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I could almost imagine the smirk I heard on her lips. Almost. I really did wish I had a picture.

“No, but once you know how the meat tastes, it’s not hard to work with it,” she said.

I shook my head. “Yes, it is. That’s why your page is so popular.”

“Is it?”

“You’re kidding, right? Everyone I know uses it. Why don’t you update it anymore?”

She paused for a moment. “I cooked the meat that Brandon, my fiancé, used to bring home. He died in a motorcycle accident two years ago. Hit by a drunk driver. So I stopped blogging.”

I could hear the tightness at the edges of her voice, and something protective in me twitched—which was weird. I barely knew her. But I didn’t like that she’d gone through this. Why do all the bad things always seem to happen to good people?

“Do you still cook other things?” I asked, getting us off the topic.

“Not really. It kind of lost its allure for me.”

“So if you don’t cook, what have you eaten today?”

“Hmmm. Well, I’m still blowing through the gift cards I got for Christmas, so I went to Starbucks and got my coffee,” she said. “Then I went to Kristen’s house to go swimming. She has a toddler. We had watermelon and macaroni and cheese for lunch. Kristen made it, so the mac and cheese was very soggy.”

“And where was Tucker? Did you leave him alone at home, heartbroken in a small closet?”

“Oh, you mean did I leave him in a crate?”

I smirked at the jab.

“No, he came with me and he went swimming too. And he got a puppuccino at Starbucks.”

I wrinkled my forehead. “A what?”

“A puppuccino. A cup of whipped cream for dogs.”

“That’s a thing?”

“It is. There’s all kinds of things you can get for dogs at restaurants. You can get ice cream at most places as long as it doesn’t have vanilla beans in it. And there’s a cupcake shop called Nadia Cakes that I take him to that has doggy cupcakes they make from scratch.”

I arched my eyebrows. “Wow, he really is on vacation.”

“There’s a reason why you’re paying me the big bucks for my dog-sitting services.”

“I’d have paid more.”

“I’d have done it for less.”

I smiled and jammed another pillow behind my back.

“I’m going to put you on speaker. Hold on,” she said. “I have to get some work done and I need my hands.”

I heard shuffling.

“What are you painting?”

“Want to see it?” she asked, sounding slightly farther away than before.

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Hold on, I’ll send you a picture. It’s really lame. You’re gonna laugh. There.”