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The Happy Ever After Playlist

Page 8

by Abby Jimenez

Two weeks? Tucker had been lost for two fucking weeks?

“I’ve been out of town. I didn’t have cell service. I had no idea he was missing. I have no problem paying for a reward. Please, just give me your address and I’ll—”

“No. He’s not your dog anymore. If he’d been at the shelter, his hold would be up and he’d either have been adopted or euthanized. I put up signs, ran his microchip, put him online, I left you a dozen voicemails. I did my due diligence. You abandoned him. So as far as I’m concerned, he’s my dog now.”

She hung up on me.

I stared at my phone in shock. I hit Send on the number again and it went straight to voicemail.

Cursing, I called Monique.

“You lost Tucker?” I growled, not bothering to lower my voice for the passengers still deplaning.

“Well, hello to you too, Jason.”

The click of her heels came through the line. I could almost see her, holding her fucking skinny latte with those huge sunglasses she always wore, shopping bags on her arms while she wasn’t looking for my dog.

“Tucker’s been lost for two weeks? Why didn’t you look for him? Or put through an emergency call to me? What the fuck, Monique? You’re supposed to be taking care of him!”

“I work, Jason. And I did look. Sort of.”

Then I heard a whoosh that sounded like a subway car. “Wait.” Disbelief coursed through my veins. “Where are you?”

A pregnant pause.

“New York,” she said quietly.

“How long have you been in New York?”

Silence again.

“Two weeks.”

I clutched the phone with white knuckles. “We are done. Fucking done,” I hissed.

“Jason, when Givenchy calls, you don’t tell them that you can’t be in their Vogue shoot because you have to look for your fuck buddy’s dog. I’m sorry, okay? Don’t—”

I hung up. I’d heard enough. She might as well have lost my child and then run off to do a damn photo shoot. It was that unforgivable.

I tried Sloan’s number again. Voicemail.

At a loss for what else to do, I stood by the gate going through the rest of my messages as rain pounded on the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the tarmac.

This Sloan woman hadn’t been kidding. She really had tried to reach me. Every day for over a week she’d left me a voicemail about Tucker. I got more and more pissed off as the messages detailed Monique’s complete and utter disregard for my dog.

He’d been in the middle of the street.

He’d had a bladder infection from not being let out.

This lady had posted all over, places Monique could have easily seen the signs had she bothered to stick around to look.

He’d dived into this woman’s sunroof. What the hell was that about?

I rubbed my temples. Tucker hated kennels. Monique had been good enough with him, at least in front of me, and I hadn’t had any reservations about it at the time. She told me she’d take him on her runs.

Stupid, stupid.

I should have flown him to Minnesota and left him with my family. I fucked up. It would have been a two-thousand-mile side trip, but at least Tucker would have been safe.