“Agreed.”
I let my head fall back and closed my eyes. I must’ve drifted off because it felt like I’d only shut my eyes for a moment before Danzig and Hugo were back.
“The moment he did his business, he insisted on coming back,” Danzig said with a chuckle. The small dog rushed up the little stairs, walked across Bec’s lap, then made himself comfortable on me.
“I think he knows you’re hurting,” Bec said.
“Of course he does,” I murmured, petting Hugo behind his ears. “He’s super smart. Probably the smartest dog ever.”
“Definitely the most intuitive," Bec said. Danzig went into the kitchen and grabbed us all drinks.
He and Bec chatted about nothing much. I was content to just listen to them talk. Finally, the pizza arrived. I was starving and was sure I could eat an entire one by myself.
“Thanks for getting the extra larges,” I said as Danzig settled on the couch on the other side of Bec. For a moment, I thought about how we’d need a bigger couch to better accommodate the three of us, then realized that this smaller one encouraged us to snuggle.
Bec grabbed the remote out from under one of the boxes on the coffee table and clicked on the TV. She put on an old black and white movie, then grabbed a slice. The names of the actors and director displayed on the screen.
“The Big Sleep?” Danzig guessed between bites.
Bec looked over at him. “How did you know?”
“I remember seeing it in the theater when it came out,” he said.
“Everyone thinksCasablancais Humphrey Bogart's best, but I think it’s this one,” I said.
“Sometimes I forget how old you guys are,” she said. She took a big bite of her pizza as the title of the film appeared across the screen with a dramatic beat of music.
We sat in silence, eating and watching until most of the pizza was gone and we were all sipping our beers.
“Mom never got into watching movies,” Danzig said.
“Oh?” Bec said.
“She has a hard time being still,” I said. “When she reads, she likes to pace. It’s interesting to watch. The moment they invented electric treadmills, she bought three.”
“What does she do?” Bec asked. “I mean for a living. Or does she have a hoard of gold like a dragon?”
“No hoard,” Danzig said. “For the last few hundred years, she’s been building companies from the ground up, then selling them. She likes the challenge but gets bored and jumps to the next project.”
“What kind of companies has she created?” Bec asked.
“Her first one made candles and other wax items,” I said. “Another built ships. She did a custom car company back when they were all hand-made. That one didn’t last long because she liked working with steam engines and wasn’t as fond of the gas engine. That’s when she moved to trains.”
“That one didn’t last long either,” Danzig said. “She loved the trains but then fell in love with planes so she jumped into that.”
“She built planes?” Bec asked.
“She raced them,” Danzig said. “She took a break from building and formed a racing team. That was in the 1920s so aviation was still very new.”
“Your mom sounds amazing,” she said. “I can’t wait to meet her.”
That thought made me uncomfortable so I changed the subject. “What about your mom? What does she do?”
Bec’s smile vanished. “Mom and Dad are free spirits. They live on about ten acres of land, mostly subsistence farming.”
Mila hinted that Bec’s childhood hadn’t been the best. I looked over her head at Danzig. He nodded his head, he wanted to know more also.
“Was that a hard life?” I asked.
