“Okay. Good. Now Please tell me Major is somewhere safe,” I say.
Aspen nods. Her blonde ringlets are drying and frizzing a little, giving her a golden halo under the street lamp. “He’s in my car across the street. He was, of course, the first thing I saved.”
“And then you went back into a burning building?” I say like it’s a question but it’s not. I lower my voice and glance around to make sure no one is paying attention to us. “After what you told me last night? You still went charging back into a burning building over work files?”
She looks instantly stricken. “I forgot.”
“You forgot that you’re…” I see Logan watching us so I don’t finish that sentence.
“It’s still new to me and I just panicked and didn’t think."
“Major is here?” Logan interrupts. He’s smiling, which is a rarity nowadays.
Aspen points to her car again.
“Door unlocked?”
When Aspen nods, Logan takes off in a jog across the street. Aspen glares at me. “My work is all I have. You know that.”
“You apparently have more than just work now,” I remind her, my eyes dipping down to stare at her midriff. Her stomach is as flat as ever—at least it appears that way through her loose, damp shirt.
Her arms drop to cover her middle. Our eyes meet. “Sorry for the trying to ghost you. I still like to avoid emotional conflict.”
“So… what are the chances, really, that this is … mine?” I whisper after I’ve squatted down in front of her. The look that passes over her pretty features immediately makes me feel like an asshole. She looks the way she used to look when her parents would critique her appearance or chastise her for not being Godly enough. It’s humiliation. She gets to her feet. I rise to join her.
“I can’t talk about this right now. I can’t have someone overhear us,” Aspen hisses and then whispers quickly. “The chances are truly fifty. I mean maybe even less because you were one time and the other guy was … more than one time. And I also want you to know he and I and you and I were five days apart. Not much in the baby making game or for the god-fearing good girl my mother expects me to be, but it isn’t like it was two guys in one night.”
“Aspen I don’t care about that stuff,” I reply. “I’m not here to slut shame you on any level. I’m just … I’m fucking confused. Worried. Stressed.”
“Join the club.”
I really look at her. The fear on her face makes her look young, like she did when we actually dated, which was ten whole years ago now. I hadn’t slept with her in eight years, and never would have thought to do it again if she wasn’t working undercover in the one bar I happen to wander into while I was in an emotional tailspin. So many little particles had to come together to make that meteor, and somehow they did. And now it’s going to impact my entire life.
Aspen runs a private detective firm and had been hired by the bar owner to pretend to be an employee. He was trying to clean the place up and find out which employee was dealing Molly to customers on the side. She was working the bar and I played along and didn’t blow her cover, and stayed until close because I had nothing else to do. When I was the only one left in the place, we talked candidly. She was just getting out of a relationship that had soured fast and I … well all I said to her was I’d been recently shot down. It felt true enough after seeing Terra with Tom. By three in the morning we were in my motel room. Neither of us were fucking each other, we were trying to fuck these other people out of our systems.
“If it’s mine Iwillbe involved,” I find myself promising and I know, even before she frowns, that I sound despondent and resigned. Like I’m walking a plank.
“I’m begging you not to talk about this right now. Not with so many people around, Jake,” Aspen replies and glances over her shoulder toward her car. Logan has let Major out and is holding him by the collar while they cross the street.
I nod and change the subject back to her apartment. “You can’t go back in there for at least twenty-four hours. Maybe forty-eight. And after that you may be able to salvage some stuff, but you still won’t live there. You’ll definitely need massive renovations.”
Aspen lets out a tortured growl that gets the attention of her oversized German Shepherd that is now on this side of the street. Major, cocks his head to the side and then sprints to Aspen’s side. He looks up at me and for a millisecond I think he might growl, but then he sniffs and his tail starts wagging wild as he jumps up on me. I bend down and let him shower me with kisses as Logan joins us and scratches him behind the ears.
“Wow. He is a smart dog if he remembers you after three years away,” Logan remarks in awe.
I used to volunteer to dog sit him when she went on vacation or couldn’t bring him on one of her assignments so me and this gentle giant had been tight.
As I stand, Major spins around and gives his full attention to Logan, who grins like he used to years ago before the wheels came off his life.
“You should really get a dog, Logan,” Aspen says. “River would love it and you’re a different person when you’re around them. You look positively human again.”
Leave it to my ex to speak her mind so fully she pisses everyone off. Logan looks up and his dark eyebrows pinch as a frown pulls his mouth down. “What do I normally look like?”
“Like a hipster who spilt all his oat milk on the floor,” Aspen says, flatly. “Like a millennial who can’t find avocado toast. A grandfather who starts every conversation with ‘back in my day’. Or your dad when there’s a storm and he can’t collect the lobster traps.”
Logan raises a hand in between him and Aspen. “Thanks for all that elaboration, Aspy. And for making me wish Jake had let you run back into that building.”
“Shut up,” she says with a confident smile.
