“You ever think about getting another dog?” I asked.
Travis was quiet for long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer.
“Sometimes,” he said. “But I’d have to leave the house to walk it.”
“They make dog doors.”
“They also make security vulnerabilities.” He shifted in his chair, something flickering across his face that was gone before I could identify it. “Maybe someday.”
Coming from Travis, that was practically a five-year plan.
One of the puppies in the bin started crying—a high, thin wail that made the mama dog’s head snap up. She sniffed the offender, determined it wasn’t dying, and went back to sleep. The puppy kept crying anyway.
“What’s wrong with it?” Travis asked, alarmed.
“Nothing. Puppies just cry sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re babies. Babies cry—human or canine. It’s what they do.”
“That seems inefficient.”
“Take it up with evolution.”
The crying stopped as suddenly as it started. Travis visibly relaxed.
“You’d be a great father,” I told him.
“Children are security liabilities. They have no concept of operational silence, they touch everything with sticky hands, and they’re legally required to attend institutions where they share information indiscriminately with strangers.”
“So that’s a no on kids.”
“That’s a no on kids.”
The hours passed strangely—fast and slow at the same time, the way they always did when you were stuck somewhere unexpected. Travis and I played some video games and checked on the pups. Watched a little TV and check on the pups. Googled if puppies could die from hiccups then… yeah.
At some point, I raided Travis’s kitchen and found enough supplies to make a passable dinner. He had opinions about how I messed up his organized his spice rack. I had opinions about the fact that a grown ass man owned a spice rack that organized.
The mama dog woke up long enough to eat some scrambled eggs—Travis’s idea, something about protein and nursing—and then passed out again. The puppies continued their cycle of sleeping, nursing, squeaking, crawling on each other, and sleeping some more.
Somewhere around eleven, one of the braver puppies escaped the bin.
I didn’t notice until Travis made a sound I’d never heard from him before—something between a yelp and a strangled cough.
“What?” I jumped up, turning from the show I was watching.
“There’s a puppy on my server.”
I looked over. Sure enough, the brown-and-white escape artist had somehow made it across the living room, down the hall, and into Travis’s command center, where it was currently investigating a tower of computer equipment that probably cost more than my truck.
Travis dove for him, scooping up the puppy with hands that were surprisingly gentle. The puppy, completely unbothered, tried to lick his chin.
“How did it even get in here?”
“Determination.”
“It’s two weeks old.”
