The Happy Ever After Playlist (The Friend Zone #2)(6)

“Jason, when Givenchy calls, you don’t tell them that you can’t be in their Vogue shoot because you have to look for your fuck buddy’s dog. I’m sorry, okay? Don’t—”

I hung up. I’d heard enough. She might as well have lost my child and then run off to do a damn photo shoot. It was that unforgivable.

I tried Sloan’s number again. Voicemail.

At a loss for what else to do, I stood by the gate going through the rest of my messages as rain pounded on the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the tarmac.

This Sloan woman hadn’t been kidding. She really had tried to reach me. Every day for over a week she’d left me a voicemail about Tucker. I got more and more pissed off as the messages detailed Monique’s complete and utter disregard for my dog.

He’d been in the middle of the street.

He’d had a bladder infection from not being let out.

This lady had posted all over, places Monique could have easily seen the signs had she bothered to stick around to look.

He’d dived into this woman’s sunroof. What the hell was that about?

I rubbed my temples. Tucker hated kennels. Monique had been good enough with him, at least in front of me, and I hadn’t had any reservations about it at the time. She told me she’d take him on her runs.

Stupid, stupid.

I should have flown him to Minnesota and left him with my family. I fucked up. It would have been a two-thousand-mile side trip, but at least Tucker would have been safe.

I raked my hand down my face and scratched my beard, tiredly. Fuck, now what was I going to do? This lady stole my damn dog.

When I finished my voicemails, I thumbed through my text messages and saw one from the 818 number I’d written down on my hand. I clicked it and a picture of Tucker popped up. It was great not knowing you.

The photo showed a woman with her arm wrapped around Tucker’s chest. I couldn’t see her face. The top of Tucker’s head covered her mouth. She wore black sunglasses and her hair was tucked under a hat. Her arm was covered in tattoos from shoulder to elbow. I tilted my head and studied them, zooming in on my phone. I made out the name Brandon on her arm. Then the screen shifted to an incoming call notification. The 818 number. I scrambled to answer it. “Hello?”

“If you love your dog, prove it.”

“What?”

“I’m not feeling the greatest about keeping your dog if you really do love him. So if you do, prove it.”

I blinked. “Okay. And how would you suggest I do that?”

“He’s your dog, isn’t he? Proof that you love him should be readily available.”

My mind raced.

“All right, hold on,” I said, getting an idea. I scrolled through the photos on my phone and selected several: Tucker and me at the beach, Tucker and me on a bike ride. Then I took a screenshot of my wallpaper, Tucker, sitting behind all my icons. I sent the photos through. “There. Check your messages.”

Her phone made a shuffling noise. She went quiet for what I knew was longer than it took to see them all.

“Look,” I said into the silence, hoping she could hear me, “he’s my best friend. He came with me when I moved to LA from Minnesota. I left him with someone I thought I could trust. I love my dog. I want my dog back. Please.”

She was quiet for so long that again I thought the call had been dropped.

“Okay,” she whispered.

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Great—thank you. And I’ll reimburse you for your time and the vet bills—”

“And my ticket.”

“Your ticket?”

“I got a ticket for parking in the middle of Topanga Canyon Boulevard when I stopped to get him into the car.”

I moved the phone away from my mouth and breathed a sigh of frustration. Not at Sloan, at Monique and her ineptitude.

“Okay, yeah, no problem. Look, I’m really grateful for everything you’ve done for him. If you can just give me a few hours to find a kennel to take him I’ll—”

“A kennel? Why?”

“I’m in Australia for two more weeks for work.”

“Well, who was watching him while you were gone?”

“Somebody who will never watch him again,” I said dryly. I collected my backpack and went to follow the signs toward customs.

“Well, I can keep him until you come back. I work from home. It’s no problem.”

I thought about her offer for a moment. My mind went to the picture she’d sent of her and Tucker and the voicemails about trips to the vet and walks he was going on. She seemed to really care about him. I mean, shit, she’d been ready to keep him. And she’d already had him for two weeks. He knew her. It would be better than a kennel. And there really was no one else. Besides Monique and Ernie, who wasn’t a dog person, I didn’t know anyone else in LA well enough to ask.

“You wouldn’t mind?” I asked, stepping onto a moving walkway.

“No. I love him.”

Something sad in her voice made me smile into the phone. Not that I was reveling in her unhappiness—I wasn’t insensitive to the fact that just a half an hour earlier she’d thought Tucker was hers, and now she had to give him up. But it was nice to hear that the person watching him actually gave a shit about him.

“That would be great. I hate the idea of putting him in a kennel.”