Page 78 of Karma Kitty Christmas

She smacked him. “Oh my God, Milo. You aresomuch smarter than that. That’s your problem. You could neverseewhy you were better than Stuart on any given day. He never deserved you.”

“He was rich, he was handsome, he was—”

“A fucking putz,” she said viciously. “Stuart was a fucking putz. Screw him.” She scowled. “He was your first big relationship postcollege, and I get it. He was your Calvin.”

Milo scowled back. “I still maintain that man would have looked a lot better with a price on his head.”

She nodded, her short black curls dancing around strong features and snapping brown eyes. “Nowyou’re seeing my side of the Stuart equation.” She stood on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek, and because she was Mari, she didn’t bother to wipe her lipstick. That was her claim to Milo right there. He was hers for life.

Then she was gone, leaving him alone with Julia, who stared at him with the same sort of interest he was showing her.

“You ready to explore the backyard?” he asked dubiously, but when he picked her leash up from the kitchen chair, she trotted right to his feet, ready to do just that. He grabbed a roll of poop bags and headed for the sliding glass door, ready to embark on his new adventure.

Stuart, he thought grimly, would havehatedthis dog.

He was pretty sure he loved her already.

A WEEKlater, he knew he did—although he was also sure she was trying to kill him.

Following Mari’s carefully made schedule, he’d been taking her walking at the nearby park in the morning. The first day he’d had to stop every ten feet because apparently your body didn’t forgive you for going to bed for two months and not getting up. The second day he’d hurt even more, but by the third he’d figured out that Julia had a… glitch.

She was fine, sort of. She didn’t mind the leash, but she didn’t understand it. She’d race behind him to sniff from the retaining wall to the grass or to scope out what was on the side of the walkway that looped around the park. Once she’d almost castrated him when she’d been behind him—and he’d had his arm behind his shoulder to accommodate that—and she’d seen a squirrel cross his path on the walk.

And then right when he thought he had a handle on how to get her to walk by his side, the leash would fall gently across her posterior, and she’d stop. Just stop, like a game of freeze tag with rules only she knew.

Milo tripped on her once and went sprawling, and she’d huddled abjectly under the leash, looking like she expected him towhipher with it.

He’d sat in the middle of the sidewalk and pet her until she stopped shaking, and then, unmindful of the blood on his palms or the holes in his old high school sweats, he’d picked her up and carried her the rest of the way.

So he was a little desperate the next day. For one thing, he wouldn’t be able to take her walking the day after. It was the in-house day at his ad firm, and while he’d bought a sort of dog box and put a dog bed in it, which she seemed to take comfort in when he was home and could leave the door open, he wasn’t sure she’d be so comfortable locked in the thing for an eight-hour day. He was contemplating barricading her in the kitchen with the dog-box cage thingy so she could maybe do less damage to the couch and the coffee table, but he still didn’t like the idea of leaving her alone. Should he maybe leave the television on?

So whatever he was going to do, he needed to make suretodaywas a good day. Which was why, as he walked around the completely empty park, he had an idea. He took her to the middle of one of the soccer fields first, hoping that if this went horribly wrong, he’d be able to get a head of steam on her and body tackle her if he needed to.

Then he unhooked her lead.

She sat there untroubled and gazed at him, waiting for further instructions.

Then he wandered down toward the walkway, and she… well, wandered with him. She was fine. She’d run up ahead a little, then stop and smell the flowers or the sticks or the otherdog’s pee, and then wait for him to catch up. It was…pleasant.It wasblissful.She wasso good.

And then the most magnificent thing happened. The park had several sections, all of which were looped by the walking/riding path. He and Julia wandered the whole of the loop, from a rise on which picnic tables and bathrooms and a child’s play area were set up, down past the soccer field, around a little wooded area, and around and back up the rise. On the other side of the rise was another soccer field, bracketed by a tennis/pickleball area way down the parking lot.

On this day as the sun leveled itself on the misty October field, Milo topped the rise by the picnic area and was confronted with, of all things,turkeys.A good two dozen of them!

At first he was amused. Oh my God, lookit the lot of them! Then he was horrified. Oh no, Julia!

Frantically he grabbed for her collar as she buzzed past his shins and onto that calm, strangely bucolic field of oblivious wild birds.

“Julia!” he called frantically, charging after her. Oh no! She’d eat them! Or they’d eat her! Or—oh God, oh—

“Oh my stars,” he breathed. “Lookit yougo!”

She never caught one. She wasn’t even trying. She just raced from turkey to turkey, barking until the birds scattered, running from one end of the field to the other. She was sohappy!

Milo stood, helpless to stop her, and watched a creature absolutely in her element, and while heshouldhave felt bad for the turkeys, all he could think was that his dog was happy.Sohappy.

Without warning, a laugh snuck up his body, shaking his stomach until it ached, and hehowledwith it, feeling as happy and as free as his idiot dog—and for all he knew, as the turkeys, who once they stopped running, didn’t seem particularly bothered by her.

He laughed until she slowed down and trotted to his side, panting happily. He put the lead back on her, a day late and a dollar short, perhaps. But still….

He’d forgotten how drunk you could get, how intoxicated, how shitfaced silly and oblivious, all by another creature’s joy.