I had to kiss him again, with the evening light from upstairs glinting off his damp lips. “Bring one for Mimsy, too,” I told him. “Now go get your tools and let me see how you use them.”
CHAPTER14
THEO
A shrill tunewoke me from my sleep.Shane’s new ringtone.I fumbled for my phone. “What’s wrong?”
“Foxy’s been straining and grunting for, like, six hours, and her butt’s all wet, but there’s no puppies yet. I’m getting worried.”
I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “What does Arthur say?”
“He’s not answering. I guess he doesn’t recognize my number. He probably has his phone on don’t disturb.”
“I can try calling him.”
“Can you just come over? Please?”
I wasn’t used to Shane sounding less than confident. “Yeah, of course. Give me fifteen minutes.” I tried to keep my own anxiety out of my voice.What if something’s really wrong?
I Googled the local vet’s office and then “How long can a dog be in labor?” with one hand as I pulled on some clothes. The answers weren’t clear, but it looked like six to twelve hours before the first puppy wasn’t unreasonable, so we weren’t in emergency territory yet. I texted that to Shane so he’d calm down before I headed to the venue.
The dark building lurked behind the parking lot as I pulled in, but despite the pre-dawn gloom, it felt less threatening than ever before. This hulk with all its lights off wasn’t my grandparents’ showplace, and Shane was waiting for me in there. I parked by the side door and hurried inside, using the flashlight app on my phone. Mimsy gave me half a heart attack, jumping down through the banister as I passed the stairs. She trotted ahead of me toward the bathrooms.
A faint blue-white light leaked out into the hall as I approached the men’s. I pushed open the door. Shane looked up from where he sat beside the giant dog bed that was now layered with towels. His hair had reached a new level of messiness, like he’d been shoving his hands in it, and his eyes shone wide in the light of his dim lantern. “Theo! Thank God. I have no clue what I’m doing.”
“You’re watching.” I pointed at the panting dog on the bed. “She’s doing all the work.”
Shane nodded, not smiling, which was a measure of how stressed he was. “Arthur told me, if she started, to offer her water but not food, except she doesn’t want anything.” He touched the rim of a half-full metal bowl.
“We have to figure she knows what she’s doing.”I hope like hell she does, because all I seem to have to offer is platitudes.
“What if she doesn’t? What if it’s her first time and she’s clueless? My mom used to tell stories about how she didn’t even know she was in labor with me and she almost had me in the women’s room in the dollar store.”
I sat beside him, nudging his knee with mine. “Maybe dogs have better maternal instincts than your mom.”
He muttered, “A flea has better maternal instincts than my mom.”
Oh, Shane.I wrapped my arm around his shoulders, and he leaned against me. “The vet clinic isn’t that far,” I told him. “It’s past six a.m. now. If she’s not making progress in another hour, we can take her there.”
The dog got up, hunched, turned in a circle, and lay down with a deep groan.
“See? She keeps doing that.” Shane held the bowl of water by her nose, but she turned away.
“I’ve heard that giving birth sucks.”
“I’m super glad I can never get pregnant for, like, fifty reasons, but that’s one of them.”
“You don’t want kids?” I definitely didn’t. Everything I’d known growing up was stuff I never, ever wanted to subject a child to.
“God, no.” Shane shuddered. “All those little kids counting on you and wanting things and messing up and needing to be shown better until you can’t live your life and have no money for basic shit like food and keeping the lights on? No way.”
I didn’t point out that not everyone had multiple kids or scraped the bottom of the barrel to feed them. I just hugged him harder.
He added, “It wasn’t only the money. If it was, I’d have probably stayed around town even after Mom and my stepdad pushed me out. But don’t have kids if you don’t want to parent them, y’know? I was supposed to be working and bringing in money but I was also supposed to be babysitting if my stepdad went out with his friends and I was supposed to be the one teaching them stuff and helping out.” He took a fast breath. “Even though my stepdad liked his own kids better and always took their side, it was still my job to pick up the slack. When my sister Anne was ten, this fifth-grade douchebag kept grabbing her ass. She tried to tell Mom, and Mom told her to ignore him. She ended up coming to me.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I taught her how to scream, ‘Get off me, rapist!’ and knee him in the balls.”
