I slid into my car and my heartbeat sped to a gallop as I waited for him to keep talking. “Okay?”
“Yeah, they want to open one of those indoor trampoline parks. For kids, you know? Birthday parties and crap like that.”
I swallowed hard. They wanted the entire building, my space included.
“Is it a done deal?” My hand felt clammy against the phone. I sat in my car because I didn’t trust myself to drive and talk at the same time.
Mike breathed hard like he was jogging, but since that was impossible I chalked it up to his smoking-induced COPD. “Not yet. They gotta do more shit on their end with the banks, but we’re getting closer.”
“Did you talk to Andrew yet?”
He grunted. “Not yet—could you let him know? I gotta run.”
I knew it was because Mike was afraid that Andrew was going to call him on being a crappy landlord and not warning him about the possible sale of the building before he signed the lease.
I finally turned on my car. “Yeah. I’ll tell him.”
“Okay, see ya.”
The snow was anything but pretty as I headed down the Gibsons’ driveway in the encroaching darkness. It was the kind that came flying at the windshield and made it feel like I was driving through a meteor storm. I needed to focus, but I could feel myself zoning out as I headed home.
I never expected that the building would go to someone who wanted to take the whole thing over. Maybe I’d kept my head in the sand about it, but seriously, who would really want a basic bitch building on the outskirts of town, with a parking lot small enough to spark turf wars between tenants?
I sat at a stop sign for far too long until I finally admitted it to myself.
Who would want it? Me.Iwanted it.
I drove blindly through increasingly crappy weather, barely registering where I was as I finally surrendered to the sticky, complicated thoughts required to make things right. I did an incredibly stupid, middle-of-the-road U-turn, then tempted fate even more by reaching for my phone as I drove. Luckily I seemed to be the only idiot on the road as I hit speed dial. I crossed my fingers as it rang.
“Hello?”
I smiled at the question in her voice. Every caller was still a mystery thanks to the ancient landline she still used.
“Mom, is it okay if I come over now? I need to talk to you about something.”
chapter thirty-seven
Dude was on a twenty-foot-long line, proving that he could do incredibly speedy recalls even when surrounded by distractions like piles of deer poop and squirrel-filled trees. Andrew and I were holding our training session in the fields behind his house, and I was thankful that we had his most excellent dog to focus on instead of the weird tension that had been growing between us ever since the night we went skating. He’d met me at the door with the briefest of kisses, but then again we had to jump apart because Dude started playing tug-of-war with my coat pocket. I chalked up the tension to his nerves about the future of Crush, which made me even happier about what I was going to tell him.
“Time to do some leash walking now,” I called to Andrew. “We’ve only done street walking—let’s put him to the test out here where there’s no clear path.”
“Okay.” He unclipped the six-foot leash from across his chest and traded it out for the long line. Dude looked like he was having the time of his life in the three inches of fresh powder, but happily ran back to Andrew when he did the “come” handsignal. It was the perfect weather for an outside session, a surprisingly temperate post-snow day when the sun lit up the landscape and warmed the air enough to encourage unzipped jackets and hats askew.
I met Andrew and Dude at the edge of the woods. “Is it okay to walk in these fields? Is it public land?”
He shrugged. “No one’s had a problem with it yet. And I’m more of an ask-forgiveness kind of guy.”
I punched him on the shoulder gently, mainly because I just needed an excuse to touch him. “That tracks. Let’s start off with you walking Dude, so I can check your progress.”
“We’ve been practicing, I think you’re going to be impressed.”
In truth I was having a hard time focusing on the work. I wanted to blurt out my good news, but I couldn’t get past the nerdy pull to honor their lesson first.
I fell behind Andrew and Dude and watched as the high-energy adolescent transformed into an attentive student. Dude kept pace with Andrew and every time he looked up, Andrew marked the behavior with the hand signal and a treat.
“Wow, youhavebeen practicing. Looking great!”
After a while I jogged to catch up and Dude gave a little hop when I reached them.
