About Buster

 The rusted sedan felt like a spaceship carrying him to a new life. Jules hadn’t just fallen for Lauren; he had launched himself into her orbit, leaving the dusty ground of his own identity behind. He moved in after three months, intoxicated by the whirlwind. She was a force, all sharp laughter and sharper opinions. He, desperate for a center, happily let her become his.

His one hesitation was the dog. Buster was a common breed mongrel, a scruffy, barrel-chested mutt with anxious eyes and a habit of shedding on black clothing. Lauren loved him in bursts, between her busy shifts and social life. So, Buster became Jules’s by default. Their relationship started with reluctant walks. Jules would trudge behind, lost in thoughts of Lauren, while Buster strained at the leash, chasing smells Jules couldn't perceive.

The cracks in the relationship with Lauren appeared quickly, papered over with frantic passion and Jules’s increasing acquiescence. He stopped playing guitar because she found it “whiny.” He saw his friends less because she said that “he cared about them more”. He became an echo, a satellite, his own light dimmed.

Throughout it all, Buster was a constant, quiet presence. On the nights Lauren worked late, Jules would find the dog resting his head on his foot, a warm, heavy weight. He started talking to him, silly one-sided conversations about his day, his doubts, the dreams he’d packed away. Buster would just listen, his tail thumping a soft, steady rhythm on the floor. The walks became the best part of his day, a silent communion where Jules could just breathe.

The end wasn’t a dramatic explosion, but a slow, cold leak. Lauren said he was “too much” and “not enough,” all at once. She needed space, she said. Her space, as it turned out, did not include him. “And just take the dog,” she’d added, almost as an afterthought. “He acting like is yours anyway.”

The eviction felt like a physical blow. He packed his life back into his old sedan, the married life went from dream to a distant, embarrassing memory. Buster sat in the passenger seat, confused, whining softly as they drove away from the only home he’d known.

The first few weeks in his sterile, rented room were a gray fog. Jules was adrift, the pain of the breakup a raw, open nerve. But Buster needed walking. He needed feeding. He needed to be let out at 6 AM, regardless of how little Jules had slept. The dog’s needs were a tether, pulling Jules, kicking and screaming, back into the routine of living.

On those walks, in the quiet of the early morning park, something began to shift. Without Lauren’s voice in his head, he started to hear his own. He remembered he liked his coffee black, not with the sugar and cream she preferred. He dug out his guitar from a box, and the first chord he played sounded like coming home. He started saying “no” to things he didn’t want to do, and the world didn’t end.

He wasn’t just walking Buster anymore; they were walking together. He learned the specific tilt of Buster’s head that meant he’d seen a squirrel, the happy prance that meant he was heading to the park. He bought a book on dog training and taught him to “sit” and “stay,” the small victories filling them both with a quiet pride. He loved the way Buster would lean against his legs while he played guitar, a living, breathing amplifier of contentment.

One evening, sitting on the floor of his apartment surrounded by a few more belongings and a lot more peace, Jules looked at Buster, snoring softly with his head in Jules’s lap. He stroked the coarse, familiar fur and felt a surge of love so pure it startled him.

It wasn’t the frantic, desperate love he’d had for Lauren. A love that asked him to disappear. This was different. This love had grown from showing up, from being responsible, from learning another creature’s heart and, in the process, rediscovering his own.

Lauren had sent him away with what she saw as a burden. She had, without knowing it, given him the very thing that would save him. In learning to care for Buster, Jules had finally learned to care for himself. The wrong woman had, in her own broken way, set him on the path to the right life. He had his dog, his guitar, and for the first time in a long time, he had himself. It was more than enough.