you can just throw it around without a hard consequence coming from it, but it’s up to you to be sensible about it, too. Saying to someone ‘go kill yourself’ meaning that you want them to shut up isn’t sensible, it’s very dangerous.”
That lesson lit a fire under me and made me even more determined to achieve the qualifications I needed to be a school guidance counselor. I wanted to help pull kids back from the edge, help them when they felt like they couldn’t breathe, and give them the gentle push they needed to maybe even be the person who did it for someone else in the future. So, I was working my ass off at the school, doing a course, and doing a part-time degree at college, too.
And I was exhausted.
That’s why, when Garrett asked me to go for a walk with him and Clyde today—who’d just graduated from his new extended canine protection course—I jumped at the chance. We were near Christmas, it was cooler in Texas, there was a slight frost on the ground, and the whole place looked beautiful.
Just behind Piersville Police Department was a wooded area that led to a small lake if you walked far enough. When I say walked far enough, it was about two miles, and there was no way I was going that far.
We’d driven to park up in front of P.V.P.D . so we could walk around the building, with Clyde being hyper-vigilant beside me as he sniffed the air and looked around us. My boy had grown and reached about four inches below my hip when he was on all fours. When he was on his hind legs, excitedly giving kisses or begging for one of his favorite treats, he was almost the same height as me, but he was still my baby.
“How’s your arm feeling?” Garrett asked as we entered the trees.
I’d discovered that my newly healed arm was like a weather warning system for rain and the cold. Holy shit, did it ache.
Still, holding it out in front of me, I twisted it from side to side, like I was proving there was nothing wrong with it. “Not too bad.”
“Does it still smell like cheese?” he teased, making me blush.
Okay, I had a good reason for that. When I’d had the cast taken off a while back, one of the techs who I’d never liked had been the one wielding the small electric saw to cut through it. He’d dropped the fucking thing twice before he’d pressed it on the cast, so I was slightly out of my mind by the time it came off.
My anxiety also wasn’t helped by the fact that I’d made the mistake of looking up how many cuts and accidental amputations happened while casts were being removed, and the information I’d found had kept me up for two nights. Just to make it even better, the helpful internet people even had photos of it all right there for my viewing pleasure.
I went into that appointment a wreck. I’m talking nerves, stress, and sleep deprivation so bad that the world seemed slightly unrealistic and weird. Because of that, I had less control of what came out of my mouth than usual, and the relief when I didn’t have someone sewing me back up after it made it even worse.
I’d walked out of the room holding my arm in the air like it was a championship trophy to where Garrett was sitting with Raoul and Rose and their newborn twins. They had a checkup appointment there that day, and when Rose found out I was at my one, she’d demanded that they find Garrett to keep him company. More like she wanted to see the end result…
Standing up, Garrett had walked over to hug me. “How does it feel?”
Holding it up to my face, I turned it around to look at it, wincing at how shriveled and pasty it looked. “It feels good to be free, but does it look a bit weird to you? Do you think it’ll stay this skinny for the rest of my life? Remember when Popeye ate spinach out of the can, and one arm would go muscly before the other one?”
All three of them snickered, but it was Rose who picked it up as we walked out and examined it. “No, you’ll get your spinach arms equal, girl, but you need to exercise it.”
All day it’d felt like I was walking through molasses and like the world