I’m suddenly aware I haven’t spoken in a bit. “Did you know that an octopus has three hearts?” As soon as it comes out of my mouth I realize I sound like that kid from Jerry Maguire. Did you know the human head weighs eight pounds? I hope my question comes off even a fraction as endearing.
“No,” Byron says with a glint in his eye that reads as curiosity—at least I hope that it does, but even if it doesn’t I’m too into the inertia of the trivia to stop it.
“It’s true. One heart called the systemic heart that functions much like the left side of the human heart, distributing blood throughout the body. Then two smaller branchial hearts, near the gills, that act like the right side of our hearts to pump the blood back.”
“What made you think of that?”
I smile. It may be entirely inappropriate first-date conversation, but at least it doesn’t bore me in the telling. I look up at the winsome August sky, marred only by the contrails of a passing jet and a vaguely dachshund-shaped cloud above the horizon. I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in love at first sight. I don’t believe in angels. I don’t believe there’s a heaven and that our loved ones are looking down on us. But the sun is so warm and the breeze is so cool and the company is so perfect and the whole afternoon so intoxicating it’s hard not to hear Lily’s voice dancing in the gentle wind.
ONE! MONTH! IS! LONG! ENOUGH! TO! BE! SAD!
I want to argue with Lily—one month is not long enough. But in dog months that’s seven months, over two hundred days. But none of it matters; to her even one day of my sadness was one day too many. I pick up my spoon and swirl it around the bottom of my empty yogurt dish and think more of Lord Byron’s poem. But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend. I corral the melted puddle of pomegranate yogurt into one side of the dish with a coordinated series of scrapes.
“I recently lost someone close to me.” A few last drags of the spoon in my empty dish before I put it down and turn my full attention to Byron. “I don’t know. I feel her here today. With us. You, me, her—three hearts. Like an octopus.” I shrug.
If I were him I would run. What a ridiculously creepy thing to say. I would run and I would not stop until I was home in my bed with a gallon of ice cream deleting my profile from every dating site I belonged to.
Maybe it’s because it’s not rehearsed. Maybe it’s because it’s as weird a thing to say as it is genuine. Maybe it’s because this is finally the man for me. Byron stands and offers me his hand.
“Let’s take a walk and you can tell me about her.”
The gentle untying of a shoelace.
It takes me a minute to decide if I can do this, and I decide that I can, and I throw our yogurt dishes away and I put my hand in his and it’s soft and warm and instead of awkward fumbling, our hands clasp together like magnets and metal, like we’ve been hand-in-hand all along. And we are touching again.
“We could grab something to drink at this place up ahead,” I suggest.
“Is it okay if it’s iced tea?” Byron asks. “I don’t really drink.”
If only he knew how perfect that would be. “Iced tea sounds great.”
Byron smiles. His eyes are still blue, this time like the sky. The sky with the dachshund cloud. I remember one of the more spectacular sunsets aboard Fishful Thinking, when I sheepishly confided in Lily that I would like to fall in love again. How the words tripped heavily off my tongue with guilt. How even saying them out loud suggested a time after Lily. And I remember her simple response.
“You will,” Lily said.
We start walking.
I start talking.
“We met on a farm in the country when she was just twelve weeks old. She was gentle and kind and this lady called her a runt. Her father was called Caesar and her mother’s name was Witchie-Poo.”
Byron squeezes my hand twice with waggish delight.
I begin the story of Lily.
BEGIN! THE! STORY! OF! ME!
Acknowledgments
I understand that most everyone thinks they have the world’s greatest dog, and I’d be hard-pressed to make the case that Lily was the greatest dog of all time. She never rescued anyone from a house fire, she was never separated from me in a way that required her to miraculously journey hundreds of miles home, and a passing skateboard could send her cowering indoors for hours. And yet she taught me everything I know about patience, kindness, strength, and unconditional love. For that, I am forever in her debt. Lily, you were, quite simply, the greatest to me.
Thank you first to Rob Weisbach, agent, advocate, visionary, and treasured friend. Even though I’m the Taurus, you’ve been nothing shy of bullish in your enthusiasm for and devotion to this book and making it an unqualified success.
My editor, Karyn Marcus, was a champion of this book before she even acquired it. We’ve laughed together, labored together, procrastinated together, celebrated together, cried together, watched YouTube videos of Cate Blanchett together—and hand in hand we made this book better. Together.
Here I should just print Simon & Schuster’s main directory, as everyone worked overtime to make a publishing house feel like
