I half-drag, half-carry him back toward my rental. It takes twice as long as the walk out because Rex has apparently forgotten how legs work. By the time we reach the outdoor shower on the back deck, I’m sweating, he’s pouting, and we both smell like regret.
“In,” I say, pointing at the shower.
Rex sits down. He’s not getting in the shower. The shower is for traitors.
“Rex.”
Nothing.
“There are treats inside.”
His ear twitches.I’m listening.
“After you shower.”
He considers this. Weighs his options. Finally, with the dramatic resignation of a prisoner walking to the gallows, he slinks into the shower.
I turn on the water.
What follows is twenty minutes of chaos. Rex twists. He shakes, spraying water and crabresidue everywhere. He tries to escape no fewer than seven times. I end up wetter than he is, and at one point I’m pretty sure he looks me dead in the eyes and sighs with disappointment, like I’m the one who’s failed him.
By the time he’s finally clean—or at least clean enough that Dean won’t disown me—I’m exhausted, soaked, and covered in dog hair.
Rex shakes himself off, walks inside like nothing happened, and falls asleep on my couch.
I check the time. 2:45.
Four hours and thirteen minutes to go.
I’m going to lose my mind.
By 6:30,I’ve changed my shirt four times.
The first one was too casual. The second was trying too hard. The third had a mysterious stain I didn’t notice until I was already wearing it. The fourth is fine. Normal. A regular shirt that a regular person would wear to listen to a twenty-year-old cassette tape with the love of his life.
No pressure.
I show up at Eleanor’s house at exactly 6:58,because showing up at 7:00 on the dot feels too precise and showing up early feels too eager.
The house is warm and welcoming, with flowers in the window boxes and a porch light glowing against the fading evening. I can see the backyard from here—the old pecan tree spreading its branches against the sky, the Adirondack chairs arranged around a fire pit that’s already crackling with flames.
Eleanor opens the door before I can knock.
“Levi.” She smiles, and it’s warm. Genuine. Not the suspicious look she used to give me when I was seventeen. “Come in. Delilah’s out back getting things set up.”
“Thank you for...” I gesture vaguely. “All of this.”
“I’ve been waiting twenty years for you two to figure this out. A fire pit and some hot chocolate is the least I can do.” She presses a mug into my hands—warm ceramic, the smell of chocolate and something spicy. “Go on. She’s nervous. You being there will help.”
I walk through the house, past the kitchen where Ruffy is sleeping in a patch of lamplight, past the table where Delilah must have read those letters last night, and out the back door into the cool evening air.
She’s sitting by the fire pit, the old boom box on the small table between the chairs, themetal time capsule on her lap. The firelight catches her hair, her face, the nervous way she’s turning the cassette tape over and over in her hands.
She looks up when she hears me.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
