“Pet Place, this is Elizabeth,” I said, cradling the phone
to my head. Here it was, 4:05, five
minutes into my workday, by myself yet again, and someone was already callin’
to bug me. Five minutes after getting
out of a pageant rehearsal is NOT the best time to be at work. If you hadn’t noticed already, I worked at a
grooming place… a grooming/veterinary place to be exact, and sometimes the fact
that I worked there and not the mall pissed me off. Anyway, after I’d made my almost snippy greeting, the voice on
the other end of the line spoke. “Uh,
yes, I’m comin’ to pick up my two dogs.
Could you have them ready in ten minutes, please?” I looked toward the wall of cages. What? He expects me to somehow know which
ones are his?…That’s cute, I thought grumpily. “What are their names, Sir?” I asked, trying to be polite but
coming off fake. “Oh, sorry. Tyk and Leigh. So I’ll be there in about ten minutes to get ‘em.” I circled the dogs on the clipboard of names
and then dropped the phone as I realized whose dogs they were and to whom I was
speaking. The plastic/linoleum impact
made a sharp, clear -crack- sound, and I quickly picked up the receiver. “Sorry, dropped the phone,” I said as
nonchalantly as possible. “They’ll be
ready when you get here,” I spoke again to clear my head. “Ok, thanks,” came the reply from the other
line. I hung the phone up and smiled
slightly into the mirror next to my head.
“No problem… Brian.”
Ten minutes later the dogs
were pristinely perfect, and so was I. It’s
a good thing I came straight from that pageant, otherwise I’d be in jeans and a
T-shirt right now, I thought to myself as I dug through my purse of
cosmetics. “Ooh, gloss!” I cooed when I
found the clear gunk in a tube. I
smeared it on with my right hand while using my left to brush my hair out until
it curled prettily at the ends. I did
feel a little too dressed up to be in the pet shop after the pageant…
usually. Today was the rare exception,
and I was glad I chose to wear my “fashionable outfit” at today’s class. The cream D&G halter and matching pants
outlined me perfectly, and the tall, square-toed boots made me… taller than
Brian! Ouch. I shrugged, hooked on my 3-chain gold belt, and put my long gold
earrings in my ears. Oh yes, I was the
woman right then. Until the door
counter dinged, and my stomach lurched into my throat, causing my earlier
cockiness to fall dead on the floor. I
grabbed the dogs’ leashes and walked calmly to the front of the store.
When I came clomping out of
the back grooming room, Brian was staring at something on the wall next to the
counter. I scrunched my eyebrows, but
then it came to me. He was looking at
the hat, his hat, that I’d caught at the Atlanta show, a few months
earlier that year. Suddenly, he turned
to face me, and when he realized that someone was actually there, he jumped a
little. “Scared me!” he said, his face
lighting up with a smile. I smiled back
a little and said “sorry.” I handed him
the dogs leashes and he handed me a fifty.
“Aren’t you a little uncomfortable in that?” he asked me, motioning to
my neck, where the string was tied. I
blushed just slightly. “Didn’t have
time to change after the pageant class,” was all the explanation I was giving
him for my appearance. When I looked up
from getting his change, his attention was once again directed at the hat.
“This hat looks really
familiar,” he said, taking it off the wall.
“Do you mind?” he asked, putting it on his head and glancing in my
mirror beside the counter. “I could
swear this thing is molded to my head,” he said, cracking a smile and a little
chuckle. Wow, he’s so… cheerful,
I noted. I nodded at him then. “It is, hun. It was yours.” He stopped
admiring himself and looked at me.
“Concert a few months ago in Atlanta.
You threw, I caught, I did NOT break into your house for it, don’t
worry,” I said, smiling. His eyes lit
up with something akin to recognition and he shook his head, laughing. I stared at him with one eyebrow
raised. “Uh, I don’t wanna sound rude,
but are you laughin’ at me?” I asked, not quite sure what had caused him to fly
into a fit of glee… but then again it was Brian, and who knows why he laughs so
much? Surprisingly he nodded and
coughed a little bit. “Yeah, um, it’s
just this thing I remembered. We like, all
saw you catch it, and we were laughin’ about it on the bus cuz you jumped like
40 feet to get it.” He grinned and my
eyebrow lifted again. I felt so stupid. The Backstreet Boys had -laughed- at
me. “Yeah,” I acknowledged, hoping he’d
leave it at that.
Oh, no he did not. He must’ve thought I was hilarious, cuz he
kept tellin’ me how they had such a laugh about it and blah, blah, blah. “And so,” he laughed, leaning on the counter,
“so we were all trying to come up with what you’d say if you’d been back behind
the venue with us and the other girls, and…” he paused for breath “… AJ was
talkin’ about givin’ you-” he paused again, but this time he ducked his
head. “Nevermind,” came a giggle. When he raised his head again, I was leaning
toward him on the counter. “Since I
don’t really know you, I’m just gonna ask you once and if you won’t tell me, no
biggie. What did he wanna give
me?” His cheeks flushed a little, and
he pocketed the change I’d given him nearly ten minutes ago. “I, uh… I gotta get home, y’know? My wife’s gonna kill me; this is her only
day off for like a month. So…” he
trailed off. I bit my bottom lip and
raised my eyebrows. “You sure you don’t
just wanna tell me?” I asked, crossing off his time on the clipboard. He looked around and grinned slyly, dragging
the dogs to the door. “C’mon, you can’t
do that! Don’t tell me you know
something and then refuse to tell me!” I practically wailed, wanting him to get
the point. He looked over his shoulder
and gave me one last smile. “Oh, don’t
worry… I’m sure I’ll tell you some day.”
And with that he walked out of my life for an entire month.