Connor:Isn’t the “brig” a military prison?
I rolled my eyes and bit my lip to keep from smiling too hard.Potatoe, po-tah-toe. What time?
We made plans to meet at the coffee shop that I visited daily because it was close to my office, which was apparently also quiteclose to his apartment. I wasn’t going to fixate on that little morsel of information, not now, because I didn’t have the luxury of time.
I needed to find something cute to wear to work in the morning, something that would make me irresistible when Connor handed off my earphones.
Thankfully, a quick text to Ellie solved all my problems. She immediately FaceTimed me.
“Take me to your closet,” she said, and after twenty minutes of her insulting my lack of taste, she found a pairing that she liked.
“But listen,” she said with a scowl as I laid the clothes out on my bed like I was a middle schooler. “Be bold tomorrow morning. Don’t wait for him to ask you out.”
“I won’t,” I said, even though I knew I would.
In no scenario would I ever have the courage to ask out an NFL god.
But by the time I went to bed, I felt marginally confident in what I had planned style-wise. As long as I could keep myself from falling down or saying something ridiculous, I felt pretty good.
—
The following morning, however, when I was five minutes from walking out the door, my father decided to ruin that little bit of confidence.
“Hey, I need you to drop off Dale on your way to work,” he said.
“What?” I set my mug in the sink as he opened the fridge and took out the orange juice.
“Dale needs an adjustment. You gotta drop him at the chiro on your way in.”
My dad was so incredibly obsessed with his cat that he took him to the pet chiropractor once a month because he was convinced Dale needed adjustments. I usually didn’t mind helping out, but that wasnotgoing to fit into my plans for the morning. I’d literally spent an hour on makeup, which seemed like the sum total of what I’d spent on makeup my entire life, so I wasn’t going to screw that up by getting sweaty wrestling with Dale.
“I can’t today, sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve got—”
“You can today and you will,” he replied, his eyebrows furrowed. “I’ve got a water conference in Mankato, so I’m going in the other direction.”
My dad worked for the city, and a big part of his job had to do with water. I’d never really paid enough attention to understand it other than the fact that he loved to share disgusting little facts about water, like how he would never go in a hotel hot tub because the foam on top of the bubbles was “butt juice.”
“Dad, I’ve got an appointment before work—we’re going to have to reschedule.”
“You gotta do this for me, Duff,” he said, unscrewing the juice lid. “You throw him in the backpack and it takes five minutes to drop him off, tops. It’sright byyour work, come on.”
“I can’t.”
“Oh. That’s fine,” he said slowly. “I’ll just call in and blow off the conference. I wasn’t looking forward to the windshield time, anyway.”
He was being pouty, but I also knew my stubborn father would do it. He would completely miss a conference that the city had paid money to send him to because Dale needed an adjustment.
But after all the time my dad took off after my mom died, hedidn’t need to miss any more work. He had a pension, but I didn’t feel like my dad would know what to do with himself if he ever retired.
“Fine,” I said, gritting my teeth and trying to be a good daughter when I wanted to whine. “But can you help me get his stuff together?”
Getting that cat into the catpack wasnotan easy task, at least not for me.
“I gotta walk out the door right now, kid,” he said. “The backpack is by the coats, you can handle it.”
My dad had one of those backpacks with the plexiglass window in the back so the cat could ride around and see the world. My father used it when he took the cat to the vet because he thought Dale enjoyed the view, and the two of them wereadorablewhen they traversed the city together.
By the time I walked out the door, however, I was sweating because Dale did not like it when I took him places. He was a sweet baby boy for my dad, the shit, but he didnotenjoy outings with me.