Victoria laid in bed, her eyes following the black wall clock. She thought it was a good decision when she first placed the clock directly across from the bed. She was an avid reader and enjoyed reading books before bed every night. With the clock right next to the bed, she would know when it was time to put the book away and turn in for the night.

What was once a seemingly great idea, was now a reminder of the crushing loneliness which had befallen her. The ticking of an alarm clock served as a reminder, every second on the nose, of how heart-wrenchingly lonely Victoria had become. Sometimes she would find herself struggling to count the seconds that would go by, which were marked by the audible ticking of the clock.

She sighed. She couldn’t help but wonder if anyone would care enough to ask what was wrong, if another living soul could see her face or hear the deep sadness in her voice.

She could hear her husband laughing and saying things like, “I got 3 R’s, the letter R, it’s a movie title with 3 R’s…Remember the Titans? Really, Jerry, come on, If I’d have been there I would have won the game already.” She could hear the frustration in her husband’s voice. Victoria knew that he’d never make the effort to go on any of his favorite game shows. After all, that would require saving a little bit of money and hopping on an Airplane to go out to Los Angeles.

When she was younger, Victoria had gone on a family trip to Los Angeles with her loved ones, and fell in love with with the City of Angels. She’d often dreamed of going back as an adult. However, due to her husband’s lavish spending on things like video games, superhero comic books, and knick-knacks from Hot Topic, most of the money that she made at her consulting firm job would be gone after she paid for essentials, such as the need to keep the lights on in their home and food in their stomachs. She popped a Xanax before she could really begin to contemplate her poor life choices.

Victoria woke to a very annoying beeping sound which was, of course, her alarm clock. She turned to her husband who was now fast asleep beside her, rumbling some unintelligible nonsense about it being Saturday and why would she want to wake up before 9 on a Saturday morning.

Victoria was hoping the annoyance that she felt would not come through in her voice, and simply replied, “honey, it’s okay, I’ll go get us some breakfast, I can walk to the burger joint from here. I’ll be back in 10 minutes with your usual fries and gravy, and you want cream and extra sugar in your coffee, right?”

The still sleeping man muttered something unintelligible. She could still hear the zombie-like sounds coming from the sleeping man who rubbed his hand across the back of his wife, as she was heading out the bedroom door and down the creaking stairs. She slammed the door behind her, half expecting the glass pane in the door to fall out of its cocoon and shatter into a million pieces.

Victoria was right: she could walk to the McDonald’s from her apartment, she could practically see the driveway. While Victoria was close to the establishment, she felt around in her pocket, trying to find the crumpled up $20 bill that she discovered while cleaning under the couch cushions exactly 7 days before. Her attempt to find it by fiddling around with the pocket of her sweatshirt was getting her nowhere, so she began to walk back, her head pointed toward the snow-covered ground.

“Hey!” she heard someone shout, “you dropped this!”

A small little boy, whose beautiful green eyes were covered up by his red hair freckles, smiled at her. She smiled back. He was adorable, missing a few teeth. The little boy went to hand her the money back, and when she turned around to face him, she discovered that he was holding a puppy. A very genuine joyful giggle erupted from Victoria. “I love puppies!” she said.

“Would you like one?” the little boy asked. He had the look of sadness plastered across adorable his face. “My mom says we have to get rid of the puppies. 5 puppies is too many puppies.”

“How much?” Victoria’s eagerness, for a moment, took over any semblance of rational thought. Before she knew it, she was holding a tiny little caramel colored puppy in her arms.

When the little boy’s mother arrived on the front porch, she had been watching from the front door, as to keep an eye on her son who wanted to make sure that the dogs went to a good home. He was confident that he could do them by himself.

“Lucas,” the tall woman with red hair said with a beautiful white smile, “who is this woman, and is she here for the puppies?”

“My name is Victoria, and yes, I am here because I want to adopt puppies. I only came out to get breakfast, but a new friend would be great too,” she said, as she gazed at the puppy with a genuine look of adoration.

“How much, what do you like for the puppy?” Victoria asked.

“I think he’ll be very happy with you, and because I know that you already seemed to have hit it off with him, you can take him for free.”

Victoria dug around in her pocket again, and as luck would have it, she was able to find just what she was looking for, she found two Reese’s fun size peanut butter cups in her pocket.

I’ll trade you, she said, placing them in the tiny hand of her new friend.