Odette pokes her. “Don’t torture the man. We still need to know why he blocked her on Instagram before we decide if he’s worthy of our intel.”
The teenager behind the counter gives me the look ofyour bill is ready but your mustache scares me so I’m going to hope you come over here and give me money on your own, so I tap my phone to pay, add a stupid tip, hand out the cookie boxes, and debate leaving.
Fuck it.
I paid for cookies.
They’re warm right now.
I’m eating my damn cookie at one of the damn tables.
The three seasoned citizens join me.
Uninvited.
Sweet Pea pants in happy glee. Especially when Sheila gets too close and scratches behind her ears. “Such a good puppy.”
“She’s three,” I mutter.
“She’ll always be a puppy to me. Probably to you too.”
“Do you want to talk about the mustache or Instagram first?” Evelyn asks.
I eye her. I’m being a dick and I don’t care. “Maybe we talk about how I’m doing.”
“I don’t need to know that anymore,” Sheila says. “Now that I got a closer look, I can tell you’re miserable.”
“And using the mustache to try to hide it,” Evelyn agrees.
They’re not bloody wrong.
I shove a bite of cookie into my mouth, warm lemon exploding on my taste buds while I remember Goldie feeding herself her peanut butter cookie that night I packed her books for her, and my dick rolls over and plays dead because we’re never seeing Goldie again.
She told me herself she picked the timing on this residency so she’d have an excuse to not go to Silas’s matches.
“So we’re back to the question of why you blocked Goldie on Instagram,” Odette says.
“She tell you that?” I ask.
“Yep.”
“For a good reason,” Sheila adds.
“Which we’re not telling you until you explain yourself,” Evelyn says.
Odette’s using a fork to eat her cookie, and she pauses between bites to point it at me. “We don’t care what your reason is. We just want to know you had one before we tell you our secret.”
I look down at Sweet Pea.
She’s glaring at me.
Happening a lot the past few weeks.
We had happiness and love and dog treats and you threw it all away because you were scared.
That’s what my tiny-ass dog keeps saying to me.
She packs a lot of attitude into every pound.
