11
Max
She had a serious case of the babbles. She was always pretty chatty, way more talkative than me, but never like this. I’d never seen anything like it—she was talking ten thousand miles a minute about the most mundane possible shit: the weather, her feeling on her new toothpaste, whether or not to repaint the kitchen cabinets, lamenting the situation with the water pressure, Julia Caesar’s slow transition away from nitrates. All the while, she was rushing around her room, opening drawers and rifling through the closet. Each piece of clothing she put on covered up that perfect body—first a pair of stretchy exercise pants that hugged her just right but hid her tattoo. Then a pink sports bra that made her cleavage look double-hot but covered the nipples I’d bitten. One tragedy after another. She was like a whirlwind, and she wouldn’t let me get near her. I took a step toward her, and she staggered back against the closet. I reached out for her, and she scurried over to the mirror on the wall and began braiding her hair. Babble, babble, babble. Deli turkey. Lead paint. Something wrong with the lock on the back door.
“Rosie.” I reached out to pull her toward me, grazing the side of her abdomen with my fingertips.
She yelped and put a rubber band in her hair, even though the braid was only half done. She still had fucking sheet marks on her cheeks, for God’s sake. There was no part of this that made any sense. I wanted to get inside her. Again. This morning. At least three times before lunch. “Get back in bed with me.”
She swallowed hard, and her eyes darted from the bed to me and back again. She shook her head fast, as if I’d just asked her if she wanted to go see the large beetle display at the Maine Botanical Gardens. “I’m gonna go for a run,” she said, producing a pair of new-looking tennis shoes that I’d never seen her wear, ever.
“A run?”
“Yes, it’s very good exercise. We’re not getting any younger!” she chirped, like ten notches too loud. “People in their thirties are supposed to get thirty to thirty-five minutes of good solid cardio a day! Two and a half hours a week! I saw it in Cosmo!” She added a Tony the Tiger cross-body fist pump. It’s grrreeeeeat! And then she trotted out of the room. I noticed a white tag poking out like a tail where it should’ve been smooth spandex.
“Your pants are on inside out, beautiful.”
But she’d already put in her earbuds and acted like she didn’t hear me.
I waited for her for a while. A long while. She wasn’t a runner, and I was banking on her coming back to me in a matter of minutes in this heat, but she didn’t. Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Thirty. I made her bed, I sized up the plaster situation—it was like we’d rocked the foundation. I fixed the lock on the back door. No sign of Rosie anywhere.
In the kitchen, Julia was waiting for her breakfast, lying on her side in a patch of sunshine on a rag rug. I gave her furry stomach a scratch, and she purred, nuzzling her nose against my foot and stretching out her legs to full length. I’d always liked Julia, and I’d told Rosie about six million times that cats aren’t like dogs, sure, but they’re smart and loyal, and they probably were shy around her because they could “smell her fear,” which was always met with a wide-eyed stare that said, Why would anybody want a pet that can smell fear?
Point taken, but Julia and I were on the same level. Usually. Except I wasn’t going to enable the SPAM addiction. At the same time, I wasn’t about to put a twenty-year-old cat through the horrors of figuring out what to do with something called Fancy Cat Slow Stewed Beef in Gravy with Peas or whatever. To me, canned salmon seemed like the best compromise. I found some on the bottom shelf of the pantry and got a can opener out of the drawer with about sixteen rolling pins. Totally normal for this place where shit only made sense if you said to yourself, Where would I have put something if I were ninety-five years old, blind in one eye, and gave no fucks?
Put the can opener with the rolling pins, obviously.
I put the blade of the opener on the rim of the can and broke the seal. Julia made figure eights around my legs, but way down at the end of the driveway something caught my attention. Rosie, sort of power-walking, not running at all. Her skin was shiny with sweat, her hair looked like she’d just been in a tussle with some wildlife, and I was pretty sure I saw some mud on her leg. But as I made a move to go help her—was she limping?—she seemed to realize my truck was still parked where it had been last night. When she saw it, she stopped short and clapped her hands to her face. She pivoted and scampered into the woods, hurling herself into a row of rhododendrons so that the only evidence she’d ever been there was the huge shiny leaves shimmering in the sun.
I finished opening the can. “I think she’s avoiding me, Julia.”
She rammed her face into my calf and purred.
Yeah. Thought so.
12
Rosie
I hunkered down like a guerilla fighter behind a huge granite boulder that looked to have been assaulted by generations of birds with very serious gastrointestinal issues. Part of me just couldn’t believe that I was hiding in the woods from Max, nor could I believe that I had used jogging as an excuse. Me! Rosie Madden! The closest I ever got to exercise was a halfhearted downward dog when my calves felt crampy. But now here I was, dripping with sweat, getting accosted by an array of terrifying New England jungle insects, which looked like maybe they were migrating from the jungles of Far Away, and covered in mud from where I’d slid into a ravine. Because even more than not believing I was running and hiding, I still couldn’t believe what I’d done with him. I was terrified of it. Embarrassed about the way I’d talked to him. Horrified by how…unfiltered I’d been. I touched the spot where he’d left the hickey, still tender. Not like he’d been particularly filtered himself.
God.
The noise of a truck filled the air from down the drive, and I hurled myself into the underbrush for cover. It was Max’s truck, I’d have known the sound of that engine anywhere. But I stayed low. I couldn’t face him. Not yet. Not until I got my wits about me and this hickey healed enough to go out in public. Or I found a summery scarf.
The gravel crunched under Max’s truck as he slowly rolled past the point where I’d taken cover in the bushes. I saw the rusty hubs of his tires. I flattened myself against the dirt and shifted a leaf that was in front of my nose with one fingertip.
Which was when I realized that leaf was attached to two others. Broad leaves, small center stem. Shiny, waxy green.
Poison ivy. Everywhere.
Was this just a big joke? Was someone in the heavens looking down, with laugh-tears streaming down their face?
A bird flew over and deposited a package on the boulder. A droplet of wet poop landed on my arm.
Awesome.
But I maintained position. I didn’t move, or even start scratching my already-itchy skin. Once I heard Max’s wheels leave my driveway and get onto the asphalt of Boston Post Road, I extricated myself as carefully as I could. It was like some ludicrous game of Twister, with only one person playing. And then I limped on home. Forcing my mind away from the thought of Max, I concentrated on the second most pressing issue: figuring out where my gram kept the calamine lotion and antihistamines.
Go figure, they were in the medicine cabinet. I dosed myself with non-drowsy allergy meds, and then I peeled off my poison-ivyed running clothes in the backyard, along with my shoes, and ran up the steps naked, with Julia charging after me like a potbellied pig. I took a cool shower, barely warm enough to get a fresh bar of soap to lather. Over and over again, I rinsed my skin and the soap too. With every touch, I thought of Max’s kisses all over my body. On my tattoo. Over my hips. Down my legs.
Fact: He was an absolutely fantastic lover. He hadn’t screwed around with any sort of how does that feel nonsense, but he seemed to know exactly what I liked. There were a couple of spots—on my ass, on my inner thigh—where there were bruises from his teeth, from the way he’d sucked and bitten.
Oh, how I wanted his bites.
But
I would not eat his pint of ice cream. I would not. I toweled off and dropped the bar of soap into the garbage. I got a fresh one and put it on the rack under the shower head, along with a new bath puff. Julia watched from her spot on top of the toilet.
As I put lines of lotion on the non-itchy parts of my legs and over my tattoo, my thoughts went right back to Max. He was like the marshmallows floating on the top of my cocoa. I couldn’t avoid him, even if I’d wanted to. But what exactly was I going to say? Let’s pretend that didn’t happen, let’s pretend we didn’t have the best sex of our lives together. Or maybe, even less plausible, Yes, we had sex! But it was just sex.
Pffffffft. I scrunched the water from my curls. That was anything except for just sex. Out of sheer habit, I tapped my phone to wake it up. There he was again. He’d sent me a text as he left that said simply:
Call me.
I wanted to. So much. But I didn’t. I put on my big-girl pants instead. I did my makeup, I dotted my itchy spots with calamine. I got dressed in a clean pair of yoga pants and a tank. Then I trotted downstairs barefoot. As I passed the steps where he’d had me on my back, I felt a pinch in my ankle. And my heart.
The pain in my heart was beyond my control. But the ankle was different. That, at least, I knew how to treat. So, from the freezer, I grabbed a bag of frozen peas. I turned up the AC to max and got situated on the couch with Julia and my sketchbook. I put my feet on the coffee table, and she draped herself over my shoulders like a slightly inflexible mink coat, periodically swatting my cheek with her tail. I was just getting into a new illustration when my calendar popped up with the notification I’d been pretending I wouldn’t have to deal with ever.
GRAY MOOSE PORTFOLIO DUE
I groaned a little. It was a tiny notice that encompassed the big looming question that had been facing me for months.
The future.
It was too much to think about at the moment. I was tired and frazzled, and I tried to drown myself in work. It actually helped, for a while, and I busily focused on the Kingdom of Somewhere, with its castle and Matterhorn-like peaks. But my thoughts were jumbled, and my stone walls turned out terribly. My trees looked parched, my valleys too empty and bleak.
Max was one part of the problem. But so too was Gray Moose Books. In New York.
See also, my dream job.
I erased my stone walls and started again. The odds of me getting the job were laughably small. I knew I wasn’t experienced enough; I knew I didn’t have the right pedigree. But Max and I had talked about it a lot. He said yes, I said no. He said try it, or you’ll never know. I said, but I already know what they’ll say. I blew some eraser rubbings off my sketchpad and glanced at my computer.
Try it…
As if I were taking tentative steps across an icy lake, I slowly moved the attachments off my desktop into my email, one by one. I dragged over my most polished portfolio. I double-checked that my cover letter had my phone number and address and the right date. I wrote my professional subject line. I wrote my professional email. I read and reread the words out loud to make sure I hadn’t blundered into some very unfortunate typo. My heart was pounding so hard, I could feel it behind my eyes. For a long time, I stared at it—long enough for my screen saver to pop on. Streaming back at me were pictures of me. And Max.
…or you’ll never know.
Max was gutsier than me. He was a risk-taker, and I wasn’t. But it was as if some of his energy and rubbed off on me. Last night had been like a B12 shot of confidence. For one instant, I truly believed I could do it—that I could do anything. That I was that amazing, fearless woman I’d been with him last night. So I held my breath, hovered my cursor over the paper airplane logo, and pressed send, filling the room with that weird swoosh of a sent message, so loud that it sent Julia scrambling.
With my palm, I slapped my laptop shut and put it on the coffee table. I flipped back a few pages in my sketchbook, from when I’d had a conference call with the author. “How about the prince?” I’d asked.
And she’d answered, “The sort of guy who’d rescue a kitten from a tree no matter how dangerous, the sort of guy who you’d die to see wearing a Baby Björn. That guy. You know the one.”
With every draft, the results were the same. The broad shoulders, the thick, dark hair, the general air of delicious impossible man-of-my-dreams-ness. Apparently, I knew just the one. The fairy-tale prince in my head looked exactly like Max.
13
Max
Just as I was pulling into my parking spot at the marina, my phone buzzed in my pocket, and my heart fucking somersaulted. I put the Chevy into park and pulled it out. But it wasn’t Rosie calling. It was a local number, no ID. Normally, I’d have ignored it. But maybe she was stuck in a pay booth somewhere. Maybe she’d dropped her phone on her jog, and she was calling me from the bait and tackle shop for a ride. Maybe, just maybe, it was her. So I hit the answer button.
“Hi, this is Doris from Truelove Emergency Veterinary Hospital. I’m looking for…”
Oh, fuck. The dog. The dog. I’d completely fucking spaced about the dog. “Yeah, yeah, this is me. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine, sir, but we can’t find her owner. We’ve done everything possible, but her chip comes back to an out-of-service cell phone, and there’s no physical address on file. We’ve taken photos and put them on the website. We’ve also sent them to the newspaper, but nobody has claimed her.”
That poor thing. Fucking hell. Takes a flying leap after a dragonfly, dog-paddles to safety, and now she’s got nowhere to go. My heart gave me a hard pinch in my chest. I did manage to man up, though, and kept my hand off my chest. I put it to my forehead instead. Way more manly, even if my heart did fucking ache.
“So what do we do?” I looked out at the docks as two fishermen in orange vinyl waders sorted crabs by length, using an old plastic caliper attached to a rope.
“Well, we’ve got two options, sir. We can hand her over to the pound…”
With the mention of the word, I flashed to the place in my head. I’d donated my labor and supplies to fix their roof. Though they did their best—I was sure of that—the place was a fucking hellhole. Seemed like every half-crazed fighting dog that animal control picked up in the state ended up there. It was like an ASPCA fundraising ad in living color. The very idea of that pipsqueak of a dog in the middle of all the pit-fighting, half-starved… But she’d said two options. Calm down, dude. One step at a time. “Second option…”
“Well…” said Doris, and she cleared her throat. In the background, some dogs barked, howled, woofed, and yapped. “You could foster her. Just for a short while!”
Foster her? I couldn’t even keep a goddamned houseplant alive for more than a week. I’d once fish-sat for a buddy of mine, and the fuckers almost ended up exploding from too much food. I wasn’t qualified to care for a two-dollar betta, never mind a sentient mammal. “I can barely take care of myself, Doris.” I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. My eyes were red, I hadn’t shaved in days, and I’d fucked Rosie so hard that my balls still ached. Goddamn it. And also—I inhaled deeply and tugged the fabric of my T-shirt—I could still smell her on me. Her. Sweet, salty, fucking perfect. “I’m just barely getting my shit together as it is.”
“I understand that, sir, but you might be her only hope.”
Christ. Rosie would know what the fuck to do about this dog situation, totally. She’d fly into action. She’d be making phone calls, doing Google searches on missing dogs, calling the goddamned radio station. Making flyers, knocking on doors, the whole deal. But I looked down at my phone. She hadn’t replied to me yet. There was nothing but a big gray space after Call me.
Last night had been fucking magical. But really good magic? It could change things, and maybe not for the better. At the very idea of losing her, I felt bummed out. I felt worn out. I felt sick about it. But that didn’t fix the problem. On the other side of town, there was a Chihuahua named Cupcake in one of my bath towels, wait
ing. Rosie might not be answering me, but that dog needed me. Right then, I needed…to be needed. “If I foster her, then what?”
“We ask that you foster her for seven days. If nobody claims her, you can either put her up for adoption or keep her.”
“Christ, Doris,” I said, staring at myself and pulling my eyelids down with two fingers as I did. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with the foster care. Seven days?”
“Seven days.”
I sniffed hard against my hangover and fired up the Chevy. “I’m on my way.”
The first thing Cupcake and I did together was go to Petco, where I drowned my heartache in some serious retail therapy. I’d never done it before, and it was fucking awesome. She rode in the front of the cart, where I’d made a bed out of her towel. She put her little paws on the bar and held her head high, like a gutsy little explorer, cruising through a brand-new universe on her spaceship. I leaned down, and she gave my lips a little kiss as we trucked through the aisles toward the dog beds. That was when I saw them.
Dog sweaters.
They were so weirdly misshapen, so funny looking on their little hangers, that I couldn’t help but hold one up to Cupcake. A half-priced Christmas sweater with snowflakes on the chest. Behind that, though, there was another one. Blue and white stripes, fuzzy yarn. Rosie had one almost exactly like it. She’d worn it when I’d helped her go chop down a Christmas tree last year. She’d spilled hot chocolate on it, a trickle right on her breast.
I took it off the hanger and slipped it over Cupcake’s head. I helped her awkward little legs through the equally awkward sleeves. The thing fit her like it was made for her. “How’s that?” I asked. I straightened the collar.
So Good (An Alpha Dogs Novel) Page 8