“Yeah. Can I bring Albert?”
The dog turned his head at the sound of his name.
“Don’t you think he would prefer to stay with Tucker?”
“He likes Tucker just fine, but I don’t think they’re really bonding. Neither one of them thinks of themselves as a dog, so they don’t feel like they have all that much in common.”
Amber smiled.
“The rental car is trashed anyway. Be my guest.”
Forty-Five: Ricky
Ricky rode in back with his dog. Every time he drifted off to sleep, he jolted back awake, feeling like he was forgetting something. When his phone started working again, he sent a message to his brother. George and Amber were still okay. They were headed back to her house. Ricky wouldn’t be going there. He had to grab a nap, get cleaned up, and then get to work. Everything was so compartmentalized in his life that he couldn’t even remember what it was like to go to work. He knew that after fifteen minutes in uniform, he would forget what it was like to stay up all night hunting vampires.
Tucker put his head on Ricky’s lap and with the dog’s warm comfort, Ricky was able to sleep.
# # #
His house felt empty. Even when Tucker went to his bed to get back to work on his favorite toy, something felt off. Looking at the clock, Ricky planned out the rest of the day. His phone lit up with a message.
It was from Amber.
“Stop by after work?”
It disappointed Ricky how much his mind was set at ease by those four words. She had reached out to him even though they didn’t have some shared goal to work on anymore. Their struggle was over—as far as they knew—and she had still sent him an invitation. There was hope. His disappointment came from the realization that he was no longer in control of his own contentment. Amber had full control over his peace of mind.
Still, he had a secret smile for the rest of the day.
Pulling into her driveway after work, he loved the way her house looked. It was lit up and alive.
Ricky barely thought about the night around him as he went up to the front door.
Even though it was cold outside, the door was open, just a crack.
“Hello?” he called as he pushed the door inwards.
The lights were on and he heard a radio playing from the living room, but her house—her uncle’s house, really—appeared empty. Ricky’s eyes went to the sign above the bar.
It read, “Work is the curse of the drinking class.”
“Hello?”
He pushed the door shut behind himself and felt like he was trespassing. She hadn’t asked him to come in. It wasn’t polite to just wander into someone’s house. He wondered if she would be angry—if he should maybe step back out to the porch and…
Amber came around the corner.
“Hey,” she said. “How was work?”
Ricky’s concern was swept away.
“Fine. It was… It was work,” he said with a smile.
“Sorry about the smoke. I’ve been airing the place out, but it just won’t go away.”
“Smoke?”
“I burned a frozen dinner. I didn’t read the package right and I thought… It’s not important,” she said.
Amber seemed either formal or guarded. Ricky couldn’t put his finger on it. Her fidgeting discomfort began to infect him too.
“Are you okay, Amber?”
“I guess we’re just mourning. You know, now that there’s a moment to kinda take a breath, it feels like everything is catching up.”
“We?”
She gestured towards the kitchen and then headed that way. Ricky followed her.
They paused in the doorway. Albert was sitting on a dog bed near the door. Ricky recognized the bed—it was one of Tucker’s spare beds that normally stayed in the back of his mom’s car.
He crossed the floor and Albert put his ears back a bit and gave his tail a little wag as Ricky crouched to pet him.
“I just figured he was with Mom,” Ricky said.
“She thought I needed company. I think she’s right, but I feel terrible for him. He misses his home and he misses Romeo.”
Ricky nodded. “He’ll bounce back. Are you taking him back down south you think?”
She nodded and then shrugged. “Yeah. I think so? Good news there though—I got an offer on my cousin’s place. More than the listing price. The house must have shown better than I thought it would. I have a good agent.”
“Oh,” Ricky said, standing back up. “So, what’s taking you back down there?”
Amber looked away. “My stuff is in storage. I have to deal with that. My car is down there, too. Aside from a brief time up here, I’ve always lived down there. I guess I don’t know where I want to go. I just have a list of places I don’t want to be.”
“Oh,” Ricky said. He looked back down at Albert. The dog had settled his head back down on his paws.
“Well, you have this place still.”
“Maybe. I mean, supposedly the market will pick up around here in a month or so, right?”
“Right. Well, you know you’re always welcome with my parents. They love you.”
Amber smiled.
For a moment, they didn’t say anything.
“I would offer you something to eat, but I just burned up my frozen dinner. Your parents left some stuff in the fridge, I think?”
She started to head that direction and Ricky waved her off, shaking his head.
“I need to get home. I need a real night’s sleep, you know?”
“Of course. Be careful, okay?”
He smiled and she walked him to the front door.
“You too.”
He paused on the porch, listening to her push the front door closed until the latch clicked. A second later, he heard the lock.
# # #
Ricky saw Amber two more times before she left.
She and Albert came over for dinner. As a surprise, she brought George with her and they had a big family dinner at the picnic table in his parents’ yard. After the sun went down, they got blankets to wrap around themselves when the air turned cold. The dogs played tug-of-war with a
