Sixteen
I DID WIND up getting licked in the middle of the night.
And not just licked. Sat on.
Because that night, there was a thunderstorm. And Hutch wasn’t kidding when he said that George Bailey had thunder-phobia. Or whatever it was called.
I woke to George Bailey, who had fallen asleep on the rug beside the sofa, clawing his way on top of me, panting, drooling, and trembling all over.
I looked up, and George Bailey looked down.
And then I realized that I couldn’t exactly breathe. So I grabbed the frame of the sofa and hauled myself up and out from underneath him. Which should have been fine. But George Bailey, teetering above me, lost his balance as I shifted and then went thrashing off the sofa and collided with the coffee table… which flipped on its side.
It was two A.M.
The sound was so loud, it rattled the whole boat.
As George Bailey and I recovered and stared at each other, Hutch came bursting out of the bedroom.
Were you wondering if Hutch had just been teasing about the boxer briefs? That when it came down to it, he would don some modest, gentlemanlike cotton pajamas?
Yeah, no.
At the sound of the crash, Hutch showed up—ready for action—with, honestly, next to nothing on.
Deep breaths: those boxer briefs were not that shocking. If we’d been on the Tour de France, I argued to myself forcefully, they could almost be bike shorts.
Fine: bike shorts that shrank in the wash—but bike shorts, all the same.
“What happened?” Hutch demanded, looking around, arms out like he might have to pummel an intruder barefoot.
I got up off the sofa and started working to right the table, and he helped me. We picked up all his newly fallen books and his backgammon set.
“Um,” I said, not even sure how to explain, “I guess it was thundering? And George Bailey climbed on top of me? But I couldn’t breathe, so I tried to wriggle out from under him—and then he kind of flopped over and crashed onto the coffee table.”
It was such an odd story when you put all the pieces together.
But Hutch just said, “It’s thundering?”
Right then, as if the universe wanted to confirm, it thundered.
George Bailey, in response, tried to dive between Hutch’s legs—until Hutch was basically riding him like a cowboy. A cowboy in his Tour de France underpants.
I blinked hard. Pull it together, Katie!
Hutch scrambled off George Bailey’s back, and then he started trying to lead him by the collar back into the bedroom. “This is what we do,” Hutch explained, as he tugged. “We go in the bedroom and close all the curtains, and I turn on a white-noise machine, and then I hold him tight until the storm passes like he’s a cow in a squeeze chute.”
George Bailey braced against the pull.
“Does it work?” I asked.
“Not at all,” Hutch said, still tugging. “But it’s the best I’ve got.”
Hutch went to the bedroom door and tried to call him. “Come on, buddy,” he said. “Let’s go!”
But George Bailey wasn’t budging.
Hutch got a squeaky squirrel, and threw it into the bedroom for George Bailey to fetch—but nothing. Then he got a rawhide bone and held it out as a lure—also a no-go. Then he went back around to the far side and tried to shove George Bailey from behind.
All to no avail.
“Fine,” Hutch said, “I’ll play possum,” and he walked off to the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” I called after him.
“I’m pretending to give up. Maybe he’ll follow of his own accord.”
George Bailey did seem interested in why Hutch was leaving the room. After a few seconds, he walked halfway to the bedroom and tilted his head. Then he looked back at me. Then he U-turned and strode toward me like some kind of big cat in a zoo and stopped when he got close.
“Go on,” I said. “Hutch is waiting for you.”
But in response, almost as if he’d understood my words, George Bailey stepped closer to me and gathered the loose fabric of one of my yoga pant legs in his teeth.
“Hey,” I said, trying to tug the fabric back out.
But, as the nonpoisonous toads of the neighborhood could attest, those jaws made their own rules.
When George Bailey started tugging me toward the bedroom—what could I do?
I followed.
Those were my favorite yoga pants.
When we reached the room, there was Hutch—I swear to god—reclining on a double bed in his boxer briefs, arms behind his head, humming “Heart and Soul.”
He saw me and sat up, like he’d never expected George Bailey to bring me with him.
Meanwhile, George Bailey had let go of my pant leg and was nudging me toward the bed with his snout.
I stopped when I reached it and looked back at him.
He blocked the door and looked at me.
“I think he wants me to stay in here,” I said.
“Maybe he’s gathering the pack together?”
“Does he usually do that?”
“I don’t usually have”—Hutch glanced at me—“a pack.”
Why did it give me a little buzz of joy to hear that?
“What should I do?” I asked.
“Why don’t you sit down on the bed and see if he comes over?”
I sat. And then I patted the bed. And then George Bailey walked right over, climbed up, and lay down in the middle between us.
“Good boy,” I said, standing up to leave.
But when I stood, George Bailey stood, too—right there on the mattress. His body language said, Don’t you dare.
“Am I—not allowed to leave?” I asked Hutch.
“I’m not sure,” Hutch said. Then he said, “Maybe give him a few minutes to settle?”
“Okay,” I said, resting back against the headboard.
At the next clap of thunder, George Bailey raised his head and looked back and forth between the two of us, like How could you be letting this happen?
“He’s really shaking,” I said. The bed was trembling.
“I know,” Hutch said, reaching around to clamp an arm against him.
“It must have been really hard for him before”—I couldn’t bring myself to say at the puppy mill —“when it thundered.”
“It must have been loud. They were in a metal structure with no windows.”
I stroked George Bailey’s soft head. “Monsters,” I said.
Hutch nodded and then said, “You might have to wait here until he falls asleep.”
I was getting that vibe, too. “The trouble is, I’m wide awake now.”
“Me, too.”
“Can I ask you about something, then? Since we have nothing else to do?”
“What?” Hutch asked.
“What happened between you and Cole? What’s the fight about?”
Hutch shifted to meet my eyes. “He hasn’t told you?”
“No.”
Hutch frowned. “Huh.”
“It might help me to know,” I said, trying to make it sound like I wasn’t just curious.
Hutch nodded, his worried frown back. Then, when he’d made a decision: “Okay, but you didn’t hear it from me. If Cole finds out that you know this story, you’ve gotta throw Rue—not me—under the bus.”
I could tell from the tilt of his eyebrow that he was mostly kidding. “Deal,” I said.
“So, this was… a year ago. Cole was getting married.”
Cole was getting married? I tried not to register surprise on my face.
Hutch went on, “His fiancée—not sure how much he’s told you about Scarlett—was really aggressively flirty, you know?”
Why would Cole have told me about Scarlett?
Hutch went on. “She was that way with everybody. She posted bikini pictures online all the time—just had that vibe of someone who wanted the whole world to notice her. It creeped Rue and me out a little, but Cole loved that about her.”
I wondered what it would be like to want to be on display.
“Anyway,” Hutch said, “that’s why I didn’t see it coming, I guess.”
“See what coming?”
“They’d been dating a few years, so I’d met her a few times—mostly just in passing. I’d been stationed in Kodiak for four years, so I didn’t get down to the lower forty-eight that much.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling like this was a slow start.
“On the night of their rehearsal dinner, she got really drunk and grabbed the karaoke mic and made an announcement to everybody there that she… wanted me, instead.”
“I’m sorry— what ?”
Hutch sighed. “She said she’d fallen in love at first sight. With me. The first time we met. Seeing me again at the wedding party, she didn’t think she could go through with marrying Cole. She said she couldn’t spend her whole life with the next best thing and then she called Cole a poor man’s Hutch .”
“Oof,” I said.
“I know.”
“That is harsh.”
“I agree.”
“Did Cole hear her say all that?”
“He was right there. Next to her. On the stage.”
Another crack of thunder. George Bailey started panting.
Hutch went on. “Then she said she wanted to switch.”
“Switch what? Switch men ?”
Hutch nodded. “And then she proposed to me. Right there. From the stage. In front of everybody.”
“So what you’re saying is that Cole’s fiancée dumped him at their rehearsal dinner and proposed to you—all in the same sentence?”
“Effectively—yeah. But she never dumped him. She just wanted to trade up.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then she took a run at me. But a bunch of groomsmen tackled her and hauled her out of the room, writhing like a caught tuna and shouting, ‘Hutch! Come find me later!’ Then adding that she wasn’t wearing panties.”
“I’m guessing you did not go find her later.”
Hutch nodded in confirmation. “I did not.”
“I take it they didn’t wind up getting married?”
“No, actually—they did .”
I looked over. “They did get married?”
Hutch nodded. “They talked that night after she sobered up—and decided to go ahead with everything.”
“Must have been a heck of a talk.”
“She told him that I’d entrapped her. That was the word she used. And somehow, after that, her no-panties karaoke became all my fault.”
“But it wasn’t your fault!”
“My brother disagrees.”
“But that’s bananas!”
“Yeah. He fired me as best man and went on with the wedding as planned.”
Huh. I didn’t know Cole was married. He didn’t give off married vibes.
But then Hutch said, “It didn’t last, of course. They broke up within the month. But Cole hasn’t talked to me since.”
“Wow.”
Hutch looked over at me. “I didn’t entrap her, by the way.”
I snorted a laugh.
“What does that mean?”
I frowned. “I guess it means of course you didn’t entrap her. I bet you’ve never entrapped a woman in your life.”
Hutch’s frown got deeper. “What does that mean?”
I waved my hand in his general direction. “Just the idea of you having to do that much work. It’s laughable. I mean, look at you. I can’t imagine you have to do anything at all. I bet women just leap into your arms like flying fish.”
But Hutch’s frown deepened. “You seem to have an outsized opinion of my appeal to women.”
“I think I’m qualified to judge.”
But Hutch shook his head. “Women don’t leap into my arms.”
“If you say so.” I wasn’t going to fight about it. “I’m just saying I agree with you. You’d never entrap a woman in the first place. But also—you’d never have to.”
Hutch looked genuinely puzzled.
“I’m not saying it’s your fault. She got drunk and grabbed that karaoke mic. I’m just saying, I get it.”
Hutch looked away.
“I’m not blaming you. You can’t help it. But—you do know how handsome you are, right? That can’t be news.”
Hutch didn’t say anything. Just looked back over with those big, dark eyes.
“Hutch?” I asked. I needed a response. “Do you know you’re handsome?”
“I guess I’m okay.”
“Okay?” I demanded, like now he was just being insulting. “You’re heartbreaking .”
Hutch shook his head like I must be joking.
I needed to make my case. “It’s the eyes, I think. Those big, serious, sad eyes—so earnest. The way you look at people when you’re listening. The way you pay attention. Or the nose, maybe? You have a thing called a Roman nose, did you know that? It’s, like, what all the people who get nose jobs ask for. And then”—I counted off on my fingers—“there’s the tallness, and the washboard stomach, and that Adam’s apple for the Guinness Book. Plus, is there a pheromone for good-heartedness?” I wafted the air with my hands like I was taking in the aroma of something simmering on the stove. “Because there’s something going on there. It’s a lot, Hutch, is all I’m saying. It’s a lot for the women of the world. Gah. We’re only human.”
Hutch looked down at George Bailey, who had conked out. Then, like he couldn’t stop himself from asking, he said, “Is it a lot for you?”
“Of course!” I had meant it to sound declarative—just stating a scientific fact. But it came out a little softer. Wistful, even.
Hutch sat with that for a while, but I didn’t take it back.
Then he looked over at me with an expression a lot like longing . The more he looked, the more I got this feeling that he might kiss me.
He could kiss me. We weren’t that far apart. One upward shove with one of his powerful shoulders and one quick lean in my direction—and we’d be face-to-face. It could happen. It really might.
I hoped it would.
For a moment there, I thought I should be the captain of my own life and just make it happen, myself.
But then I chickened out.
Mostly because I still wasn’t sure where, exactly, we stood. He’d been so weird yesterday—hadn’t he? Or had I just been reading him wrong? Either way, I was still looking for clues to his feelings. And if he kissed me of his own volition, that would be a big one.
And then it started to look like he would do it. I started to feel like he was ever-so-slowly leaning toward me.
I held my breath.
But then, instead, he looked away. Then he said, all curt, “I think you better go back to the sofa.”
Was he mad? “You do?”
“You can’t say things like that to me, Katie.”
“I can’t?”
He brought those dark eyes back to meet mine, and he shook his head.
“You’re the one who asked the question. I just answered it.”
He nodded, agreeing. “I shouldn’t have asked. That’s why I need you to get out.”
I won’t pretend it didn’t sting. I had just basically—in the most joking way possible—told him that I, personally, found him irresistible. I’d disguised it as some kind of anthropological statement, but I guess we both saw through that.
How could I even hope to hide something like that? It had to be obvious, right?
I mean, we were in his bed—and he was in his underwear. If you ignored the Great Dane in between us, I’m not sure how much more suggestive I could possibly have been.
But the answer to that suggestion was, apparently, a very unambiguous Get out.
“Of course,” I said then, trying to gather my dignity back up. “I get it. No problem.”
I felt a prickle in my throat like I might actually cry.
That’s normal , Beanie would’ve said. That’s normal for a rejection.
But it didn’t feel normal.
I slid sideways, working not to tug the bedspread or do anything else that might jog George Bailey awake. I made it off the bed and then rotated to tiptoe out.
But before I made it to the door, George Bailey was already there, blocking my way.
Defeated, I walked with him back to the bed.
“Guess I’m staying,” I said.
“Guess you are,” Hutch said to the ceiling.
This time, as I lay back against the pillow, Hutch clicked the lights off.
And we fell asleep there, in the darkness—as alone as two people in the same bed can be.
BY MORNING, GEORGE Bailey was on top of me again.
I felt him before I saw him—draped over my belly as if we slept that way every night. I strategized for a minute before trying to extract myself, since my first attempt last night had gone the opposite of well.
That’s when I opened my eyes—and it wasn’t George Bailey.
It was Hutch.
George Bailey, for his part, wasn’t even in the room anymore.
My stirring awake roused Hutch—and the second he saw me, he jerked back to the other side of the bed like a stuntman on a wire.
“What the hell?” Hutch said.
As if I’d been the person on top of him .
Maybe I was still a little irritated by his attempt to kick me out of bed last night, but I resented the implication that I was the problem here.
So I did the only dignified thing I could think of.
I got up and walked out of the room.
George Bailey was out in the living room, napping amiably, belly-up on the sofa, as though the concept of thunder didn’t even exist.
I started shoving gear and equipment into my bag, breaking down my tripod and zipping lens cases. I didn’t change or even brush my teeth. I just grabbed my stuff to make my getaway.
I was closing my last case when I noticed Hutch watching me from the bedroom doorway—now in jeans and a T-shirt—with his sad frown back in place.
“I’m sorry I was so… all over you just now,” he said then. “I must have thought you were the dog.”
Insult to injury. “I guess you must have.”
“I hope you don’t feel… upset about it.”
“What—you mean, am I worried you were trying to make a move or something?”
Hutch gave a little shrug.
“No, pal. You were clearly fast asleep. And you made your total noninterest pretty clear yesterday.”
“That’s a good thing, though—right?”
Why the hell would that be a good thing? “If you say so,” I said.
“I’m just trying to do the right thing here.”
“You think mistaking me for a dog was doing the right thing?”
Hutch’s jaw tightened. “Look. I didn’t ask you to come over here—”
“Technically, you did.”
“Only because Cole told me to.”
“Do you have to do everything that Cole says?”
Hutch blinked. “Yeah. Yes, I do.”
Was he truly not letting himself date anyone because Cole wasn’t dating anyone? Had he just accepted all that incorrect guilt without question? “Well,” I said. “I think you’re doing penance for something that’s not your fault.”
“That’s not what this is.”
I shrugged, like That’s between you and Cole, I guess . “Okay. But you told me to get out. So I’m getting out.”
I hated how hurt my voice sounded. Could Hutch hear it, too?
Hutch checked the time. “I thought you stayed until ten.”
It was 9:27. Close enough. “I’ve got everything I need.”
Except for the two hundred push-ups. But even that wasn’t worth staying for.
Now that I was leaving, Hutch seemed oddly dismayed about it. “Let me help you with your stuff.”
“I got it,” I said.
But there was no stopping him. He grabbed my remaining bags and followed me down the dock back to Rue’s car. Even after everything was loaded, he was still standing there—lingering. “Thank you,” he said then, squinting into the sun. And then, as if we would never see each other again, he said, “I had a weirdly great time yesterday.”
I wasn’t ready to get nostalgic about our time together before he rejected me . “Yeah, well,” I said.
“See you at work, then,” he said next, stepping back.
But I didn’t want to go to work. And it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have to. I could take a mental health day, right? I wasn’t in the military, after all. Nobody would know—or care—if I spent a day in bed, eating bad food and watching bad TV.
“I’m pretty sure,” I said, “that I’ll be skipping work today.”