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When I opened the door, Alex was leaning in the door frame giving me a goofy smile that was all teeth. He was wearing a navy blue knit cap that made his eyes look even brighter. His jeans were pale blue, washed down to thin soft threads and spattered with bleach spots and ancient paint-stain freckles.

“Now, you sure are worth the wait,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the sides. His smile was kind and earnest, and I swore I could feel the warmth radiating from it. Joe pushed his head under Alex’s hand. “Hey, buddy!” Alex bent down to eye level with Joe and scratched him behind his ears. Joe’s tail wagged at warp speed, hitting my legs at every pass.

“He loves you,” I said. “I thought dogs hated the vet.”

“Well, he has good taste.” Alex winked at me. He was the only person I’d met who could make a wink look natural. “Get your shoes, cutie.” He gestured to my feet.

I waited, but there was no comment about the socks. I slid into my Air-walks, wishing I’d thought to find sexier shoes, or at least ones that weren’t ten years old and looking their age. Crouching down to tie my dirty laces, I noticed that Alex’s work boots were worn and creased and covered with paint stains like his jeans.

“What were you painting?” I stood up.

“Huh?”

I pointed to his boots.

“Oh, all sorts of stuff,” he said. “The office, my dad’s tool shed, my deck. That”-he picked his foot up and turned it to the side-“that blue there? That’s a bookshelf I painted for my grandma. Spilled the can all over the garage.” He laughed. “I should get new boots, but these are comfortable, you know?”

“I think my sneakers are ten years old,” I said, feeling better about my shoes.

“See, you get it. Nothing like broken- in shoes.”

When we got out to the car, Alex opened the passenger door for me and Joe and then ran around and slid into the driver’s seat. Joe sat between us, and licked the side of Alex’s face from chin to ear.

“Thanks, bud,” Alex said, laughing and wiping his face with the back of his hand. He rubbed Joe’s head, leaving the fur on his head standing straight up like a mini-Mohawk.

We laughed about Joe’s new punk hairstyle. I liked the sound of Alex’s laugh. I liked the way it felt to sit with him and Joe on the bench seat of his truck, like a little family. I fought to keep my thoughts from getting too far ahead of the situation. We were just going to take the dog for a walk. It was entirely possible that this meant nothing beyond that. Years of lusting after Peter-thinking every pat on the back, or arm brush, or knowing look meant surely he liked me as more than just a friend-created a complete lack of faith in my ability to ever have anyone seriously fall for me. So even while I was soaking in every minute with Alex, I couldn’t help but think that maybe he just felt bad for me, this pathetic woman who got drunk and bought a dog off the Internet. Maybe he saw me as a failure of a person and he was one of those missionary types who felt it necessary to step in and help. Maybe he was a dog zealot and didn’t want to see Joe end up at the pound. He was, after all, a vet. He obviously cared about Joe’s well-being. And after all the times I’d gotten my hopes up with Peter and been let down, I didn’t think I had it in me to hope too much anymore. It was better to call it what it most likely was: a guy who cares about dogs, helping out someone who doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.

“First things first,” Alex said, when we got to the parking lot at the canal path, over by the playground. “You cannot keep walking him on that backward leash contraption you’ve got going there.” He reached behind his car seat and pulled out a chain- link collar and a blue nylon leash. “My gift to you.” We got out of the truck. He slipped the collar over Joe’s head and hooked the leash on.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, embarrassed that I still hadn’t gotten around to getting Joe a real collar.

“Not a problem. I had an extra.”

He showed me how to hold the leash at my side, not giving Joe any slack, and we started walking.

“Do you have a dog?” I asked.

“Two,” Alex said. “Rosie and Tinsel.” He pulled out his wallet, flipped past a few business cards too fast for me to get a good look, and pointed to a picture of a chubby Golden Retriever and a small black and tan German Shepherd running in the grass. “Rosie’s the Golden,” he said. “Tinsel is probably a Shepherd like Joe. She’s a little small, but she doesn’t look like she’s got any other breeds going on.”

“Tinsel?”

“Yeah.” Alex blushed. “Mindy named her. Someone abandoned her on our doorstep a few days after Christmas last year. She was really sick. She had parvo, and she almost didn’t make it.”

“Oh,” I said, picturing him and Mindy in matching flannel pajamas waking up to find a puppy in a basket on their front porch. “Are you and Mindy together?” My voice got higher and squeakier with every word. “I didn’t realize you lived-”

“No, no!” Alex said. “We’re not together.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to keep a poker face, even though I was pretty sure I’d just shown all my cards.

“Someone abandoned Tinsel at the clinic. She was probably a holiday gift they couldn’t handle. Mindy found her in a cardboard box when she was opening up for the day. She was going to call a rescue group to try to help find her a home, but then her fiancé said he might take Tinsel when she got better. But I took Tinsel home with me the first night, because I worried she wasn’t going to make it, and then I couldn’t give her up. She worked her way in.” He smiled. “She was too tiny.” He held his hands out to show me that she was only about a foot long. “I wore a sweatshirt for days and walked around with her in the pouch pocket to keep her warm, like a kangaroo.”

“And she’s okay now?” I said, feeling like the little clamp on my heart that was trying to keep me from getting my hopes up was starting to crack, because how could you not get your hopes up about a guy who would spend days walking around with a puppy named Tinsel in the pocket of his sweatshirt?

“She’s on the small side,” he said, “but she’s perfectly healthy.”

We reached the end of the playground and I tried to get Joe to turn around with me. He didn’t want to move, and I ended up tripping over him. Alex caught me. His arms were solid. It didn’t feel like there was any chance that he’d drop me. He helped me find my balance.

“I was just wondering,” I said. “About Mindy. I didn’t mean to pry.” I rubbed the toe of my sneaker into the dirt, making a thick line. “I just-I mean, do you take all your clients to the park with their dogs?”

“No,” he said, resting his hand on the small of my back. “I don’t.” He took Joe’s leash from me. “Just you.”

He smiled and then looked down quickly and gave Joe’s leash a tug. “K nohe,” he said, firmly. Joe walked to Alex’s left side and sat down. “K nohe,” Alex said again. He clicked out the side of his mouth. Joe stood, and they walked in unison. When Joe started to stray, Alex would give his leash a tug and say the command again. I wondered if he knew all the Slovak commands already, or if he learned them just for me.

They got to the end of the playground and turned perfectly together. It was freezing. As soon as I stopped walking, I started shivering. I shoved my hands in my coat pockets and watched Alex and Joe walking back toward me. I felt funny making eye contact when they were so far away. I looked at Alex and he looked at me and then we both looked away. I watched Joe. He watched Joe. I looked at Alex and he looked at me. We looked away again.

By the time they got back to me, Alex’s face was beet red and there was no mistaking it. He gave Joe’s leash back to me, and his hand lingered on mine for much longer than necessary.

“Thanks,” I said, wrapping Joe’s leash around my hand.

“He’s been trained really well,” Alex said. “You can tell someone worked with him a lot. And he’s very eager to please. So, it’s just a matter of teaching you how to work his commands.”

“Are you saying I need training?”

Alex laughed and didn’t say anything.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said.

“I didn’t say a word,” Alex said, giving my arm a playful swat.

We spent about an hour going over Joe’s command sheet. Alex made sure I knew what each command meant, and how to make sure Joe adhered to good form. He was a good teacher. And so patient when I couldn’t get the footwork down to keep Joe in heel position. We did it again and again, and he explained and reexplained without the slightest hint of frustration. I wasn’t used to that kind of patience. Even my mom would have lost patience with me by the third or fourth time, but Alex just smiled and said, “Okay, now lead with your left.” And when I’d get confused again and lead with the right, he’d just say, “No, the other left” or “Almost. You’re so close.”

“It’s not that I don’t know my right from my left,” I said. “It’s just that my brain thinks left, and then I think about what Joe’s going to do, and then we start walking and my right foot moves instead of my left.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Alex said, jogging backward. “Stay there.”

Joe tried to follow, but I held him back and made him sit by my side.

When Alex got about twenty feet away from me, he stopped and called out, “Okay, you walk toward me, and just let Joe do his thing. Don’t think about Joe, just focus on me.”

And it was that easy. I looked at Alex, and it wasn’t awkward this time. I had permission to. I looked right in his eyes and he looked right in mine, and I imagined Alex and me drinking red wine in big globe glasses on a patio overlooking the Aegean Sea at sunset. Peter and Janie were nowhere to be found.

I made it all the way over to Alex without leading with the wrong foot or tripping over Joe, and after that, it was easy. We did it five or six more times, and Joe and I walked in perfect unison.

“You were just overthinking it,” Alex said. “Sometimes, you need to let go to get everything to work.” He knelt down next to Joe and rubbed the sides of his face. “You’re such a good boy!” Alex said.

Joe licked Alex’s chin and leaned against him. The fact that Joe was so at ease with him made me like Alex even more. I crouched down to pet Joe too. My hair fell in my eyes and Alex reached over and brushed it off my face with the tips of his fingers. He smiled. His face was very close to my face. He leaned in and I closed my eyes and waited for him to kiss me. The anticipation of feeling his lips on mine made my knees feel like they might stop working altogether. And then Joe knocked Alex over, pulled the hat right off Alex’s head, and ran across the field, leash trailing behind him.

“Damnit, Joe!” I yelled. Joe obviously was not the stellar wingman I’d thought he was.

Alex ran after Joe, who ran in zigzags, swerving to fake Alex out. Finally, Alex got close enough to grab Joe’s leash. Joe dropped the hat and jumped up to lick Alex’s cheek.

They came running back to me. “It’s impossible to stay mad at this guy, isn’t it,” Alex said, laughing. He shoved the hat in his jacket pocket.

We went back to working with Joe, but I couldn’t stop thinking about our almost kiss.