Chapter Eight #2
She watches me closely. I bounce the ball so it’s right on target to hit her mouth, and this time—after countless hours of practice and encouragement—she opens up and catches it.
I shriek with joy as I scoot across the floor to throw my arms around her neck, planting mushy kisses all over her head and showering her with praise while she wags her entire body from the top of the bin.
I can’t tell who’s prouder. We’re both buzzing from the high.
It’s so good to see her being a dog, engaging in play.
Obviously, her weight and mobility are our top priorities, but her mind needs a reboot, too, neglected for years without sufficient interaction to occupy it.
If she’ll catch a ball, it’s a good sign—a really good sign—she’ll also engage in other forms of play as she continues to learn, heal, and feel more secure with her new life.
I toss about a dozen more times to make sure her first catch wasn’t a fluke. She doesn’t catch every ball, but she reaches for the closest ones, and catches about one out of every three. She definitely understands the game now, and her instincts are taking over.
“Who’s the best dog in the universe?” I coo as I give her another hug and she nuzzles into me. “That’s right! You are. You’re the best dog in the universe.”
I’m carrying on like this, blathering away, when I hear Everett’s voice in the hall. Still buzzing with excitement I’m eager to share, I leap up, jog to my door, and fling it open.
“Everett! You’re home!” I call out as I stumble over my threshold. “I need to—”
My voice catches in my throat. He’s not alone.
Like, really not alone. His apartment door is ajar and he’s standing by the elevator, embracing a beautiful woman with alabaster skin and platinum-blond hair that falls straight down her back as though it’s never seen a tangle.
She’s even wearing a romper. I can’t pull off a romper, not with my gangly limbs and nonexistent curves.
But this woman looks amazing, with a pronounced hourglass figure, a sexy cropped leather jacket, badass cuff bracelets, and coral fingernails that match her lipstick, something I’ve never even attempted, let alone pulled off.
She seems so put together, making me newly aware that I’m in cheap leggings, an old Mother Mother concert tee with a neckline I cut away when I couldn’t stop tugging at it as though it was tight even though it wasn’t, and a stretched-out cardigan I should’ve replaced at least a year ago.
My not-quite-blond-not-quite-brown hair is in its usual hasty topknot, my fingernails are chewed to stubs, and my socks don’t match.
Somehow, I’m able to note all of this in the span of a single second, while also noting that the embrace I’ve blundered my way into witnessing isn’t giving off thanks for popping by energy, and the woman is not one of Everett’s sisters, whose photos he showed me weeks ago.
In the next second, I register the surprise and painfully clear discomfort on Everett’s face as he and his date step away from each other, not like they’ve been caught at something, but like their embrace has been interrupted by a manic woman running into the hall. Because it has.
“Cameron, hi,” Everett manages, pulling at his ear and scratching at his neck.
“Sorry.” I wave my hands in that way I do, like I can Etch A Sketch a moment away.
“No, what?” he asks. “You were about to say you needed something?”
“Yeah, just, um”—I rack my brain for a neighborly request—“flour. For baking.”
His brows shoot up and his lips twitch with the threat of a laugh. “You’re baking?”
“Yep.” I inch backward over my threshold.
“Brownies. From scratch. Grandma’s recipe.
Famous. So good. Ran out of. Obviously. Anyway.
” I take another step back, reaching behind me for my doorknob, unable to take my eyes off Everett and his date, who’s glancing between us with a little too much curiosity for my liking.
“Never mind. You’re busy. Hi. Sorry. Cameron.
Everett’s neighbor. Haveagreatnightseeyoulater!
” I swing my door shut, slowing it just enough to prevent slamming it before sinking to the floor with my face in my hands, muttering curses.
Sure, it was only an embrace. They weren’t all over each other like The Lovers, and I don’t want to leap to too many hasty conclusions here, but I definitely witnessed an intimate moment, and I should at least allow for the most obvious reason for that intimacy.
So what if Everett bought me dinner? And a really thoughtful book? And he went out of his way to help me with Aggie? He also hauls lonely plants out of alleys and rescues discarded sweaters. He’s a nice guy. That doesn’t mean he’s interested in or attracted to me.
“This is why dogs are better than people,” I tell Aggie. “No guessing games. No major misunderstandings. No romantic relationships that somehow never came up in conversation.”
She watches me from her bin with concern in her eyes, and understandably so.
She probably has emotional whiplash from seeing me exit the apartment elated, only to return ten seconds later in the throes of dejection.
I crawl over and bury my face in her neck, raking my fingers through her soft, thick fur while I reiterate that she is, in absolute fact, the best dog in the universe.
Fifteen minutes later, I’ve hauled her onto the futon—a new thing we’re trying—and we’re watching The Proposal with my feet kicked up on the coffee table, her head on my lap, and the bitter sting of jealousy slowly ebbing with the help of sharp banter and a storyline with a guaranteed happy ending, when I hear a light knock on my door.
I tense at the sound, snapping into fight-or-flight mode, or really, just flight.
Despite a growing acquaintance with Khalil, I’m pretty sure only one person would knock on my door after 8 p.m., and while I want to hear what Everett has to say, I’m not up for talking to him right now, not when I’m so raw.
I’d rather wait until I can at least pretend to be happy for him.
“Stay really, really still,” I whisper to Aggie. “Maybe he won’t realize we’re here.”
She blinks at me, her head still resting on my lap as I set a finger to my lips. On-screen, Ryan and Sandra bicker a little too loudly for my liking, though I can’t exactly mute them now.
“Cameron?” Everett’s voice comes through my door. “Aggie?”
Her head jerks up and she lets out a happy bark. Traitor.
I shoot her a glare. “Fine. Have it your way. But no more flirting with him!”
The look she gives me suggests this is a futile request, which I suspected before I made it, so I resign myself to my fate, give her a quick scratch on the head, and get up to answer the door.
I assume I’ll find Everett with his hands jammed into his corduroy pockets and an apologetic look on his face, prepared to talk.
Instead, I find him with his arms full of baking supplies.
“Hi,” he says. “From what I’ve seen of your kitchen, I figured if you really wanted to make brownies, you probably needed more than flour. I’m also a pretty decent baker if you want some company and you’re up for diverging from your grandma’s famous recipe.”
“I don’t have a recipe,” I admit.
“I kind of figured.”
“And I wasn’t baking anything.”
“I figured that, too.”
“And I barely knew either of my grandmothers before they died.”
“That... is new information. And maybe something we can talk about?” He adjusts the unwieldy baking supplies in his arms as he manages a smile, though it looks conflicted.
I don’t manage a smile. And I’m definitely conflicted.
“Everett—”
“Can I come in? Please? I think it’s important.” He pleads with his pretty hazel eyes.
I take a breath, wonder if I’m up for this, glance over my shoulder to find Aggie watching us with her head resting on the back of the futon, and decide there’s no such thing as an ideal time to hear Everett tell me about his girlfriend or date or whatever she is to him. Might as well get it over with.
“Okay.” I step back from the door so he can enter. “But only if you’re serious about baking.”
He steps past me and heads to the kitchen. “Did you have cereal for dinner again?”
I notice the open box of Raisin Bran on the counter at the same time he does.
“I wasn’t feeling inspired,” I tell him.
“Then let’s see if we can change that.”
I frown at him, unsure I can handle his sweetness right now, not while I’m trying to eradicate feelings I haven’t even fully identified yet.
Aggie has no such qualms, wagging her tail as he empties his arms and then gives her a proper greeting, scratching her ears and asking if she’s been up to no good, and if she hasn’t been up to no good, what is she waiting for?
My frown softens of its own accord. This man is impossible to dislike.
I turn off the TV and pad my way over to the kitchen, which consists of a chipped two-by-two-foot laminate counter, a crappy sink, a two-burner gas range, a compact fridge, and a few serviceable cabinets.
It works fine for my purposes, but the lack of space would probably frustrate anyone who actually cooks.
Poking through the items on the counter, I find a baking pan, eggs, flour, sugar, butter, a fancy-looking canister of cocoa, a spatula, a wooden spoon. He brought everything. I don’t even need to provide a saucepan or mixing bowl, which is good because I don’t own any.
Everett steps up beside me while I’m still marveling at his thoroughness.
“You want to measure or mix?” he asks.
I’m not entirely sure what’s happening here, beyond the obvious, but I play along.
“Mix,” I say. “Seems more forgiving for an amateur.”
He nods as if considering this while he sets a saucepan on a burner and hands me a wooden spoon, nudging the ingredients out of the way and pulling up a recipe on his phone.