Next
Month
“Hi! Pet Place,” I said
happily into the phone. It was 8 pm,
and my shift was up in two hours, so I’d have Friday night to spend with my
girl Serena and her new boyfriend Jay.
There was a bit of static on the other end, so I turned around, trying
to clear the air. “Hello?” I asked,
tapping my foot and ready to hang up.
Just then, a voice, kinda familiar, spoke up. “Yeah, I need to drop off my dog for grooming. If I get there in ten minutes, can you have
him ready before 10?” it asked. That
irked me. I did NOT want to get dirty
dog hair on me before going out. “I can
do my best,” I replied, not really having the spirit of snip in me at that
moment. “Um, what is your dog’s name,
Sir?” I questioned placing my pen over an empty name slot, ready to write. “Sorry, it’s Tyk.” My heart did a flutter, and I decided to have some fun. “Ok, sir, I’ll tell you what. I’ll get the dog ready for you if you tell
me what you wouldn’t last month!” I
knew I sounded like an idiot, but I didn’t care. I needed people talk, animals were making me insane. I guess Brian was surprised, cuz I heard a
loud -bang!- from his phone. “Sorry,”
came his voice a second later, “I dropped the phone.” I laughed a little, and heard him chuckle as well. “Elizabeth, wasn’t it?” he asked. I was shocked that he remembered me, but let
it go. “Yeah,” I said. “Here’s the deal. I got an anniversary gift for Leigh, and I need Tyk all spiffed
up tonight. Can you please trim him up
a little?” I put on my sympathetic face, but it melted when I thought of my
plans for that night. “I got plans
too!” I said, sounding a little miffed.
“I can do it, I just didn’t wanna get hair all over me,” I tried again,
hoping I hadn’t sounded too miffed.
“Ok, well, you go ahead and put on whatever you were gonna put on, and
I’ll bring one of Leigh’s little plastic hair-cutting things, you know, the
things that keep you from getting hair on you when you get your hair cut?” I smiled and told him thank you. He said he’d be there in twenty minutes, so
I said bye and got my clothes jerked on as fast as humanly possible.
I had just put on some ‘test’ lipstick to see if the shade matched when I saw Brian pull up and hop out of the car with Tyk. I looked in the mirror, satisfied with myself, and put on some gloss. “You are my personal savior,” he said as he walked in, plopping Tyk onto the counter and taking off his big, black coat. He was in a suit. My heart just about melted out into a little puddle on the floor. I’d always thought Brian was adorable, but Brian in a suit made me want to play with children or dance with elves or something. I guess he saw my look of adoration, and he smiled. “I brought a cover for me too. Brown fur on a black suit just doesn’t say ‘Happy Anniversary’ to me,” he joked. Oh, hun, if she doesn’t love you in everything, then she doesn’t love you enough, I thought to myself, but just kept smiling. “No, don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I can do this in like ten minutes,” I said, letting my eyes fall onto Tyk. “Ok, baby, time for shave,” I cooed, then picked him up and walked into the back room.
Fifteen minutes later, Tyk was
nearly done, and I was happy. I was so
happy, in fact, that I was singing the Star Spangled Banner. “Oh-o say can you seeee!” I sang. Just then I heard a noise to my left and
turned off the razor I’d been using on Tyk.
It was Brian, standing in the doorway watching. “I thought you said it took you ten minutes,
Liz. It’s been fifteen,” he said
lightly. I rolled my eyes, grinning,
and turned on the razor again. “By the
dawn’s early light!” I heard.
Silence. “What so proud-ly we
hailed!” Silence. “At the twilight’s
last gleaming!” I figured out 1+1 and
took up where he left off. “And the
rockets’ red glare!” “The bombs
bursting in air!” he continued. “Gave
proof through the night, that our flag was still there!” we finished the rest
of the song together, sounding pretty bad, but having fun nonetheless.
Five minutes later, I was done
with Tyk and gave him to Brian. “He’s
pretty!” I said, kissing his head before I gave him up. “Hey, thanks,” he said, grabbing my hand. I shook it, but he gave me a funny look,
then lifted it up and kissed it.
“Grassy-ass, Senir-eeta,” he said like a hick, and then, “have fun at
your party,” I smiled. “And you better have fun at your party,” I
replied, giving him a suggestive look.
He didn’t get it for a second.
“Oh!” he finally said, then blushed.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you will,” I said. He grinned at me in that
Hi-I’m-Brian-and-yes-I-realize-how-incredibly-adorable-I-am-when-I-grin-like-this
grin. That grin that made you want to
pinch his cheeks until they were red.
He grinned and walked out. Out
again. And he still hadn’t told me what
AJ had wanted to give me!!!
It wasn’t until two
days after my twentieth birthday that I saw Brian again. He came in at five-thirty on Friday, lookin’
shaggy and beat. I smiled when he came
in, and was extremely glad that Mrs. Haley had just gone home so she wouldn’t
cause a ruckus. She’s my boss, and
fifty-three, but she’s crazy about Brian and Kevin both. So Brian, like a dog being put to sleep,
dragged himself toward me and put Tyk on the floor along with about thirty cans
of dog food. “Whoa, what’s all that
for?” I asked him. He scratched his
little quasi-beard and sighed. “We’re
goin’ back into the studio to record, so I have to leave Tyk here while I’m in
the Bahamas.” I smiled at the thought
of a new album, and Brian saw it.
“Yeah, well, don’t expect me to be writing any love songs. You know, it’s real hard to write about
something you don’t even know about,” he said quietly, then looked up toward
the sky like he was trying to keep in tears.
My eyes softened, and I knew what he was talking about. Leighanne.
I wondered how he could’ve gone from being so happy with her to being so
miserable. Ever since I’d known about
Leighanne and Brian, I had thought they were right for each other. It had seemed to me like he thought she was
the only woman in the world, the way he talked about her on television.
“Well,” I said softly, “don’t
worry. I’ll be here all summer, and Tyk
will be fine.” He looked back down at
me and sighed again. I don’t know how
I’d missed it, but now the unquestionable smell of alcohol hit me. My heart leapt with concern for him as it
would with anyone else. “Sometimes I
hate it, you know,” he said to me, stacking all the cans into a few little
piles. “Hate what?” I asked. The mere thought of Brian actually hating
anything hit me hard. He was so happy
all the time, and now to confront him in this way was very awkward. He looked up and brushed his hair out of his
eyes. “My job. What I do.
Sometimes I wonder if I did anything worthwhile at all. Maybe we’ll just fade out, and no one will
remember how big we were. Maybe I’ll
just be alone for the rest of my life,” he choked, nearly in tears now, but
continued. “It hurts. I had it so perfect, and now… Jesus I can’t
stand it. It ruined us. Never seeing each other, not even knowing
where the other was. And I just can’t
take that! She’s gone because she put
her career over me! I told her I’d
quit, that I’d be with her so we could have a… a family,” he sobbed, gripping
the counter edge for support. Through
it all, I’d kept a hand over my mouth and not made a sound. I thought he would stop, thought he would
realize that he was telling his troubles to a near stranger, but he
didn’t. He just kept crying and
talking. “But now I’ll never have a
family! I can’t do this, I… I-” he
wailed, breaking down, putting his face in his hands and letting the tears
come. I walked out from behind the
counter and got him a chair, not knowing what I should do. I gently pulled him into the chair and
handed him some Kleenex from the box on the counter. He wiped his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to control
himself. “I’m so sorry about… God, all
of this, but I feel like a part of me just died.” I looked at him and my eyes welled up. “Don’t be sorry. If I was
you I probably would’ve done the same thing,” I told him, wiping my eyes
quickly. “I’m going to get you a cup of
coffee, ok? And when I come back, we’ll get Tyk straightened out.” With that said, I hurried back into the
staff room and made two cups of coffee… strong coffee.
I led him back into the coffee
room and he sat down, taking the drink I offered him. We sat in silence while we drank, and I threw away my cup when I
was done. “I hate my job too, sometimes,”
I said, sitting back down. He stared at
me over his cup and I went on. “I hate
being the only one here, and I hate being so…nice to people all the time. I wish, just for a little while, that I
could take a break. I want a vacation
from it. I do the same thing every day,
and it gets so bad, so empty here sometimes I wanna quit, too. I want to and then I think about it. I may not have made much of a difference in
anyone’s life, but… I think the bad things about this job made me stronger, as corny
as that sounds.” I shrugged then, and
looked at him. His coffee was gone, and
he just sat there, cup in hand, listening to me. “How can you hate this?” he asked. “This is great. I would
trade all my days in music for one day when I was just ‘Brian’, and no one knew
who I was.” I shook my head. “ But you can’t, and that’s the point. You have to keep doing what you do. If you don’t realize how much better you
make some people’s lives, then take it from me. You matter, you count.”
A few minutes of quiet later,
Brian lifted his head again. “You said
you want a break?” he asked. I smiled
and nodded. Suddenly this little grin appeared
on his face. “I uh, don’t suppose you
know how to cook and clean, do you?” I
was taken aback at the question, but answered it anyway. “Uh, actually yeah I can,” I said, giving
him look of askance. He grinned again,
and tapped his hand on the table.
“Well, then I got an idea. When
me and the guys are in the Bahamas, we’re gonna be staying at this house by
ourselves. We’ve been lookin’ for
someone to cook and clean, so…” he waited, smiling. “What?” I asked. “Well,
if you want the job, you’ve got it.” My
jaw nearly fell off, and my eyes got as big as saucers. “You mean I’d be doin’ housework for
you?” He nodded, rubbing his face
sleepily. “Yeah. We’re gonna be there a month and a half, so
you’d have to take a leave of absence from your job, you know,” he said. I laughed a little, then told him , “I’d
have to quit!” I closed my eyes,
running options through my head. Stay
with Brian and… I couldn’t even imagine staying with all five of them. Staying with Brian over the summer, or
covering myself with dog hair every day.
I opened my eyes. “I’ll take
it,” I said, grinning. Brian stood
then. “Welcome to the crew.”