The Happy Ever After Playlist (The Friend Zone #2)(3)

This was seriously so inconvenient. I kept checking my cell phone to make sure the volume was up.

No calls or texts.

I was contemplating my limited options when, like the cherry on top of the sundae, Tucker peed on the floor of the vet’s office.

The vet looked unfazed. She pulled paper towels from a dispenser without looking up from her chart and handed them to me. Tucker retreated under a chair and looked on with sorry puppy dog eyes.

“He was eating grass too.” I crouched and dropped towels on the mess. “I think he has a stomachache.”

“He might have a bladder infection. We should test the urine.”

I whirled on her from my pee puddle. “Wait, me? You want me to pay for this test? Seriously? This isn’t even my dog.”

She shrugged over her clipboard. “Well, just be aware that if he has an infection he won’t be able to hold his urine. Tomorrow’s the weekend, so it’ll cost more to bring him in then if he doesn’t get picked up. Plus he’s likely in pain. If you can’t afford it, you could always take him to the Humane Society. They might treat him there.”

The shelter was out. And the pain thing bugged me. With my luck I would end up with him until tomorrow and I’d be back here paying double, begging them to make the peeing stop. I put a finger to my twitching eyelid. “Fine. Test him. Maybe the owner will pay me back?”

God, I was already tired tomorrow, just from today.

My cell phone pinged, and I looked at it wearily.

Kristen: Did the cop have that porn-stache they always have?



Ping.

Kristen: You should have cried. Machine gun sobbing always gets me out of tickets. Just sayin’.



I snorted. She was trying to make me smile. She and her husband, Josh, were on Sloan watch today. High alert, code red. Keeping an eye on me in case I flipped out or broke down.

It was probably a good idea.

Two hundred dollars and one expensive bladder infection later, we left with our dog antibiotics. On top of Tucker’s vet bill, I bought a leash and a small bag of dog food. I needed enough supplies to at least get me through tomorrow in case this ended up being a sleepover. I also grabbed a chew bone and a ball to keep him busy. I didn’t need this Tasmanian devil destroying my house.

I wasn’t familiar with his breed. I forgot to ask the vet. He looked sort of like a small golden retriever. It wouldn’t surprise me if he turned out to be half honey badger. He was a little wild. What dog jumps through a sunroof?

Whatever he was, he was not what I was supposed to be doing today.

Today I was supposed to be with Brandon.

Setting a bottle of Woodford Reserve against his headstone. Sitting on a blanket on the grass next to where we laid him to rest, telling him how much I missed him, how the world was worse for him not being in it, how hollow I was and it wasn’t getting better with time like they said it would.

April eighth was the two-year anniversary of his accident. Not the date of his death—he lived a month before he succumbed to his injuries—but the date of the crash. That was really the day his life was over. My life was over. He never woke up. So today could never just be some day.

The year held a lot of days like that for me. The day in December when he’d proposed. His birthday. My birthday. Holidays, the date of the wedding that never happened. In fact, most of the calendar was a minefield of hard days. One would crest, I’d live through it, and then another one would roll toward me in the constant ebb and swell that was the year.

Another year without him.

So I had planned to distract myself today. Have my visit to the cemetery and then be productive. Get some paintings done. Eat something healthy. I’d committed to not sleeping through the day like last year. I’d promised myself I would ignore that the month of April smelled like a hospital to me now and reminded me of fixed pupils and beeping machines with tempos that never changed.

I glanced at my phone again.

Nothing.





Chapter 2





Sloan





? affection | Between Friends


Ten days. I’d had Tucker for ten wonderful, fur-on-my-bedspread, wet-kisses-in-the-morning, tail-wagging days.

I knocked on the door of Kristen’s house, grinning from ear to ear. When she opened it, she stared. “You fucking did it.”

“I told you I would.” I beamed, edging past her into the house, not waiting to be invited in. Tucker and her little dog, Stuntman Mike, circled each other, tails wagging, noses to butts.

She closed the front door behind me. “You walked here? That’s like seven miles, you crazy bitch.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. My reemergence into daylight had been shocking friends and family alike lately. “I have to use your bathroom. Is Oliver awake?”

“No, he’s down for his nap.” She followed me down the hall. “God, you’re really loving this dog thing, huh? Oh, which reminds me,” she said, “I made him something.” She disappeared and came back a second later holding up a dog tee that read I JUMPED ON SLOAN THROUGH A SUNROOF AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS T-SHIRT.

I snorted. Kristen ran an online business from her house that sold merchandise for dogs.

I went into the bathroom, and she tucked the shirt under her arm and leaned on the door frame. Josh wasn’t home, so we fell immediately back into our old roommate habit of never closing doors between us.