Free The Dogs of Christmas by Cameron W Bruce

lowered her eyes to her food. “Yeah, sorry. I just … right, look, I seem to have a talent for finding men with substance abuse issues, maybe because my mom made me blind to it. And I met you and I thought finally here’s a normal guy instead of someone all emotionally damaged, or an addict, or both. But I needed to check because usually the first I find out about it is one day I stumble upon all these pills—prescription, of course, all with prescriptions.” Her mouth twisted as a bitter memory came and went. “So I just thought I’d cut to the chase. I get that it was wrong and everything.”
    A small smile twitched onto Josh’s lips. A talent for finding men, she’d said. He liked the way she’d put that, like he was a man that she had found.
    “Sorry. I know it’s not my business,” she apologized.
    He felt pretty good about the whole conversation, needing only to clear up one misunderstanding. “And the reason I don’t sleep in my parents’ room is just because I like to sleep in my room, where I grew up,” he explained. “I like opening my eyes and seeing the dent I put in the ceiling with a Star Wars saber, and looking out at the same trees.”
    This sounded perfectly reasonable to Josh, but she was looking oddly at him. “What?” he finally asked.
    “I’m just thinking I can’t imagine having such a wonderful childhood that I’d want to relive any part of it,” Kerri said simply.
    Now Josh wanted to reach out and touch her hand. Before he could act on the impulse, she pulled it away and looked at her watch. “I need to go.” Kerri signaled to the waitress.
    “Um…” Josh just didn’t want this to be over yet. “Want to walk around the lake? It’s such a pretty day. Just, like, for a few minutes?” he suggested desperately.
    “Fine,” Kerri agreed, shrugging like it was nothing.
    The waitress set the bill in front of Kerri and Josh grabbed it as if snatching a pistol away from a child. “Thanks for lunch,” Kerri said, smiling.
    Evergreen Lake would have been called a pond in most other states, but in water-starved Colorado, if you couldn’t empty it with a bucket, it was a lake. Enthusiasts fished and canoed the forty acres of cold water, and only a local ordinance kept people from running power boats on the thing. A barely perceptible breeze was enough to stir the sun’s reflection into dancing sparkles as they walked the path encircling the green water, Josh keeping his pace slow to make the time last as long as possible. They talked about the puppies, which as far as Josh was concerned was better than discussing Amanda but not nearly as interesting as this idea that Kerri had a talent for “finding” the wrong sort of men but that, in Josh, she had not .
    Josh had met Amanda as a set-up, a have I got a girl for you thing that his friends Wayne and Leigh put together. Josh remembered driving over to his friends’ house, full of dread, knowing the night would be the worst on record. Leigh thought that just because she made Wayne happy, Josh only needed a girl and then he’d be happy, too. She’d brushed away Josh’s protests that he already was happy: he didn’t have a girlfriend, so, in Leigh’s mind, he must be miserable.
    Leigh seemed to have an endless supply of friends for whom Josh would be perfect (and vice versa), though previous attempts had missed perfection by a considerable measure.
    Amanda was standing by the fireplace in the small living room, talking to Wayne in a forced-casual fashion, as if they hadn’t all been waiting tensely for Josh to pull in the driveway. Josh entered the house carrying a bottle of wine and was giving Leigh a glare, trying to frown the manic enthusiasm from her face, when Amanda turned around and Josh’s heart froze in his chest.
    That’s how Josh knew how to meet women: Leigh would find them and Wayne would say his wife was driving him crazy and that Josh needed to come over for dinner so Leigh would shut up about it. The