“It’s so different,” Phoebe said as she sat back on her heels, surveying our work. Her hair got curlier when she sweated, and right now, she had a mass of ringlets around her face that was highly distracting.
“I should go,” I said as I rose to my feet. My quads ached from too much time spent crouching over floorboards. “I’ll have a mutiny on my hands if I don’t get home and feed Minnie soon.”
“Sheisdramatic,” Phoebe agreed as she stood. “Thanks again for your help tonight.”
“It’s the least I could do since I’m the one who messed up your renovation plans by giving you a pregnant dog to care for.”
“I suppose that’s true.” She shoved her hands in her front pockets, rocking back on her heels.
I didn’t know what to do with my hands either, which meant I needed to go home before I did something I’d regret. “Good night.”
“Night.”
I let myself out the front door and climbed into my SUV, rolling down the window so I’d get a blast of cool country air as I drove. Hopefully that would clear the romantic nonsense from my head, because I wasn’t going there with Phoebe.
Ten minutes later, I pulled into my own driveway. I went down the stairs to my basement apartment to feed and walk the dogs, annoyed every time my thoughts drifted to Phoebe. Once the dogs were settled, I took a shower and went straight to bed, determined to keep a certain brunette out of my dreams.
I was successful too. But when I picked up my phone the next morning, there was a text from Phoebe waiting for me.
Violet’s temperature dropped!!!!!!!
13
Phoebe
My knees hurt. I’d been kneeling on them all afternoon, nailing trim now that the laminate was down. Every half hour or so, I went down the hall to check on Violet. She’d taken to her playpen like a champ now, spending the majority of her time there. She’d evicted the stuffed animals, though, perhaps in anticipation of her real puppies. They were scattered across the floor of the master bedroom.
I scooped them up and dropped them into the toy box as I eyed Violet. Her temperature had dropped this morning, which meant she was likely to go into labor in the next twenty-four hours. “Want to go for a walk?” I asked.
She looked up at me, panting slightly. It was time for her to go outside, but I also hoped the exercise might help get things started. Didn’t pregnant women sometimes walk to try to go into labor? I wasn’t an expert, but I was pretty sure Emily had done laps at the mall to jumpstart things.
Violet followed me down the hall to the living room. Her toenails made the cutest clicking sound on the laminate floors. I clipped the leash onto her collar and brought her outside. By the time she’d gone down the steps into the yard, she’d stopped panting.
“Wish you could talk,” I said. “Then you could tell me if you’re in pain. Don’t be stoic about it, okay? I need to know you’re in labor in time to get someone out here to help us.”
She whined when she squatted to pee, which was unusual. Then we walked around the yard together, and I couldn’t be sure, but I thought she looked uncomfortable. And since I didnotwant to do this on my own, I was going to call in the reinforcements early and hope it didn’t turn out to be a false alarm. I dialed Taylor’s number.
“Hi,” she answered. “Is it puppy time?”
“I’m not sure, but I think so, and I just…I’d feel so much better if somebody came out and checked her for me.”
“Let me make a few calls. I’ll have someone at your house within the hour, okay?”
“Thank you,” I said, immensely relieved to know that someone knowledgeable would be here soon to help me. I ended the call and took Violet back inside.
She went down the hall to lie in her playpen. She’d seemed to like it when I played the piano yesterday, so I sat on the bench and began to play, hoping it would soothe her. I wasn’t paying attention to a specific song or melody, just letting my fingers roam the keyboard. It was a method my grandmother had taught me before I’d started taking formal lessons.
But after a few minutes, I realized I wasn’t playing a random tune at all. The familiar notes of Alicia Keys’s “No One” filled the living room. It had been our song, mine and Taylor’s. I would sit right here at this piano and play it for her, not that my voice held a candle to Alicia’s. My fingers kept moving, and I began to sing along, quietly at first and picking up volume as I got lost in the music.
It was as familiar as it was emotional, memories of that summer flowing through me as the lyrics spilled from my mouth. We’d been so much in love. As I sang our song, I remembered the way I used to lie beside Taylor, hands entwined, staring into each other’s eyes as we talked for hours, the way my body seemed to inflate with happiness when she came into a room, the way it felt when she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me until my whole body thrummed with electricity.
There was a knock at the door, and I stopped playing, wrenched from my romantic trance back to the real world where there was a dog down the hall who was about to have puppies and someone from the shelter at my door to help me through it. I stood and walked to the door, and my heart lurched against my ribs when I saw Taylor on the front porch.
Her hair was in a ponytail, and she was wearing a T-shirt with the shelter’s logo on it as if she’d come straight from work. She looked slightly dazed, as if she’d heard what song I was playing. With the windows wide open to let in the spring air, she probably had. I gulped, my throat gone dry.
“Hi,” she said, her hazel eyes locked on mine with a dizzying intensity.
Maybe I was still stuck in the past, but that fluttery feeling in my belly was exactly the way it had felt when she looked at me that summer.Oof.“Hi.”
