As it turns out, puppies are more difficult than I thought they would be, and in the first week or so, he was even worse because I couldn’t get up to help. I just rolled after Sara and suggested things to her that didn’t help.
A puppy that lived in the park wasn’t potty trained and didn’t have his shots and wasn’t fixed. We had to buy food, a bed for him, his shots, medicine for his ticks and things, and getting him fixed. More expensive than I thought. And then we had to buy toys, a leash, and a collar, but to get a collar, you had to name him.
Sara waited the week to name him in case we found any missing posters, and we searched high and low for some, but never found any. So, now that she finally decided to keep him and I was out of my chair, we took him back to the pet store and stood in front of the dog tag maker for ages.
The Australian Shepherd was straining at the dark blue leash as he watched all the other dogs wander around. He was small, he was a few inches short of my knee right now, but he was just a puppy.
“What should we name him?” Sara asked after a while.
We hadn’t had this discussion yet, I’d been putting it off as long as possible. “I don’t know.” I mumbled. I’d never had a dog, and I knew Sara had one in California with her parents named Dusty, but I had never been through this before.
“Sam?”
“Nah. Too boring.” I sighed and watched him finally sit down and watch all the other dogs.
“Max?”
“Everyone uses Max.” I thought about all of the dogs I had met when I was a kid. “Cooper.” I finally settled on. The dog across the street from my house before the car crash was named Cooper. I liked it.
Sara seemed to contemplate the name for a moment and then smiled broadly. “Cooper. I like it.” And with that, we made his dog tags.
I woke up with Sara in my arms the next day, naked and with the blanket tangled up down by our legs. I sighed happily and pressed my cold nose against the back of her neck.
Vanilla and lavender. I would never get enough of that smell.
Damn, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d liked anyone this much. I loved Jan as a friend, but I needed space from her sometimes too, and she understood that. Sara was different from everyone. I couldn’t get her out of my head, and it was torture in class.
“Your nose is cold.” I heard Sara grumble in her sleep.
I started to pull away, but she grabbed onto me before I could and she said, “Don’t go. I’ll be cold. You’re supposed to be my blanket until I need to wake up.”
I chuckled quietly and wrapped my arms around her waist again. Her back was to me, like it usually was in the morning. I reached down to pull the sheet up, but instead it didn’t budge. I looked down to see a furry, sleeping, brown and white Australian Shepherd laying on top of it.
“Coop…” I sighed heavily and returned back to Sara. “Sorry, Cooper once again has claimed the foot of the bed, including the sheets and blanket down there.”
“It’s alright, it gives you more of a reason to keep me warm.” She pressed further into me and I couldn’t help but smile softly and let a few fingers trail from her neck to her shoulder and down to her hip.
Puzzle pieces. We fit together like puzzle pieces. And I liked that. I liked how comfortable I was with her. I liked everything about her. “Like I needed a reason to do this.” I said when I finally pulled myself from my thoughts.
“Dev?”
“Yeah?”
“I…I really like being with you.” She said after a moment and I kissed her shoulder.
“I really like being with you too. Do you want to do something today?” I asked before I kissed her neck.
“Don’t you dare leave a hickey.” She growled menacingly, and then added, “I’d love to go somewhere. Where to?”
“What? You didn’t like it the last time?” I teased, gently nipping at the soft spot on her neck. “I don’t know, I was thinking we could go out to lunch and maybe see a movie or something. Anything really.”
I think she was having a hard time paying attention when I kept kissing and dragging my teeth along her neck. “It’s all my friend could talk about for weeks.” She shivered and I took her earlobe between my teeth gently. “A movie sounds good.” She whimpered quietly.
“Are you free this weekend?” I whispered before moving back to her neck while I awaited her answer.
“Depends, what do you want to do?” She was breathing heavily, I almost had her.
“Camping. I have a great site I go to, about an hour hike from this great waterfall and tons of stuff to do around there.”
I could tell she was biting her bottom lip to hold back the sounds I wanted to hear. “Camping?”
“Sure, why not?”
“It’s fall.” She said breathlessly.
“And? We won’t go swimming, we can bring big jackets, and I can zip our sleeping bags together. We can share body heat to keep warm. The stars look better in the cold anyways.”
She rolled over and wrapped her arms around my neck and I went back to where her shoulder meets her neck and she tangled fingers in my hair. “Okay.” She said after a moment and I finally kissed her lips.
“We leave Friday after class and we’ll be back Monday afternoon.” I said as I rolled her onto her back.
By this point Cooper was long gone, which I was thankful for.
“What about class on Monday?” She could barely get the question out before moaning loudly and I let my hands run over her body.
“Skip it. One day will be alright. Come away with me. We’ll leave Coop with Jan and we’ll go away. Just the two of us and the stars and the waterfall and so much more. I’ll keep you warm.” I added with a smirk.
She groaned, “Fine, we’ll go.” And then wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me down to her lips.
