flipflop_diva

Lara was lonely. Desperately lonely. All she wanted in the world was a friend. The type of friend she could tell anything to, who wouldn’t judge, who would always listen, who would always be there. Someone to help fill the dark, empty corners of her life.

“You have friends!” her mother always laughed when Lara would mention this desire to her.

“Yeah,” Lara would reply, because it was no use explaining to her mom that it wasn’t the same. That she had dozens of superficial friends, but not the friends she dreamed about. She had coworkers she laughed with as they made coffees and passed out muffins, people she traded messages with on social media, even a few she texted now and then who had once been the type of friend she was looking for before their lives had diverted. But she didn’t have a friend. Not a real, true friend who understood her like no one else.

But Lara wished she had. She was desperately lonely.

She was on shift at the coffee shop up the street from her apartment the night it happened. The door crashed open, and a rain-soaked man carrying what looked at first like a bundle of wool hurried inside. He dumped his bundle on a table, and Lara blinked as she realized it was actually a dog. A dog with long, dirty, untamed hair and wild untamed eyes that appeared to be looking in three directions at once and gave the impression that this dog had seen some things in its years.

“Sir, I’m so sorry,” said Marlena, Lara’s coworker who had obviously found her voice before Lara had. “We don’t allow animals in here.”

The man frowned. “But he belongs here,” he said, sounding confused.

“Sir, this is a coffee shop,” Marlena said patiently, but the man was already digging through his pocket, pulling out a wrinkled piece of paper and doing his best to unfold it.

“He has a chip. I had him scanned,” the man said, finally getting the paper to lay flat. “This was the address listed.” He pointed at the paper, and both Lara and Marlena squinted at it from behind the counter. Indeed, the address of the coffee shop was listed right there next to the line labeled address. The rest of the contact information, however, was blank.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” Marlena said again. “But we’ve never seen that dog before. You can’t keep him here.”

The dog, who until then had just been lying on the table where the man left him, now turned his head to look over at Marlena and half whimpered half growled as though he thought she had no idea what she was talking about.

“He belongs here,” the man insisted. “I’m returning him to you.”

“Sir, you can’t,” Marlena tried again, but the dog growled again, and the man was already backing away, hands raised.

“He’s not mine,” the man said, and then as fast as he had come, he was gone. The dog howled just a little and flopped his short stubby tail on the table. Marlena looked at Lara helplessly.

“What the fuck are we going to do with this dog?” she said.

“Maybe he belongs to someone who used to work here?” Lara offered tenuously. She decided to venture out from behind the counter, see if the little fella had a name.

“I’ve been here for close to twenty years,” Marlena said. “And I sure as heck haven’t seen anything like this dog before.”

The dog looked up again and growled. Lara made her way over to him.

“Hey buddy,” she said softly. “Do you have a name?”

The dog studied her with his crazy eyes, like he was sizing her up, and then to Lara’s surprise, he rolled over on his back, all four paws waving in the air, tongue lolling from his mouth, but there, under his long strands of gray hair was a very thin, faded yellow collar. Attached to it was a gold buckle with a piece of tape over it.

Chunky.

“Chunky?” Lara repeated. The dog woofed happily and jumped to his feet. “Your name is Chunky?” Lara said to him. The dog woofed again.

“Huh,” said Marlena, and then Lara opened her mouth, and before she could even register deciding to do it, the words were there in the air, floating around the coffee shop.

“I’ll take him home.”

“You do that,” Marlena said quickly. “Great idea.”

“Until we figure out who really owns him,” Lara said.

“Sure, whatever you say, honey,” Marlena said. She looked around the coffee shop, as though she expected some of their nonexistent nightly customers to be hiding under a table. Apparently sure that no one was, she added, “Why don’t you just take him home now? I’ll cover for you with the boss.”

Lara hesitated. She really didn’t want to get in trouble for leaving early, but Marlena looked genuine, and she had never lied to Lara before.

“Okay,” Lara said. She looked to the dog. “Do you, uhhh, want to come home with me?” she asked, as if the dog would know what she meant.

Except at her words, the dog leapt off the table and right into her arms, woofing happily. Lara wrinkled her nose. Close up, Chunky smelled a little like raw sewage. But well, she supposed she probably smelled a lot like coffee beans.

The first night with Chunky was a challenge. He refused to get in the warm shower unless Lara got in too, and then once she did, he bounded out, running down the hall and shaking drops of water everywhere. Lara practically had to wrestle him back into the bathroom and double lock the bathroom door so he wouldn’t escape. An hour later, they both had wet, soapy hair and the bathroom looked like it would never be dry again, but the smell of raw sewage was gone.

After that, Lara thought things would be better. But Lara was wrong.

Chunky growled at the ice maker on the refrigerator, barked furiously at the toaster, refused to eat the kibble Lara got him from the corner store and instead stole the ham sandwich she had gotten for herself and then decided he wanted to sleep on top of her head. Literally. His paws were over her eyes, and his wet, furry body was on her head. Lara thought she might suffocate before morning. Instead, she woke up with about an inch of space on the right side of her queen bed, only to find Chunky had taken the rest as his own, stretched out in all directions, like a dog playing dead.

The vet she took him to in the morning blinked suspiciously at him, especially when Chunky growled at the chair in the examination room and batted the dog treat from the vet’s hand like he thought the doctor was going to poison him. He did, however, allow for an exam, and the vet declared him healthy as could be.

“He’s a strange one,” the vet said. “But he’s physically just fine.”

Lara didn’t ask if that meant he wasn’t mentally or emotionally fine. She had a feeling the answer might not be yes, and she really wasn’t sure they had therapists for dogs like Chunky.

That night, Lara created some “FOUND DOG” posters to put up around the coffee shop and her apartment, though her enthusiasm for posting them wasn’t as strong as she thought it should be.

“If you belong to someone,” she told Chunky. “Then they should be able to have you back.”

Chunky growled at her computer mouse as though he thought that was a horrible idea.

For the next few weeks, Lara dutifully hung posters of Chunky in the coffee shop and around the neighboring streets, on every lamppost and apartment bulletin board she could access. And every night she went home where she felt her heart hammer in her ears each time her phone popped up with a number she didn’t recognize.

For his part, Chunky continued his feud with the toaster and the ice maker. He also had issues with the coffee maker, the microwave, Lara’s favorite mug (the one with the dog who had just woken up) and her red tennis shoes. He found himself a home in the blankets on the bed, the couch cushions and Lara’s favorite fuzzy purple slippers. Although he managed to get the latter stuck over his head a few times and proceeded to race around the apartment, bumping into walls and furniture like a faceless purple monster.

Two months after Lara had first taken Chunky home, she was packing up for the night after her coffee shop shift when Marlena appeared next to her, her hands full of papers. She dropped them down in front of Lara, who saw they were all the posters of Chunky she had put up. Lara looked up into Marlena’s eyes.

“No one’s coming for him, honey,” Marlena said gently. “That little weirdo is yours. He doesn’t belong to anyone else.”

Lara felt a smile blossom over her face as she dumped the papers in a dumpster outside her apartment and then raced inside to see her own weird little dog. That night, as the two of them lay in bed, Chunky’s feet playing the piano on her spine, Lara realized something: She wasn’t lonely. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time in the past two months that she had been lonely, and the thought made her heart swell with warmth.

Sure, his fur was too long. Sure, he was a bit crazy. Or maybe more than a bit. Sure, he hogged the bed and still refused to eat the many different kinds of kibble she bought him, but he was here and he was hers and she knew without a doubt that he loved her.

So what if he wasn’t the type of friend, or the type of dog, anyone would envision as being most worth it? He would never get top money for his quality, but he was the exact perfect friend she needed.

And, she hoped, she was the exact perfect friend he needed as well.

Fiction.

This was written for the new season of

therealljidol, Wheel of Chaos! If you liked my entry, please consider voting for me or any of the other amazing contestants. You can find all the entries here. Looking for the voting post on Saturday night!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

erulissedances

Perfect friends perfectly matched for each other. Nice!

- Erulisse (one L)

fausts_dream

I'll be voting for this among others this week I'm a sucker for a good dog story.

muchtooarrogant

I enjoyed your story. A few months ago, my daughter found a puppy on the side of the road leading into her subdivision, and like Lara, once no one claimed him, kept him for herself. A hog of bed space, check. Dislike of almost all kibble, check.

Dan