My phone rings at 10am.
"Hey. Come over, I made breakfast. Also, Grace* found a dog."
"What? What kind of dog?" I ask.
"Looks like a German Shepherd. He's smart. Just followed Grace home on her walk this morning."
"Ok. I'll be over in a few," I say, and hang up.
I brush my hair and teeth, slip on jeans, a tee-shirt, and flip flops, and don my mask for the three block walk over to the house where my boyfriend lives. With his ex-girlfriend.
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I knock on the fence door. Grace opens it for me while she holds onto this foreign doggo.
"Good morning! Watch out, he's a bolter!" she warns as I slip past her and the dog.
Will* meets me on the back step, motioning me to come in and eat. I step inside the house and slip off my shoes. Will kisses me, slaps me on the ass, and says, "Good morning!" He offers me an orange juice. He prepares my plate of eggs, sausage, and toast. We chat about the dog. When we're finished, we head back outside so Grace can eat breakfast and we can watch the dog.
This is normal, this eating in shifts. Sometimes Grace eats before we do, sometimes she joins us and the three of us settle down at the table together, like a weird, slightly uncomfortable throuple. Today, she eats last.
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"Are we still on for tonight?" I ask.
Tonight is the second episode of season three of Killing Eve, a show we all fell in love with during the first two weeks of this shelter-in-place order, when bingeing shows felt fun and novel.
"Yeah. Is it on at 6?" He confirms. A plan is made.
Grace finishes her breakfast and joins us outside. We all play with the dog. We all make guesses as to what kind of owner would give up such an expensive, well-mannered dog (he's a Belgian Malinois, probably no more than a year old, and lovable as fuck). We all throw out names, just in case Will and Grace decide to keep the dog. Will likes "Ronnie", as a sly nod to the Corona virus. Grace suggests "Kevin", and I'm totally on board with that, but not like in a "agree with the ex so she'll like me" way, more like "I'm an asshole who loves human names for animals" way.
I finish my coffee and get ready to head home for a few hours of work and Zoom catch-ups. Will takes the dog and skateboard and accompanies me to my place. We kiss on the street and he heads home for the afternoon, where he will deal with the ASPCA, the foreign dog, and lunch with his ex-girlfriend.
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I first met Grace nearly two months ago, at a bar in Long Beach. My boyfriend and I had been dating for about six months. I knew about Grace, in fact *had* known about Grace since my sixth date with Will. Typically that sixth date would have been a few weeks in, but we moved fast. I had known him for a week and we had already spent a ridiculous amount of time together. As far as I knew, Will had a roommate who was kind enough to care for his dogs when he went on tour. What a score, I thought. And then, during a dinner date at the park overlooking the Queen Mary, he confessed that his roommate was not, in fact, just a roommate, but his ex-girlfriend.
"But we split up in January," he assured me. It was August.
"If you want to be done with me, I totally understand," he said. "But I want you to know we're over. If there is a red flag, it's not that I live with my ex-girlfriend, but that I wasn't honest about it from the beginning," he said.
I was stunned. He looked at me expectantly. I sat on a rock overlooking the marina and thought, "I could just push him in and be done with it." And then I sighed. He seemed like a good dude. He didn't seem like an asshole. Was I really going to write him off because real estate in Southern California was fucking cutthroat?
And so we decided to tentatively give this whole thing a try. And hilarity (and tears and frustration and a whole lotta grace) ensued.
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