The Puppy Problem

by Katie Meyer

  “She dragged me kicking and screaming,” Val answered, smiling warmly at him.

  “She’s not even exaggerating.” Olivia jabbed her thumb at Val. “She was still swearing at me as we were coming up from the parking lot.”

  “I don’t swear. That’s all you.”

  “Like hell you don’t,” Olivia retorted.

  Caio laughed at them both. “You two don’t change, like two perritas always barking at each other. You having dinner or just going straight to the back?”

  “No dinner tonight,” Olivia answered.

  “I’ll let you in without the cover. It’s gonna be packed anyway.”

  “Ooh, your stingy cousin isn’t going to pitch a fit?” Olivia asked.

  “You gonna tell her?” He hugged them both, practically lifting Val off the ground. “It’s good to see you, mama. I’m glad you didn’t let that guy keep you down.”

  Val’s stomach knotted at the mention of her ex. Luke had been a roller-coaster ride, with his on-again/off-again commitment to her, his betrayal and public humiliation. It would be a lie to say she didn’t miss the intimacy of having a steady boyfriend. The late Sunday mornings spent in bed, or having a ready partner to dance with when she craved a night out. But the trade-off—her peace of mind for the exhausting vigilance required to keep Luke’s attention from wandering off—was more than she was willing to make again. She’d wasted two years on that man and spent an additional eight months recovering after she’d found out she was nothing more than his side piece. In public. Right here, of all places. Practically in her house. No wonder she’d stayed away until tonight.

  She patted Caio’s shoulder. “He did for a little while, but it’s all good now.”

  “Hope so. You didn’t deserve the way he did you.” He stepped aside. “Have a good time tonight.”

  They bypassed the restaurant, heading toward the club proper. The outdoor patio area looked out over a promontory, yielding a view of Riverside Park across the river in Manhattan. Here, the music was a rhythmic backdrop that still permitted conversation. Wooden beams crisscrossed overhead, while the glass walls opened to allow the river air to float in on warmer nights like tonight.

  Val and Olivia glided through different groups of people. Val recognized almost everyone in the club, either because she’d gone to school with them, hosted them at the community meetings or served them at Navarro’s Family Restaurant, which she owned together with her father.

  Val slowed her approach to the dance floor as her heart rate soared. “I’m so freaked out.”

  Olivia put an arm around Val’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’ll get your groove back. Give yourself a chance.”

  Olivia got on Val’s last nerve most of the time, but Val could count on her cousin to have her back. She always could, ever since they were little kids, running amok in the neighborhood. Val couldn’t say that about many people. She’d trusted Luke, thought he might have her back, as well. But it had been a lie, and she’d learned her lesson too well: you couldn’t let people get that deep under your skin. If you did, you were giving them the power to destroy you.

  Val swallowed her anxiety. She could do this. She could enjoy herself here, even after everything that had happened. Clutching at the rosary she always wore, the one that had belonged to her late mother, she closed her eyes and let the beat of a slow bachata settle into her bones. As she swayed, her heart relented, beating as if in time with the music. She missed this. It had been ages since she danced, and the last time had been with Luke.

  She needed to stop thinking about that faithless jerk. Not tonight. Tonight belonged to her.

  She closed her eyes, immersing herself in the music, until someone tapped her on the shoulder. She opened her eyes to Rosario Villanueva, the owner of Aguardiente Lounge. She was in her late forties, but she wore her short leather skirt, tiny tank top and boots like a rock star.

  She gave both Val and Olivia a kiss on the cheek in greeting, and the three of them made their way to the bar. Olivia leaned into Rosario’s shoulder, whispering loudly, “I’m on a mission.”

  Rosario’s perfectly shaped eyebrows arched all the way to her hairline. “Really? What do you have in mind, traviesa?”

  “Val needs to break her dry spell tonight.”

  Rosario erupted into laughter while Val glared at Olivia. Loyal or not, sometimes it surprised her the amount of time she spent with someone who tempted her to commit murder.

  “Don’t give me that stink eye,” Olivia continued. “I’m meeting Aleysha tonight, so you’re going to have to find your own entertainment.”

  “Traitor,” Val shot back, all the while finding comfort in the familiarity of their verbal sparring. “You’re abandoning me for your girlfriend?”

  “It’s not abandonment.” Olivia shrugged, her straight black bob bouncing in time with the motion. “Think of it as incentivizing you.”

  Rosario was breathless with laugher. “I’ve missed you two. You don’t need nobody but yourselves to have a good time.” She turned to the bartender, who was doing her best to stifle her own giggles. “Give the girls a free round on me. Welcome back, Val,” she said, giving her another kiss before floating away to circulate among the other patrons.

  “Guess she’s not that cheap, after all,” Val admonished Olivia.

  “Oh, please, the markup on these drinks is ridiculous.” Olivia drummed her nails on the bar counter. “Rum punch, please.”

  Val threw up her hands in defeat. “I can’t go anywhere with you.” She pretended to scan the crowd, putting distance between herself and the truth of Olivia’s teasing words. It had been a long time, but she’d needed the break to recover from her torn-up heart and bruised ego.

  Val took a sip of her añejo, listening to the beats of a reggaetón mash-up as it boomed through the room. People made their way to the dance platform, dappled in colors from the strobe lights. Val loved the way the music blasted through her body, the reverberations of the pumping bass through her bones; it had been too long since she’d felt this loose.

  Olivia, who had stopped to talk to people she knew, grabbed Val by the hand and pulled her onto the dance floor.

  “I also forgot how much fun dancing could be,” Val shouted.

  “Yeah, that Luke did a number on you,” Olivia shouted back.

  Val waved her hands, indicating she didn’t want to talk about Luke or anyone else. She just wanted to enjoy the music, let her mind grow empty of everything except the lyrics and the beat. Reggaetón was a gift to someone like her—US born but every bit as Puerto Rican as a transplant could be without having lived on the island. It was the soundtrack of the vaivén, or the back-and-forth movement that characterized the migration of people going from the mainland to the island and back again.

  Val danced until the song changed. Olivia’s face split into an uncharacteristically dazzling smile at her girlfriend’s arrival. Aleysha’s smooth, dark skin contrasted sharply with light brown eyes the color of burnished bronze that were shocking even from a distance.

  Aleysha raced over to them, giving Val a glossy, messy kiss on her cheek before flinging her arms around Olivia. “Why didn’t you text me when you got here?”

  Olivia shrugged. “I figured you’d be late, like always, so why stress you?”

  “You’re one to talk. Let’s go sit with Malena.” She gave Val a wink. “She’s been seeing this one guy and he brought a friend of his.”

  Ugh, not a spontaneous blind date. That was the last thing she needed tonight. But of course, before she could say no, Olivia spoke for her. “Why not?”

  “I’m not really—” Val started but Aleysha put a hand on her shoulder.

  “We’re just hanging out. No pressure, okay?”

  She just wanted to dance, maybe catch a buzz and go home in peace. But Olivia and Aleysha were wrapped up in each other, so Val had no choice
but to follow them. At the far end of the patio, she recognized Malena, who often stopped into her family’s restaurant for a late lunch. She sold real estate in one of the smaller boutique agencies in Wagner Financial Place. Malena was leaning into a good-looking man she introduced as Étienne, who said his name with a voluptuous, Creole accent.

  At the end of the table, almost in his own orbit, sat Étienne’s friend.

  “And this is Philip,” Aleysha said.

  He was whispering something to Étienne, initially unaware of her, but when he turned, the overhead lights flashed, illuminating the most striking blue eyes she’d ever seen. They reminded her of the Caribbean lapping at the beaches of Ponce, where her family used to vacation when she was a child. Music skipped through the space between them before passing her by. How long had she been staring at him. A few seconds? Minutes?

  She gave him a cursory wave, determined to cover her dazed reaction before taking the seat next to Olivia. He had the kind of face that was just shy of being too good-looking and it kept dragging at her attention. Through sheer force of will, she fixed her gaze on her cousin to tame her wayward eyes, focusing intensely on her conversation without really processing the meaning of her words. Maybe if she ignored him, he’d forget she was there.

  But she didn’t have that kind of luck. He slid into the chair next to her and cleared his throat.

  “You seem to really enjoy dancing,” he said.

  That meant he’d been watching her. “I wouldn’t do it otherwise,” she snapped. His surprised expression forced her to take a deep breath and calm down. No sense being rude to the guy. “My family,” she began more slowly. “We dance all the time.”

  She tried not to actually look at him, but damn, it was hard. He was a study in symmetry but his eyes were kind and approachable, nullifying the aloofness of his good looks.

  “Festive group.” He recovered, giving her a smile, which improved his already-exceptional features.

  She picked up a coaster, toying with it. “Yep, you name it, we dance to it. Birthdays, holidays, first tooth, first traffic ticket...”

  His laughter prickled at her skin. Val’s eyes slid to where the others in her group conversed, but they were oblivious to the way the air had galvanized around her.

  “My family doesn’t dance. At all.” He said the last part with a cutting sweep of his hand. “I have known my mother to sway a little on her feet at cocktail parties. But that could easily be because of the martinis.”

  A laugh bubbled unbidden from her. She tried to stop herself. Cocktail parties? Did people actually throw those outside of ’80s TV shows? The sound caught Olivia’s attention, and she raised an eyebrow in response. Val bit back her laughter. She was not going to give Olivia a reason to tease her.

  Étienne had already pulled Malena out of her chair, and was dancing a slow grind against her despite the energetic beat. Olivia returned to her conversation with Aleysha, their heads so close, their cheeks were practically smashed together.

  “Drink?” Philip asked as a server approached. She recognized her as Gloria, one of Rosario’s infinite number of cousins, just as she scooped Val into a welcoming hug.

  “Val!” Gloria released her. “Oh, my God, girl, it’s about time you showed your face. It’s been forever.”

  “Yeah, well...”

  Gloria took her hand, sliding her thumb over the glossy nude color of Val’s nails, and the tiny diamond twinkling on the nail of her ring finger. “Look at those nails. They won’t last a week in the restaurant. Want a refill?”

  “Añejo, if you don’t mind,” Val answered.

  Gloria gave her a thumbs-up before turning to Philip, who handed her his empty beer bottle, an amused expression on his face.

  “So, it’s been a while for you, too?” he asked when Gloria walked away.

  “A while?”

  “Since you’ve been out. The waitress. She said it had been forever since she’d seen you.”

  Val debated on what to say, then opted for the truth. She’d been lied to so many times, she couldn’t stand the idea of doing that to anyone else.

  “I was dating someone. After we broke up, I stayed away for a while.” She avoided his gaze, tearing bits off the now-frayed coaster.

  “Sounds like you needed to take care of yourself.”

  She froze in her coaster abuse. “That’s what I keep telling everyone. You’d think people who’d known me all my life wouldn’t feel the need to badger me about it,” she murmured mostly to herself.

  He stared at her a beat too long and it occurred to her that she wasn’t making any sense. “I’m sorry. I’m being a Debbie Downer. What about you? What’s your tale of woe?”

  He chuckled, taking a swig of his beer before pointing toward the dancers. “I’m not interesting enough to have a tale of woe. You see that maniac over there, draped over Malena like a mink coat?”

  Val followed his line of vision to where Étienne was dancing provocatively with Malena.

  “He’s my best friend. And he threatened me if I didn’t go out with him tonight.”

  “Because?”

  “Because...” He shook his head. “Because I’m a workaholic and I’d still be in the office if he hadn’t rescued me.”

  “You’re right. My tale of woe is much more interesting than yours.”

  The smile he gave her made her knees weak. “What would you have done if you’d stayed home?”

  Val thought wistfully of her Yoda pajamas, her copy of a Star Wars novel and three episodes of The Great British Bake Off on her queue. “Probably catch up on my Star Wars novel.”

  “Star Wars,” he said, his excitement palpable. “Too bad Disney threw out the Expanded Universe.”

  Val’s eyes grew wide, and she forgot herself completely. “They had to! The Expanded Universe had become such a sprawling mess. It wasn’t internally consistent any longer.”

  Philip’s eyes flicked to her lips before returning to hold her gaze. His geek-out was real but something in that glance stole her breath. The sea roared back to her consciousness, and she looked away before it pulled her into its endless blue.

  “The Legends are sacred. The least they could have done was keep the major arcs and change the inconsistencies.” He actually sniffed in indignation and it was quite possibly the cutest thing she’d ever seen.

  She raised her glass. “Maybe if they had, the new trilogy would have been different. Instead, we got...what we got.”

  “I’ll toast to that.” Philip clinked his bottle against her drink. Olivia always teased Val for her little obsessions. But she couldn’t believe it. There was no way this gorgeous guy could have that in common with her.

  Val’s nerves quieted to a low hum, and she gave herself permission to relax, taking refuge in the safety of a conversation based purely on their mutual love of Star Wars. Olivia and Aleysha had long melted onto the dance floor, while Étienne and Malena went AWOL for the better part of an hour. Philip’s hands claimed her attention. Strong and elegant, they were also soft, like a pianist’s.

  He finished off his beer. “So, what’s this about a restaurant?” he asked. “Is that where you work?”

  “I own it together with my father. It’s not too far from here.”

  An expression flickered across his face and disappeared when he smiled again. “What’s on the menu?”

  “Mostly Puerto Rican cuisine, with some variations. We serve breakfast and lunch, though I’ve been toying with introducing a dinner menu on the weekends. I’m still up in the air on that one because I like having a life.”

  “Are you the main cook, as well?”

  “Chef,” she corrected. “I’m trained. Got a degree and everything to show for it.”

  Philip’s surprise didn’t annoy her, laced as it was with something that looked like admiration.

  “Well, come
on. Your turn.” She tapped his forearm, which was remarkably hard. She wanted to do it again, but that would just be weird.

  Philip shifted in his chair, glancing around him before looking at Val. “I work in real estate.”

  Something about the way he hesitated made Val pay attention. “You make it sound like you’re some secret agent.”

  “Again, I’m really not that interesting.”

  “It’s a good time to be a real estate agent in East Ward ever since they built that light-rail station.” Val pulled a face, gathering up her abandoned coaster and recommencing her torture of it.

  “You don’t like that?”

  “How can I? Everyone I know has been getting letters from developers wanting to buy their properties, including our building.”

  Philip shifted again. “You could just not sell the property.”

  “Problem is, I don’t own the building my restaurant occupies. And the last building that was bought, they started forcing out tenants because they couldn’t afford the new rents.”

  Philip rolled his shoulders before reaching for his empty beer bottle, then setting it down again. “I thought... I mean I heard through the grapevine that it was a straight renovation project, which is good for the city, right?”

  Val gave him her best “Don’t be an idiot” look. “Making improvements in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. But the company buying everything up, Wagner Developments, has been super resistant to negotiating with the community. Things will only get worse once they finalize the project for the pencil factory complex they bought on the waterfront.” She swept her hands out to indicate their surroundings. “Did you know this building used to be abandoned?”

  “No.” He glanced around him, nodding in what looked like approval.

  “Rosario, the owner, has always lived in East Ward. She got a small business loan from a fund that helped members of the community improve their own spaces. And that’s what she did.” Val swept her hand to indicate the veranda, with its sleek trimmings and cool river wind. “Then they discontinued the program.”