“Such a smart girl. Pup-Pup is special, and she must have sensed that.”
“Maybe so.”
Chapter Five
Ernie
I got the job.I copied Hal’s habit and added a bunch of exclamation points before hitting send. I watched the phone, waiting for the others to join the chat. Hal should be out of work by now, and I had no idea what Ridge was up to.
Be there in a half hour!!!!!!!Hal didn’t waste time asking me for details.Bringing beer.
I’ll be there, and I’ll grab food.Ridge left off the million-and-one exclamation points.
Just like that, my celebration party was planned. This was how we kind of rolled. We were ajump in first, ask questions laterkind of friend group, and that worked well for us. It also gave us some pretty interesting adventures over the years.
They both came with their backpacks on and party supplies in hand. They were ready to stay the night if we drank too much or if we decided to have some little fun together. We’d learned that lesson the hard way and now always came prepared. More often than not, we would hang out here and not their places because of my Pup-Pup rule. Wait until I told them how I broke it. I was going to get some major eye rolling over that one. Oh well. I had the best bed out of us all, making this the best choice anyway.
“So, tell us everything.” Hal handed me a beer.
We sat around my coffee table, a pizza and box of wings in front of us. We didn’t pretend to have manners, eating directly from the containers and drinking our beers from the case as I told them about the job, my benefits package, how much I liked the dress code, and on and on.
“Your job sounds better than mine,” Hal sighed, grabbing another wing. “Having to wear a tie every day sucks.”
“That’s the worst thing about your job,” I reminded him.
“I know, but I can complain if I want to.”
“I guess that’s true.” I set my beer down, wanting to tell them about the hot doctor daddy, but also not wanting to share him just yet. For now, that day in the park was like a happy dream, and I didn’t need them bursting my happy with things like facts and logic.
“What about you, Ridge? Doing anything new for work?” Hal asked.
“Not really. That ghost-tour place is hiring, but I went on one of the tours and I could not do it twice a week. Nope.” He’d be great at taking on a persona and sharing the stories, but being great at something and wanting to do it over and over were two very different things.
I hadn’t been on one, but I’d seen them running in the pouring rain. It didn’t sound like fun to me either. Spending two hours with grumpy, soaking-wet tourists who would rather be anywhere else but going anyway because it was nonrefundable, sounded dreadful.
“Yeah, that was a hard pass for me,” Hal agreed.
“We should do something to celebrate you, Ernie.” Ridge had wing sauce on his face. I itched to hand him a napkin, but in the past, he’d been very adamant that only a daddy could do that kind of thing, so I ignored it.
“Isn’t that what this is?” I chugged the last of my beer.
“Nope, this is dinner and gossip.” Ridge shook his head and, taking out his phone, tapped away. Little stinker already had something planned and had been laying the groundwork. How typical of him.
He set it down on an empty spot on the coffee table. “We should go here. They’re having a stuffie hospital.”
“A stuffie hospital?” My attention was already caught.
“Yeah, kind of like that teddy bear hospital thing, only for littles. You can bring any kind of animal that needs a repair, or, if you just want a Band-Aid on it and some cookies, you can do that too. I heard there’ll be some hot doctor daddies.”
I wasn’t really into role-play, but Pup-Pup did have a small hole, thanks to his visit with Zoe. A stuffie hospital sounded like a solution to that problem, wrapped in a fun night out.
I didn’t tell Jovan about the damage at the time. I didn’t want to make him feel bad.
For so many years, Jovan had been the doctor in my head, and now, he was just a man. Still a doctor, but with a name and a smile and a dog. A man who bought me coffee. And, unlike back then, I was a man too, no longer a teen.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t having some very adult thoughts about said man. Not only was he attractive and nice, but he didn’t talk to me like the kid he knew. He talked to me like I was on equal footing with him, while at the same time making me feel safe. My feelings were far too complicated when it came to this man, and I needed to let it go. It wasn’t like we were dating or friends or even neighbors, for that matter.
“I can’t go.” Ridge made a grumpy face, the fake pout he wore when he got his little on and wasn’t getting his way. I sometimes wondered if he practiced in the mirror because it got more ridiculous the longer I knew him. “I promised to go on a trip with someone.”
