died in a car accident.”
And then I wished I wouldn’t have asked for more. “I’m so sorry.” I whispered. I felt terrible for digging up such a painful memory. And what question do you ask after a moment like that? We sat in silence for a bit. I pretended to pick at a piece of invisible lint on my sweater to occupy myself.
Eventually the sound of Travis’s voice broke the silence and for that, I was thankful. “And then there’s now.” He reached his hand across the table and grabbed onto mine. Our fingers intertwined, sending tingles across my skin and down my spine.
“And then there’s now.” I repeated, suddenly hoping I didn’t sound like a lame echo.
Somehow I managed to ask Travis the rest of my allotted questions and he asked twenty to me. But my brain was in a fog from that moment forward. I never truly believed in soul mates until that moment. Admittedly, I have always been skeptical that love can only come in the form of a crush, or lust. But for the first time in my life, I’m beginning to believe that there truly might be someone who is meant for me in this world. And someone I am meant for. When Jordan and I met at the duck pond, I was sure I’d found love and I think he’d say the same. But this, whatever this was between Travis and me, it was different. It was more. It was real. And I hope on every star in the sky that it will last. With Jordan, what we had at the start was merely a mirage. It didn’t last, although we both kept oddly wishing it would. I don’t want it to be that way with Travis. With Jordan, when the love, or lust, whatever it was, faded, we replaced it with the goal of fulfilling an image for society; the image of a perfect couple. We were more focused on fulfilling the image of perfection than we were on actually keeping our love in check. But with Travis, Trish is the only one who even knows he’s in my life. I don’t need to tell the world because I know what we have is real. I don’t need the external validation to make me feel better. I feel fine. In fact, I feel more than fine. When Travis asked if I’d been in love before I thought about all of this and I answered honestly. “No, I haven’t.” I told him point blank. “But I’m glad I am now.”