“Mr. Doyle?” said a voice on the other end. I could almost place it, but not quite. Until she said, “This is Doris, at Truelove Veterinary.”
I looked at Cupcake. A yellow butterfly flew past, and she leapt off my chest to chase it. My heart started to go into free fall. Please tell me I forgot to pay my bill. Please tell me I left my credit card. Please fucking tell me that you’re only calling to check on her. Please, fucking please, don’t break my heart again…
“Doris. Don’t tell me…”
A series of barks in the background filled my ear, and then Doris said softly and sadly, “I think I’ve located Cupcake’s owners. I’m so sorry.”
When I walked into the vet, Doris looked up from the counter and frowned before placing her hand to her heart. “I thought for sure we were in the clear,” she said with a painful frown.
I would not fucking cry. I would be strong. I clutched Cupcake to me harder, and she cleaned the sweat off the edge of my collar. She smelled a whole lot like Fritos, and she was a little bit plumper than when I’d rescued her. But I knew this could happen; I knew it was an option. “What did they say?”
She sighed. “They’d left their dog with a house-sitter, so they don’t have many details. But they’re looking for a female Chihuahua mix, fawn.” Doris looked at Cupcake and nodded, as if confirming the description exactly. “They explained they’d let their chip registration lapse. Her name is Skittles.”
The fuck it was, I thought. “Skittles” was the name of a turtle or something. This dog wasn’t a Skittles. She was a Cupcake, no fucking doubt about it. My Cupcake. Rosie’s Cupcake. Our Cupcake.
But not for long. I blew out a long breath and closed my eyes. No crying, Max. No fucking crying. “All right,” I said, my voice all gravelly and hoarse.
“I’ll put you in the respite room,” Doris said quietly. “They said they’ll be here soon.
Doris led the way to a room at the end of the hallway that wasn’t an exam room, but a much friendlier, more welcoming room with a small sofa and calming photographs of gently babbling brooks and close-ups of flowers. I realized almost immediately this had to be where they put people to give them the really, really bad news. The room where the vet would say, Why don’t you sit down?
I did sit down, and Cupcake sat next to me on the plush, fancy, nicely upholstered bad-news couch. On the far side of the room was a framed poster that said, Heaven is full of animals.
God. Damn. I situated Cupcake in my lap, her paws to my upper thighs, her little tush near my knees. I felt like it was important to be brave for her so she wouldn’t be sad, too.
“It’s been awesome, cutie,” I said, with a lump in my throat the size of a fucking baseball. She cocked her head to one side. “So awesome.” She cocked her head again. “I’m sure they’ll take great care of you.”
Even if they don’t let you pick out your own cookies. Even if they won’t spoil you rotten every fucking minute. Even if they aren’t Rosie and me.
She flapped her paw out in the air and snagged my T-shirt with her toenail. I picked her up and bounced her at my shoulder, the same way Rosie had. Her hot stomach was warm against my chest and her paws even hotter. I pressed a kiss to the funny, warm, rough pad of her front foot and inhaled hard so I’d never forget. Some footsteps and voices approached from outside—a kid’s voice asking, “What if it isn’t her, Mommy?”
I could not handle this shit. I was a manly man, but this was the fucking limit. The room got blurry, the posters got hazy, and a tear tumbled down my cheek. Cupcake caught it with her tongue right as they opened the door. Doris couldn’t even look at me, and I noticed her nose was slightly red like she was about to burst into tears, too. “These are the Thompsons,” she said and let a family of three into the room. A little girl marched in first, every step making a tiny fart from her itty-bitty pink Crocs.
I couldn’t even look her, so I kept my eyes on Cupcake. I was going to be such a fucking goner after this. I’d go buy five gallons of mint chocolate chip, as much beer as I could find, and spend the next week wallowing in Fletcher’s basement watching Braveheart and sobbing 24/7. Fuck, fuck.
The little girl fart-stepped her way closer. She had thick glasses that made her eyes as big as a cartoon character’s. She wrinkled up her nose like she still couldn’t see quite right. She put one slightly dirty plump finger to her glasses frames and pushed them up her nose. This was it. I was a goner. This chubby kid was going to take my dog, and I was done with this horrible fucking world.
But then, very slowly, the little girl’s round and slightly sunburned face contorted itself into an agonized, cheek-pinching, eyebrow-rippling, nostril-dimpling sadness, and she shrieked at the top of her lungs, “That’s not Skittles, Mommy! That’s not Skittles!”
Skittles wasn’t lost either. She was a few towns away, at the pound in Scarborough, which meant that Cupcake was officially mine. Fuck. Yes. The family left the vet, with the bug-eyed girl fart-skipping and beaming. I didn’t even try to contain my smile as I filled out the adoption papers, and neither did Doris, who carried Cupcake around to meet everybody, from the vet techs to the resident cats. Weirdly, Cupcake had no problem with the cats at all.
“Say, Doris,” I said, scratching my cheek with the end of the pen. “About introducing dogs and cats. Got any tips?”
She considered Cupcake like she was measuring her for a dress or something. She gave her a nuzzle on the cheek. Cupcake closed her eyes and flattened her ears as she gave her a noisy smooch. “What’s the cat like?”
Dude, I didn’t want to be rude about it. Didn’t seem right, speaking ill of the…whatever she was. But I did want to know what to do if Rosie came back to me. When. Not if. Christ, not if. “Old. Scottish Fold, grumpy. Likes SPAM.”
Doris turned to me. “Julia?”
God bless life in a small town. “That’s her.”
Again, Doris considered Cupcake, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes. “Have they
met?”
I filled in my phone number and started checking off the boxes. As the guardian of this animal, I promise to give her regular meals and fresh water every day. Check and check. “Yeah, it was a disaster. Julia ran up a tree, and I had to rescue her.”
“They met in the house?” Doris asked. “On Julia’s turf?”
I paused with the pen perched over the top of the next box, Do you promise to keep your animal current with vaccinations, heartworm preventative, Lyme vaccines, and routine bloodwork? “In the living room.”
Doris raised her shoulders, making the pandas on her scrubs dance up and down. “Probably best to try to get them to meet on neutral territory. Outside, maybe. That’s what I’d try.”
I signed my name and initialed a few lines and then reached across the counter. Cupcake squirmed in the air, kicking her legs and kissing the air as Doris handed her over. She put one paw on my shoulder and lowered her head as Doris gave her a pat.
“See you two for her next checkup,” Doris said, grinning, as she took the clipboard from the counter. Together, Cupcake and I headed out onto Main Street. I snapped a selfie of the two of us in front of a big plump wooden bear with a carved yellow bird on his head.
Guess who’s here to stay?
OMG!!! YAAAAAAY!!!!!
You good?
Yes! Just about to get to work. So happy about cupcakes
cup
OMG Autocorrect why
CUPCAKE!
Knock ’em dead, gorgeous.
Love you. So much.
Love you more.
My whole body ached with the words, but still, I stayed strong. I wouldn’t back down now. And anyway, in the meantime, however long it might be, I had a tiny Chihuahua to spoil senseless, starting now. “How should we celebrate, little lady?” I asked Cupcake as I carried her along. On my right, we passed a new storefront. Pepe’s Pet Emporium. The place looked expensive and fancy. Not at all the sort of place I’d have ever thought about checking out, until now. In the window was a cra
zy cute rhinestone collar, pink and gold sparkles everywhere. Doesn’t your pet deserve a personalized collar made from Swarovski crystal? Inquire within! said the handwritten sign.
“I think we should inquire,” I told Cupcake as she gave me a nice wet lick up my nostril to say, Inquire! Inquire!
As I opened the door to Pepe’s, the reflection of a different storefront was projected back at me in the perfectly clear glass. Red, white, and blue letters. The idea was so fucking obvious, I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to think of it. The perfect place to live. And something that we definitely needed to inquire about, too.
46
Rosie
The Gray Moose offices smelled like new paint and hazelnut coffee, but there was no talking at all. It was kind of disorienting—I’d expected something like a newsroom, maybe. People bustling around, sharing ideas, storyboards with sketches of smiling geckos, and princesses as small as peas. But that wasn’t how it was. It was silent like a library under the authority of a militantly introverted librarian. It was so quiet, in fact, that the noise of the air conditioning from the ceiling vents whirred like a white noise machine, by far the loudest thing in the place. At the front desk sat a chic-looking girl with straight-across bangs, like a Sixth Avenue Zooey Deschanel.
“Hello, can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m Rose Madden, I…”
“Oh!” She rose gracefully from her chair and extended an equally graceful, lean white hand. “So good to meet you. Rosie, isn’t it?”
I hoped to heavens that my palm wasn’t sweaty and gave her hand a shake. Her bangs were so straight and clean, it made me wonder if she’d just had them trimmed that morning. She could’ve been a ballerina, she was that pretty, that thin, that exotic. And with a matte fuchsia lip to die for, the type of thing I could never pull off, no matter how hard I tried. “I’m Emilia,” she said. “Let me take you back to meet Ms. Poindexter.”
She led me back into the offices, which were equally silent and quiet. There were desks where people should have been, but weren’t. Everything was immaculate, like an ad for office furniture. But there was nobody, and still no noise besides the air-conditioner wind.
It was weird. Very weird. But I didn’t have time to ask the chic Emilia about it before she opened the door of another corner office and said, “Sam, this is Rosie Madden.”
The woman gasped like I was her long-lost niece. “Darling! I totally forgot you were coming today! Where is my mind? So good to meet you!” She hopped up from her desk and held out her arms for a hug. She was as chic as Emilia, but in a very different way—lots of linen, short-cropped white hair, tawny skin. Absolutely beautiful.
After the hugs and fancy air kisses, I sat down in the comfy chair across from her big maple desk, like a farm kitchen table from another time. “Can I just ask…where is everybody?” I glanced out at the empty workspaces. “I’m ready to start on whatever you’d like.”
Ms. Poindexter looked a bit confused, but then slowly a realization seemed to dawn on her. “Honey, our in-house illustrators don’t actually work in-house.”
I clutched my black purse to my chest. Yet another page in the rule book that hadn’t gotten to me in time. How had I missed so many memos? “They don’t?”
She shook her head slowly. “They live all around the world. I invited you to the city to meet for the afternoon. There’s a place down the street that does the most amazing coconut prawn soup.” She kissed the tips of her fingers. “Heaven.”
Now I was even more confused. I’d spent the last week looking for an apartment that cost as much in a month as I paid in property taxes in a year in Truelove. But here, linen-fancy Ms. Poindexter was talking about coconut soup?
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Nobody works here?”
Ms. Poindexter made something that looked halfway between a cringe and a smile. “We keep the workspace for tax purposes, and they drop in when they can.”
“Is that…” I blinked hard, trying to reorient myself with this new and totally amazing idea. “Is that…an option? Can I work from Maine?”
Ms. Poindexter held her handmade mug of tea with both hands and smiled behind the swirling steam. “Only if you’ll let me come visit! Because boy do I love a good lobster roll!”
After lunch, I used some of the cash that Max had given me to treat myself to a cab. I was too impatient to wait for the ancient elevator where I was staying, so I took the steps two at a time and flung open the door to my Airbnb, where I found Julia with a strip of the curtains in her mouth.
“Good news, you old battle-ax!” I told her as I closed the door behind me. “It’s time to go home.”
Like a woman possessed, I flew into action. I packed up the assorted tiny, slightly sticky, travel-sized bottles from the bathroom—they were always sticky, I could never understand it. I got all of Julia’s things organized into her canvas bag, emblazoned with the phrase, TO BE A CAT IS DIVINE. I shoved all my stuff into my suitcase willy-nilly, not even attempting to fold my things. Once I’d half zipped my suitcase, I pulled out my phone to check the trains.
First one was leaving tomorrow.
Not going to cut it, I thought as I zipped my half of the heart back and forth across my neck, hooking the chain over my lip and staring at my phone. Calling Max would ruin the surprise, and I just couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when I appeared unexpectedly with this amazing, life-changing news. For him, for me, for both of us.
I woke up my phone and did some Googling. It really didn’t matter how much it cost—it was worth it. Within a matter of minutes, I’d signed up for Zipcar, reserved one just a few blocks away, and left forty dollars for the curtains with a note that said, “So sorry!”
Sharing a ham sandwich, and with all the windows down, Julia and I zoomed out of the city against traffic. We headed north, with the sun shining in the driver’s side window, on our way home.
Home.
The sun was just setting when we turned onto my driveway, and I saw Max in the front yard with his shirt off. Heavens. He turned when he heard the engine and shielded his eyes from the low summer sunshine with his cupped palm.
Like a bat out of hell, I tore down the driveway, gravel spraying out from behind my tires, and slamming on the brakes like I was skidding into a pit stop. I flung my door open, undid my seat belt, and sprang out of my seat. “Hi!”
“Holy shit!” he said and opened his arms wide. “It’s you!”
I slammed my door and trotted toward him. I kicked off my heels and didn’t fix my pencil skirt as it rode up my legs. “A better question is, what are you doing!” I asked and stared at the For Sale sign in his hands. “Did someone buy the place?”
Max’s face got serious. He nodded once, and my heart dropped.
“No,” I gasped. “No, no, no. All the way home, I was having a fantasy about a vegetable garden with a deer fence and planting beds full of peonies and you playing with kids in the yard. This front yard, our front yard.” I took the For Sale sign from him and clutched it to my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t my real estate agent call? Who bought it?”
Still, though, he frowned. He had his eyes down, looking at the gravel. He ran his hand through his hair. He gritted his teeth, and the muscles in his jaw fluttered. Then he lifted those beautiful eyes and hit me with that All-American heart-stopper smile. “This guy.”
“You did!” I squealed, my eyes suddenly welling up with tears of utter, pure, perfect happiness.
“I did,” he said. “We did.”
I dropped the sign and wrapped my arms around him. He picked me up off the ground and twirled me so that soon the forest was nothing but a deep green blur. “But what are you doing here?” he said into my ear. “Something wrong?”
“Everything’s right,” I said as I spun. “I’ll explain later, but I just had to see you. I had to get back. I had to come home.”
“Home,” he said, beaming as he set me down, while the world spun and
spun behind him. “So you’re here to stay? To stay-stay?”
I couldn’t suppress my squeal and clapped my hands together. The wind in the trees picked up, and my wind chimes dinged a little louder. “Yes!”
“Well, in that case,” he said, taking a deep breath and reaching into his pocket. “I’ve got a question to ask.”
Then, to my utter shock, my total astonishment, and my overwhelming joy, my very best friend in the world and the love of my life took something from his pocket…
And got down on one knee.
47
Max
Three months later
Standing on the roof, I watched Cupcake and Julia investigate the edge of the woods together, like two old-school partners in crime. It still surprised me, seeing them together, totally chill and happy, but Doris at the vet had been absolutely right. Outside was the ticket. Inside, there were still sometimes snarls and snaps, but outside it was like Milo and Otis, only with funny-looking body doubles. Complete with matching rhinestone collars.
Carefully, I made my way to the new skylight that I had installed above the bathroom. I put a few nails between my teeth, and I was about to tap one into the copper flashing when I saw her again. My Rosie, standing in the patch of sun beneath me.
I held perfectly still, leaning back slightly to make sure my shadow didn’t catch her eye. Her ring sparkled in the sunshine, and the shimmery spots from the prisms dotted her perfect skin.
On the counter, she had her phone, and she kept pressing the button to keep the screen from going to sleep. I could tell that she was nervous from the way she paced around and straightened out her lotions. From where I was, I could see her face in the mirror, just barely. She looked serious and focused. As beautiful as ever.
So Good (An Alpha Dogs Novel) Page 23