She gasped. “You are practically nonexistent online!”
“I know! And I’m very suspicious. Not to be trusted at all. You should add the social media rule to your love list.”
“I don’t have a love list. You make enough rules for the both of us.”
I gave a sitting bow. “You’re welcome.”
Kamala smiled, then took my phone and started scrolling down Dale’s page full of pictures of him on boats and in big houses and traveling to exotic places. The guy was loaded.
“Is it wrong that I now find him more attractive?” she asked.
I shoved her shoulder with a laugh.
She showed me a picture of him in a pair of short swim trunks, shirtless. “I mean…” She waggled her eyebrows.
“Too bad he’s a huge jerk.”
She rolled her eyes. “Huge jerk? He was just trying to protect his friend.”
“By threatening to humiliate him?”
“I mean, maybe Asher wasn’t listening. Maybe that’s all Dale had left to get through to him.”
“You’re defending him?” I asked.
“He seemed harmless to me.”
I grabbed my phone back. “It doesn’t matter. He’s not the one I want to message. He’s the one who can’t know what I did or he will definitely follow through with his original plan.”
“You could look through all of Dale’s followers. Asher has to be online. He was getting catfished, after all, which is pretty much only possible through social media. Maybe he goes by a weird name or something.”
“Ugh. I don’t care enough. I’m just curious if Gemma ever fessed up. But if I have to put in actual work? Not worth it.” I dropped my phone next to me and turned toward the fan. “It’s so hot! Let’s go get Popsicles or sit in a freezer or something.”
I stood and pulled Kamala to her feet.
“I now know someone with a boat,” she hummed. “We should ask him if we can go for a ride. Pretty sure a whale can’t swallow a speedboat whether it’s trying to or not.”
“Funny. And you better not be talking about Dale.”
She laughed as we headed for the door. “No, but really. Do you think he’d take us on his boat?”
Rule: Never date a guy who has bad taste in friends.
Despite its unfortunate name, Petsacular was one of my very favorite places to be. And as I stood, earbuds in, hosing down a recently vacated kennel, I smiled at my good fortune in landing this job. A lot of the people who worked here were volunteers, but I actually got paid to cuddle, walk, and bathe animals.
As I watched the foamy brownish-yellow liquid head toward the drain, the water coming from the hose in my hand drizzled to a stop. I turned around to see Erin, my boss, standing by the faucet and pointing at her ears. She’d obviously been trying to get my attention.
I plucked out my earbuds. “Sorry!”
“It’s okay. You have a visitor up front.”
“An appointment? Did they say who they’re here to see?”
“You,” she said as I walked closer.
“No, which animal? Please say Bean. I’ve been posting about him a lot.” Bean was a brown pit bull mix with little white tufts of fur on each paw who I also called Beanie and Beano and Beanster and Goodest Boy and a number of other endearments. He’d been at the shelter the longest—nine months. Two hundred seventy-four days, to be exact—it was written on the whiteboard in the break room. Maybe that was why I felt so connected to him—because I knew him the best. Or maybe it was because I knew how it felt not to be chosen.
“I’m not sure,” Erin said.
“Hey, Good Boy,” I said as I passed Bean’s kennel. He gave a single bark. “Cross your toes that this one’s for you.” I knelt down by the chain-link door and put my palm against it. His tail was wagging his whole backside as he licked my hand through the door, then finished with another bark. “Yes, you’re such a good boy. So handsome and smart.”
“Only for you,” Erin mumbled.
“That’s not true. Don’t listen to her, you love everyone, don’t you, boy?”
“He really doesn’t. He refused to walk for Rodrigo yesterday, made him carry him from the back play area. That’s why he has the longest-resident award.”
I turned back to Bean. “Just because you’re particular doesn’t mean you’re not lovable.”
“That sounds like someone else I know,” Erin teased.
“No, I’m both particular and not lovable,” I joked back.
She laughed.
I stood and crossed my fingers as I passed more kennels full of barking dogs. I pushed through the swinging door to the front lobby, used the hand sanitizer attached to the wall, and rounded the corner.
An older woman I knew I should’ve recognized but didn’t stood with a smile. “Wren!” she said.
“Hi, nice to see you again.”
“I’ve come back for Toto. I couldn’t stop thinking about her.”
“Oh…” Oh! The woman had been here before. “Toto found a home already.”
“What? You said you’d hold her for two weeks.”
There was no way I said that. We had animals to move here, this wasn’t some furniture storage facility. “Did you put a deposit down? Or fill out paperwork?”
The woman wasn’t smiling anymore. “No, but I told you I liked her a lot.”
I tilted my head, assessing her for a moment. “Can I introduce you to one of my very favorite dogs in the shelter?”
The woman looked at the tall counter where we didn’t have anyone working at the moment. We were short-staffed today. Then she gave a reluctant grunt that I took as an agreement.
“Follow me,” I said.
We passed several rows of kennels before we came to Bean’s. I presented him like the prize he was. The woman glanced into his kennel. “I don’t know about a pit.”
“He’s the sweetest. Aren’t you, Bean?”
Bean took one look at the lady, snorted in her direction, then retreated to the far corner of the kennel.
“Bean, come here.”
He turned his backside to her.
The woman gasped. “Well, that is the rudest dog I’ve ever met.”
Okay, so maybe Bean wasn’t the best introduction to make. Erin was right, he was a little particular. Or a lot.