The nerves rattling my body make it difficult to multitask. Bubbles’ leash is what I drop to the floor first before her food slides down my legs.
Rushing all over the place to collect the few that spill, she thwarts any plans I have of trying to move quietly.
I don’t want to startle Dollie more than I have to.
I don’t know how she’ll react to me being here.
“Annabelle, did you just come in?” Dollie’s voice rushes from the reading room. There’s a pause before she says anything else.
This is it.
This is when we’ll come face to face.
I have to remind myself to stay away from the black hole, as it opens up to me once more and offers safety.
I straighten the sack of dog food, guiding the obviously starving animal away because she isn’t starving in the slightest, and I stand to my full height.
Freezing on the spot, the air in my lungs stalls and stays there.
Bubbles crunches on the kibble, but it’s Dollie I listen to as she says, “No, I know. I thought maybe you got off early, but you also don’t have a key. I just—I could have sworn I heard the door.” Another pause gives me a break from the fear in her voice.
Is she worried I’m Shane or maybe another break-in?
Is that why she’s creeping through the room at the slowest pace in history?
The anticipation is killing me slowly. If I hold my breath any longer, I’ll pass out.
“I don’t need your dad, I hope. I’m probably imagining things again.”
The pitter-patter of delicate human feet picks up pace beyond the clacking of Bubbles’ nails on the wood as she prances around me.
At the sound of Dollie’s voice, our new poodle rushes into the reading room to greet her. Just as Dollie comes into view, Bubbles catches her off guard, pushing her back as she does her signature move of locking arms around Dollie’s waist.
“Oh, my! Where did you come from?” A giant smile takes over Dollie’s face, rounding her cheeks.
And for the first time in years, I smile so hard my eyes squint.
The air finally leaves my lungs. At the same time, Annabelle must ask what’s going on because Dollie announces with so much excitement, “There’s a poodle in the house!”
My eyes stay locked on her, with the phone wedged between her shoulder and ear, her hands in Bubbles’ long, white curls, and the biggest smile on her face.
She looks too much like everything I need tonight when my mind and emotions are all over the place.
There’s just something about her long socks, giant sweatshirt, lack of gloves, and no fucking ring from some other man that feels like home.
God, what I’d give to just pull her upstairs, huddle in her dome, assuming I still fit, and escape into a fictional world of an old book.
To go back in time, to a time in the story when I had her.
Because I need something other than alcohol tonight.
I need her.
She’s still my lifeline.
All the hope I feel inside me dwindles to nothing when her eyes lock on me, and her expression flattens.
Her mouth hangs open, all her excitement dropping with her phone that bounces across the floor as she straightens and steps back, her eyes trailing up the length of my body.
