Chapter Eleven
Tris
After my shift ends, I go straight home.
Ellie isn’t expecting me when I arrive and open Levi’s door, but within seconds, it becomes clear that she couldn’t be happier.
She might think she is still a puppy, but she’s about one hundred pounds of King Shepard, and I’m pretty sure ten pounds of that is all fur.
There’s no way she’s fully grown. She still has too many features indicative of a puppy, but trying to pull answers out of Levi is like, well, I’m not sure, but I’d rather claw my own eyes out than deal with him.
“Hey, Ellie,” I say, laughing as she jumps up and pulls me to the floor.
She smothers me in kisses until deciding that she’s had enough. Soon, I’m in the middle of the entryway to Levi’s condo, staring straight up at the ceiling with a one-hundred-pound weighted blanket of fur sprawled over top of me.
“It’s fine. I don’t need to breathe,” I joke as she rests her head on my chest so that her nose is directly below my chin. I tilt my head down and smile. “Comfortable?”
She peppers me with more kisses, and since I have nowhere in the world to be, I don’t push her off.
Having her weight on me is actually comforting, so I’m in no rush.
Instead, I let my eyes wander around the condo, or at least as much of it as I can see.
Levi must have known when he gave me the key for Ellie that it would also mean trusting me to be in his home without completely destroying the place.
After what he said to me a few weeks ago, I have half a mind to find his toothbrush and scrub the toilet with it.
He’s lucky I’m trying to work on myself, or else that’s exactly the kind of petty behavior and revenge tactic I’d be taking now. .. very lucky.
Levi’s place is comfortably furnished, and annoyingly so.
It’s the kind of comfort that’s intentional, curated, like someone with good taste and too much restraint picked everything out and stopped just short of letting it feel lived in.
If I had to guess, I’d say Callie had something to do with this.
The design is nothing like the mishmash of things spread throughout my place and is leagues nicer than mine in every way.
The color scheme is nice, forest greens and neutral brown tones spread throughout, and there’s furniture that looks solid and expensive without screaming for attention.
Every appliance appears to be stainless steel and brand new.
There’s even a high-end coffee machine sitting on the counter, still wrapped in plastic from what I can tell from my spot on the floor.
Which only makes me wonder why he wastes his time at Cozy Pines Cafe so often when he could make a damn near perfect cup of coffee right here at home. The thought sticks, nagging at me in a way I don’t like, like there’s a reason he prefers elsewhere.
Thinking about it pulls me right back to earlier today, back to the way my chest tightened when Levi suggested Ellie spend the night because my door is still broken. I didn’t say it out loud, but the thought came fast and sharp, like a reflex I couldn’t stop. Why do you care?
My jaw had locked, my shoulders stiffening as I swallowed it down, afraid to press him.
Afraid that if I did, he’d shrug and give me the same answer I’ve come to realize is true for everyone that was once in my life, that he doesn’t, really.
That he’d just be another name on the long, exhausting list of people who look like they care until they don’t.
But if that’s true, then why does my stomach twist at the idea?
Why does it sit heavy in my chest now, hours later, like an unanswered question I keep circling?
And if it isn’t true, if he suggested it because he actually gives a damn about my safety, then that’s worse.
Because that means the heat crawling up my neck, the way my pulse kicked hard under my skin, the way I couldn’t stop looking into his eyes.
.. It all means something. Something I wasn’t prepared for. Something I don’t even want.
I drag in a slow breath, unsettled, annoyed, and more than a little rattled.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Ellie protests the moment I shift, letting out a series of offended little whines, but when I remind her she needs to go out, she springs off me and trots toward the door like she’s been personally summoned for an important task. I follow, pausing in the doorway and taking one last look around.
Everything is spotless. Immaculate. Not a stray shoe by the couch, not a forgotten mug on the table, not a single photo frame or half-finished project cluttering the space.
Considering how neat and put-together it all is, it might as well be ripped straight from a Manly Men of the Adirondacks: Home & Living spread.
It’s rugged but refined, masculine without being personal.
And that’s what leaves me unsettled.
Other than Ellie, her leash by the door, her bowl tucked neatly in the corner, there’s nothing here that actually says this is someone’s home.
No history. No warmth. No evidence of a life spilling over the edges.
It feels like a place meant to be occupied, not lived in, and it leaves me wondering if that’s exactly how Levi feels.
Like he’s only occupying space now, instead of living in it.
I lock the door behind me and watch Ellie run around the yard.
She finds a stick, and before I know it, we have a full-blown game of fetch happening.
I continue to play, my mind drifting to who Levi might have been before the accident.
Soon, I’m imagining who the woman was that must have found something worthy in him to love.
Ellie drops the stick in front of me and gently paws my leg, waiting for another throw as it dawns on me that Ellie was probably their dog.
Tears spring to my eyes unexpectedly, and my heart aches as I kneel and take Ellie’s face in my hands.
“I’m sorry. He wasn’t the only one to lose her that day, was he? You lost your momma, too,” I say, looking into her puppy dog eyes.
They say that dogs have a sixth sense for things.
That they understand us more than we may ever realize.
I don’t know how much of that is true, but at this moment, I do wonder.
Ellie lets out a long sigh, and her body relaxes as she tilts her head and presses it into my chest like she’s hugging me.
I hold her there until she’s ready to pull away, and wipe the tears from my face.
“Come on, Ellie.” I rub her ears, and love how her tail swishes softly. “We’re having a girls’ night.”
A few hours later, we have Animal Planet playing in the background on my flea-market and certainly refurbished flat screen TV, and we are comfortably settled in for the night.
“A lady must always have her nails done and look her best, Miss Ellie,” I tell her as I polish her nails. Ellie is sprawled out in front of me as I sit on my living room rug.
I made sure to search on Google, “Is it okay to polish a dog’s nails,” before starting, and once I got the go-ahead from PetMD, the only thing left to decide was which color suits her best.
“I think pink is your color, pup. Wouldn’t you agree?” I ask, lifting her paw to show off her now polished nails. She gives me a sloppy kiss of approval, so I continue.
I’m fully aware that I’m talking to a dog, but Ellie loves the attention.
She wiggles and waggles each time I praise her, so I have no intention of stopping.
I swear you’d think spa days were a normal occurrence here.
“I get it, girl,” I laugh, thinking about all the days I would spend being pampered at the salons and spas.
It was a weekly trip for me, sometimes more than once a week, depending on the service.
Massages, reflexology, facials, manicures, pedicures, highlights, blow-outs, all of it was once my normal.
Now, I have to polish my own nails, and I cringe at the memory of my first ever attempt.
My right hand didn’t look half bad, but when I tried to polish with my non-dominant right hand.
.. the red polish made it look like a crime scene, and I was scrubbing red from my hands for days.
Looking at Ellie’s paws, I laugh. This is not where I would have ever pictured myself half a year later, that’s for sure.
“What do you think?” I ask her after polishing the last nail.
As if she’s a real person, she stands on all four paws and looks down, examining my work. She must like it because she starts bouncing from one front paw to the other, chest puffed out and tail wagging.
“I’ll take that as you approve.”
She sneezes and covers me with kisses.
“Alright,” I tell her, petting the fur around her face. “On to our next pampered pup service of the night. And after, how does a couple of Ellie’s Biscuits sound?”
I smile as she spins in tight circles before settling down, ready for what the rest of the night holds.
“Mother, today is Tuesday, not tomorrow, today,” I explain over the phone as I walk to work. The fact that she’s even awake this early in the morning tells me how messed up her sleep schedule must be. That and the fact that she thinks it’s Monday.
Sorry, must not have taken enough of your happy pills last night, mother.
I roll my eyes as she tries to argue with me, until she ultimately realizes I’m right.
“Oh, well then. That’s what I meant,” she says.
Sure, you did.
“Your father will be with his lawyer this afternoon. You should call him, or at least pick up the phone if he rings for you.”