Page 31 of Venus

The shelter smells like wet dog, bleach, and pet food. Like hope and heartbreak all in one.

Dogs are barking from every direction. Some are bouncing off the walls from the sight of visitors.

Others are tucked tightly into the corners of their little cages, their big wet eyes screaming terror.

Some are cautiously approaching the steel doors to see what the commotion is about, defeated but hopeful.

I’ve got one arm thrown casually over Victoria’s shoulder, both of us stopped in our tracks, staring through the bars of a kennel marked with a bright orange laminated sign:

Bonded Pair. Must Be Adopted Together. Bad With Children.

Inside, two pit bulls sit curled up like two halves of the same heart. Like if one moves, the other will move with them.

The bigger of the two, a male, tan in color, looks back at us with wide eyes and a heavy thump of the tail.

His tongue lolls out like he’s waiting to be called a ‘good boy’.

The other, a smaller, steel-grey female stays cautiously pressed against her brother, tail tucked in tightly next to her chunky body.

“They’ve been here a while,” the animal shelter worker says. “It’s hard enough finding someone willing to adopt one pit, but two? They’re the sweetest babies in this shelter, though, and very loyal.”

“They’re perfect,” I say. I look down at V, who has loosened herself from my grip and is squatting by the cage, beckoning the larger one over.

He happily wags his tail but positions himself protectively between her and his sister.

He pokes his nose through the bars and gives Victoria a sniff and a lick before going wild in the cage, jumping and wagging and barking.

His excitement causes his sister to raise her head, and ever so cautiously, she gets closer and closer.

At her own pace, she carefully sniffs the both of us, and then she sits.

Just sits. No indication of any excitement, but it's a very small sign of trust, and we couldn’t ask for anything more.

V has a soft look in her eyes, tears filling her vision as she stares at the two pits, and her smile tells me everything I need to know.

“We’ll take them,” I say to the worker, and the best sound I hear all day is the little bell she rings at the front desk, twice, to show that two dogs have found a new forever home.

Our house isn’t much, but it’s ours. A little two-bedroom home, built in the early 1900’s, with creaky floors and misaligned closet doors.

The backyard is huge, and the neighbors are quiet.

We’re still in Terracotta, but on the outskirts where we have distance from the bustle of a busy small town, but still close enough to see the people we love.

The first few days with our new dogs are like heaven on earth. The male, who we named Nacho Cheese, took to the place like he owned it. He loves to be all over us, constantly. Every time you move, he moves, his tail wagging like a jet engine.

The girl though, named Cool Ranch, was a lot more wary of the house and her new family. She kept to herself mostly, enjoying her alone time in her little purple bed.

But one day, she decided that Victoria was safe, and now she sticks to her like glue. She loves me fine, and gives me plenty of kisses and snuggles, but I’m definitely the spare human in this case. My girls stick together, and that’s more than okay with me.

The sounds of their claws on the hardwood is as normal as breathing.

So is their snoring.

Our home is full and beautiful, complete with the four of us. I’ve never been happier.

It’s been a year since I lost Trevor.

A year since I lost my best friend. A year since I watched him disappear under smoke and steel. A year since I tried to save him, and failed .

I made it out. He didn’t. And that’s still impossible to accept to this day.

Therapy helped. A lot. Not right away, though. Not magically, and certainly not without some resistance from me.

But little by little, I got used to letting myself be vulnerable in my grief. In my guilt. In my fear. In the way that grief hollowed me out and left me just a little bit more rigid and sharp than I was before.

Some days I didn’t say enough. Some days I said too much. Sometimes I didn’t speak at all.

Victoria kept gently pushing me to stay consistent with my appointments, but she never asked for information I wasn’t willing to share. She was there for me, but in a way that gave me quiet strength. A crutch to lean on while I learned to live with this hole in my chest again.

I still think of Trevor, and it still hurts. A photo of him, Jackson and I at our fire academy graduation sits on the table where we dump our house keys. His arms are slung over our shoulders, and we’re grinning like idiots ready to face anything the world is willing to throw at us.

I see that photo every time I leave and every time I come home. I don’t know if I could handle that if I didn’t also come home to her .

My Venus. My Victoria.

She’s never once run. Not even when I was at my worst. She kept showing up in my bed. And eventually, without even realizing it, her clothes were there. Her toothbrush was there. Her dirty scrubs landed in my washing machine, and I kept finding long blonde strands wrapped around my nuts.

That’s when I knew it was forever.

One night in late spring, we’ve got citronella candles burning while we sit out on the back porch while Nacho Cheese chases brave rabbits through the backyard and Cool Ranch is curled up by our feet.

“Hey, V?” I say while I absently stroke her shoulder, barely pulling her attention from her mystery novel. She hums for me to continue. “I used to think life had a checklist. Marriage, kids, you know, the perfect little American Dream every country boy is expected to have.”

Victoria eyes me suspiciously over the top of her novel. “And now?”

“Now I think life isn’t something you can just…

have. It’s all of these tiny little choices we make that seem inconsequential at the time, but when you put them together, they give us…

well, us . And losing Trevor really put into perspective just how…

scary and unexpected things can get. I realized that chasing happiness in the future makes you miss out on everything you have now .

I learned that all I want, I already have. You. The dogs. A good career.”

She sets her book down and holds my hands.

“I know what you mean about the unexpected. When Jackson led me to the ER and I saw you that day…all I could think about was if you died, how much I would have regretted not loving you more. I never wanted to waste another minute with you, pretending my feelings weren’t there.

Sometimes I still get scared of the future, but our now is worth it. ”

I grin and say in a sing-songy voice: “Right here right now.”

“Oh God,” V playfully gags. “Did you really just reference High School Musical? Divorce. I’m taking the dogs.”

“What’s really worse? The fact that I referenced it, or the fact that you immediately recognized it?”

She glares at me, picks an ice cube out of her sweet tea, and shoves it down the back of my shirt. I laugh and grab one of my own, dropping it down the neck of her own shirt and getting it stuck in her bra.

We run into the yard and start chasing each other with ice cubes, our pits trailing behind to clean up the mess. Fireflies light up the air around us and the sun dips behind the horizon. The porch light flicks on automatically in the darkness.

V runs at me with her last ice cube and I catch her in my arms, spinning her in a circle in a fireman’s carry until she’s dizzy and begging me to stop. I set her on her feet and hold her.

Then I look at her. Really look at her.

This life isn’t what I thought I wanted. It’s better. Not because it was easy getting here, but because it’s real. It’s ours. It’s messy and earned .

And I’ll take this over any fairytale ending.

Or in our case, a mythological one.