“Definitely,” I lied, since I honestly couldn’t have told her. Tamsin had been captured by the book’s great villain, locked in a tower, and separated from the Elder, so the amount of fun the dogs were having had not been my primary concern.
“So here are the keys for the Wilson house,” she said, handing them to me. “You got the e-mail Dave sent you?” I nodded. Dave was beyond on top of this—making sure I had dog information and addresses and instructions, most of it laid out on spreadsheets.
“I should probably get these guys back,” I said, looking at the time on my phone and realizing that I should have had them back an hour ago and was going to have to hustle if I wanted to bring them home before their owners returned from work.
Maya nodded, but then looked at me thoughtfully. “You’ve been doing a great job here, Andie,” she said. I looked at her, surprised. “I mean it. I think you really have a talent for this.”
“Dog walking?”
“Working with animals,” Maya said, looking at me steadily. “Not everyone does. Certainly not all the people we’ve hired have it. But you do.”
I nodded, trying to process this. At the start of the summer, I would have said that it was just walking dogs, that anyone could do it, but now I wasn’t so sure. Especially after Toby came on one walk with me and spent the whole time freaking out every time Bertie sniffed a tree. Maya gave me a smile as she clipped her carabiner filled with keys back onto her belt loop. “So . . . ,” I started, not really even sure what I was asking her. “Did you know you always wanted to do this? The whole dog and cat thing, I mean?”
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “Not at all. I was actually in business school, getting my MBA. That’s where I met Dave.”
“Really?” The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it, and I hoped I didn’t look as shocked as I felt.
“I know,” Maya said with an easy laugh, not seeming insulted by this. “Hard to believe, right?”
“So what happened?”
Maya smiled as she bent down to scratch Banjo’s belly, and the dog’s back leg started twitching like crazy. “At the end of the day, I decided I wanted to do something that made me happy.” She gave the dog one last pat before standing up again. “And it’s working out so far.”
I nodded as I clipped the Wilson keys onto my own key ring. Maya handed me my paycheck, we said our good-byes, and I stepped out into the late-afternoon sunlight, three dogs moving sluggishly behind me. But even as I tried to get the dogs to move, Maya’s words were staying with me. The idea that you could rethink the thing you’d always thought you wanted and change your plan—it was almost a revolutionary concept. That you could choose what would make you happy, not successful. It was the opposite of everything I had long believed to be true. I looked back at the office for a moment, Maya’s words still echoing in my head. Then I gave Freddie a pat on the head and pulled the dogs back out onto the sidewalk.
ALEXANDER WALKER
Andie, you okay?
ME
Fine.
ALEXANDER WALKER
It just sounds like you’re crying. At 3 a.m.
ME
I’ll keep it down.
ALEXANDER WALKER
What’s wrong?
ME
I just finished Clark’s second book.
ALEXANDER WALKER
Oh boy.
ME
HOW COULD HE DO THAT?
ALEXANDER WALKER
I think there’s ice cream in the kitchen.
Meet you there in ten?
ME
Better make it five.
• • •
“What’s going on?” Clark asked as I glared at him, taking the stairs to the diner two at a time, my arms folded tightly over my chest.
“I’m not talking to you,” I said, pausing at the ever-deserted hostess stand, looking around the restaurant, and seeing Palmer and Tom sitting a booth over from our normal one. I started to head over to them, Clark following close behind me.
“You’re technically talking to me right now,” he pointed out, and I just glared at him again.
“Hey!” Palmer said as we arrived. Tom slid out from where he’d been sitting across from her and walked around to sit next to her, doing an abbreviated version of his usual complicated handshake with Clark.
“Hello, Palmer,” I said pointedly to her.
“Um, hi,” she said, looking from me to Clark, clearly sensing something was going on.
“Perfect timing,” Tom said, drumming his hands on the table. He nodded at the mini jukebox at the end of the table. “Because I put my money in, like, half an hour ago, and now you two will be here for my song.”
“What’s happening with you guys?” Palmer asked, mostly asking this question to me.
“Well, Andie’s not talking to me,” Clark said as he got a menu from where they were pressed against the wall with the ketchup and saltshakers. “I don’t know why.”
“Oh, yes, he does. He knows what he did.”
Palmer and Tom both looked at Clark. “What did you do?” she asked.
“He killed Tamsin,” I said, glowering at him, while across the table from me, Palmer’s jaw dropped.
“You what?” she gasped.
“Fictionally,” Clark explained hurriedly. “It’s not like she was a real person.”
“Clearly not, to you,” I huffed.
“You bastard,” Tom said, now glaring at Clark as well.
“Wait, why are you upset?” Clark asked, sounding baffled.
“Because it’s all coming back to me now,” he said, shaking his head at Clark. “Really, how could you have done that?”
“Yeah,” I said, turning to him. “Was it all just a big joke to you or something?” After I’d eaten my way through a half pint of cookie dough ice cream, trying to deal with my grief about this, I’d left a series of predawn texts on Clark’s phone that had started sad and then had gotten more and more angry when I realized that all of this was his fault and he could have prevented it if he’d wanted to. When he’d picked me up to go to breakfast, I’d crossed the line into refusing to speak to him.
“Hey, remember when I said I wanted you to read my books?” Clark asked. He shook his head. “I regret that now.”
“You read a book?” Palmer asked, looking impressed.
“I did try to warn you,” he said. “I told you I wrapped up her story at the end of the second book.”
“I thought you meant you gave her a happy ending. Not that she died a terrible death in the highest tower.”
“I’m just impressed you read a book,” Palmer said.
“Technically, I listened to one,” I admitted.
She considered this for a moment. “Still counts.”
“So what now?” I asked Clark, deciding that the time had come to start speaking to him again, especially because there were things I needed to know. “What happens in the next book? And when do you think it’ll be done?”
“Yeah,” Tom said, turning to Clark as well. “When will it be done?”
Clark looked at both of us and then dropped his head in his hands. “Not you guys too.”
TOPHER
Hey.
ME
Hey—how’s it going?
TOPHER
Can’t complain. You around this weekend?
ME
So here’s the thing.
I’m dating someone.
TOPHER
Damn—you’re a total heartbreaker this summer.
ME
Ha ha, no. It’s the same guy as before.
TOPHER
Oh.
Really?
ME
Yep
TOPHER
Well. That’s new.
ME
It really is.
• • •
“Let me see if I can do it,” my dad said, looking down at the six dogs I was holding, three leashes in each hand. His brow furrowed as he looked
at them. “Fenway, Bertie, Leon, Duffy, Crackers, and . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared at the Pomeranian in front of him. “I don’t know that one.”
“Bella,” I said, and my dad nodded. “But that was really close. I’m impressed.”
“You get good with that when you can’t ever forget a donor’s name and you get brand-new colleagues every two years,” my dad pointed out.
I’d been heading out on an afternoon walk when my dad had wandered into the kitchen and asked if he could tag along. I’d hesitated before agreeing—what if he saw the reality of what I was doing and was disappointed that it wasn’t more impressive?—but had said he could come. Which meant that I’d already suffered through at least three “take your father to work day” jokes. “Ready?” I asked, intending this to be for my dad, but all the dogs looked up at me, tails wagging furiously.
“I can take some,” my dad said, then took a small step back as he watched the two biggest dogs, Bertie and Fenway, lunge forward. “Uh, maybe not all of them.”
“Here,” I said. I separated out the leashes for Bella and Crackers and handed them to him. “Let’s go.”
We started walking, taking up most of the street with all the dogs. I’d gotten better at scouting new routes, looking for really quiet streets with ample trees and bushes. This was a new route, but I was already liking it—and so were the dogs, judging by the amount of ecstatic tree sniffing going on.
“Do you remember,” my dad said, his words coming out hesitantly, “that stuffed dog you used to have?”
I stared at him for a moment, trying to remember which one he was talking about—at one point my stuffed animal collection had been vast. But a second later, there it was. My dad had given it to me when I was something like six, a small black stuffed dog that came with its own leash. I remembered how thrilled I’d been to get it, how I had carried and dragged it with me everywhere for a while.
“Yeah,” I said, looking over at him. “Of course.”
“I was just thinking that maybe it was good practice for this,” he said, nodding at the dogs and their leashes.
“Was that a Christmas present?” I was searching my memory, trying to recall the details. It was like one day the dog had always been with me, but I couldn’t call up how it had gotten there.
“No,” my dad said, looking offended. “Don’t you remember? I had to go to that summit in London, and brought it back with me. It wouldn’t fit in my carry-on, so it rode next to me on the plane.”
I smiled, fighting down a lump in my throat. How had I forgotten about this stuff? It was like I hadn’t let myself remember it in years and years—that my dad had been more to me than the last five years. That at one point we’d been really close, and the dog he flew across the ocean with had become my favorite because it was from him.
We walked without speaking for a few minutes, as I concentrated on making sure leashes weren’t getting tangled and that everyone was getting along. It was a beautiful day out—sunny but not too hot, and the street we were on was tree-lined, the sunlight filtering through the leaves. “So what do you think?”
My dad reached over and scratched Bertie’s ears, then patted him on the top of his head. “I think . . . ,” he said, looking around at all the dogs in the sunshine, and then smiled at me. “I think you picked a pretty great way to spend your summer, kid.”
“Yeah,” I said, tugging on the leashes in both hands, more relieved than I’d realized I would be to hear this. “It has its moments.”
TOPHER
So who is this guy?
ME
You don’t know him
TOPHER
Try me
ME
His name’s Clark. Do you know any Clarks?
TOPHER
CLARK?
ME
Told you
TOPHER
What, did he time travel here from the 1930s?
ME
Ha
TOPHER
Well, call me when you’re free again.
Or have your old-timey boyfriend send a carrier pigeon.
ME
Talk to you later, Topher.
• • •
I dipped my toes into the hot tub and looked over at the very intense Ping-Pong game that was going on between Palmer and Clark on the lawn. Wyatt was in the pool, Toby was perched on the edge near him, and Bri and Tom were both floating on the oversize rafts Clark had bought last week, shaped like donuts and pretzels. None of this was a new or unusual sight because, as I’d predicted, my friends had pretty much moved in.
We still went to the Orchard and other people’s parties, and movies when Bri could sneak us in for free, and there had been a week when Palmer had been determined to try out all the mini golf courses in a fifty-mile radius, and Wyatt had hit a hole in one into the clown’s mouth and we’d all gotten free ice cream. But most nights, no matter what we did, we ended up back here, hanging out in the pool, watching movies on the couch, or lying on the lounge chairs under the stars. We’d even spent the Fourth of July there, everyone lying on floats in the pool and watching the fireworks we could see overhead from the official town celebration. Well—everyone else had watched the fireworks. Clark and I had taken turns sitting with Bertie in the laundry room, since Bertie hadn’t realized all the explosions were just for pretend and had spent the night trembling and whimpering.
“Hey.” I looked down and saw that Bri had floated up to the edge of the hot tub in her pretzel. She nodded over to where Toby was, and I could see in her expression that she was worried.
“She’s fine,” I said, though without a ton of conviction in my voice. Toby was wearing a new bathing suit, and she’d gotten her hair blown out straight, which was why she’d avoided getting in the water all night. She was wearing much more makeup than you normally did if you were going to be hanging out and swimming, and there was a kind of fixed desperation in her smile as she watched Wyatt in the pool.
“I don’t know,” Bri said as she pushed off the wall and steered her pretzel closer to Toby.
“So, Wyatt,” Toby called in what I’m sure she intended to be a casual voice, but just came out strangled. “Wyatt,” she repeated when he still didn’t look over at her.
“Sorry,” he said, giving her a quick smile, but not making a move to go any closer. “What’s up?”
“So,” she said, her voice coming out too fast and rehearsed, as she smoothed her hair down with one hand, “I was thinking about how you were saying you needed a new band name? And I came up with—”
“That’s okay,” he said with a shrug as he started to swim into the deep end. “We decided it might be better to just be unnamed. More mysterious, you know?” He ducked under the water, and I watched Toby’s smile falter.
It didn’t get any better over the next hour—Toby moving around the pool, clearly trying to be closer to wherever Wyatt was and Wyatt either not noticing or avoiding her on purpose, but either way, barely talking to her. Palmer had won the last three Ping-Pong games and decided to quit while she was ahead, and we’d been lying on loungers next to each other while Tom and Clark tried to dive through the hole of the donut raft, often with disastrous results.
“I’ve got this,” Tom said as Bri steadied the donut in the water for him. “I’m just visualizing my victory. And—”
Clark didn’t let him finish, just pushed him in, and Tom belly flopped spectacularly, sending water flying.
“My hair!” Toby yelled, scrambling to her feet—and I could see she’d been squarely in the splash zone.
“Hey!” Tom said as he resurfaced, sputtering. “Not cool, man. I could have died.”
“Did you have to do that?” Toby snapped, glaring at Tom. “Really? I was trying to keep my hair dry—it’s the one thing I wanted, and you guys just—you just . . .” Toby’s voice broke, and as I watched in horror, she started to cry.
Bri was out of the pool lightning-fast, putting her arm around Toby’s shoulders and steering
her toward the house. I looked at Palmer, who nodded and helped pull me to my feet.
“Um . . . I’m sorry,” Tom called, sounding baffled as to what was happening.
Palmer and I found them in the kitchen, where Toby was sobbing into a paper towel and Bri was rubbing her back. “Sorry about your hair,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t about the hair.
Toby started to smile, but then gave up the attempt partway through and shook her head. “It’s so stupid.”
“It’s not,” Bri said immediately.
“I just keep thinking that one of these days he’ll look over and really see me, you know?” She wiped under her eyes, where mascara had started to streak down.
“I know,” Bri murmured, pulling her in for a hug. I mouthed She okay? to Bri, who gave me a small smile and nodded. I’ve got this, she mouthed back.
An hour later, things had calmed down somewhat. Toby had pulled herself together and had done a spectacular swan dive into the water, clearly giving up on her hair for the night. After a serious game of sharks and minnows earlier that had ended with Palmer doing victory hand stands in the shallow end, I was on a lounge chair with Clark. He was sitting behind me, and we were wrapped up in the same towel. Bri and Toby were sitting on the edge of the deep end together, feet dangling in the water, laughing. Palmer was floating on her back while Tom treaded water next to her, saying something that made her smile.
“Did I tell you?” I asked, shaking my head as I leaned back against Clark.
“You told me,” he said, leaning down and kissing a spot that I’d never even thought about before, but drove me crazy whenever he came near it, right on the edge of my shoulder. Over the course of many hours of making out, my formerly rigid boundaries—just kissing, and nothing more—had gotten a little fuzzier. Clark wasn’t the one pushing me—though he seemed thrilled every time we ventured just a little further from my self-imposed limits. It was mostly me—everything was just feeling so good and so right that I was having more and more trouble remembering why I’d decided that was all I could do.
“They’re never leaving,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”