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Me: grounded.

I was grinning at my screen. Lexi glanced at me. “Who’s that?”

“Chris. The dog left a dead frog in his bed,” I said, showing her the picture.

She wrinkled her nose at it. “Huh. Nice bedroom furniture.”

“Mike also has nice bedroom furniture,” I said, putting my phone away.

“Yeah, but do you think his mom picked it out? I mean, he lives in the guesthouse, right?”

I thought about it. Maybe his mom did pick it out. It did match the vibe of the main house. I shrugged. “I don’t care if she did. He keeps it clean,” I said.

“Yeah, I can see that about him. He seems meticulous. Isn’t it funny how you can just tell when a guy has a dirty refrigerator door? Like, you don’t even need to go over there, he’s just giving dirty refrigerator door energy?”

I was laughing again.

Chris had a clean refrigerator door. I’d been going over there while he was at work for the last few days to walk the dog. His whole house was nice actually—except for his bookshelf, which was a chaotic mess of hardcovers and paperbacks that looked like he read them too fast to put them away properly. They were stacked in teetering piles, some of them on the floor. I wanted to organize it for him but I felt like it was rude. I didn’t know him that well yet to offer to fix his shelves.

I didn’t know him well enough yet to have a key to his house either, but here we were.

Lexi parked behind the restaurant.

We got out of the car and she pulled her apron out of her bag. “Maybe I should bone that guy who comes in with the hard hat,” she said, tying it on.

“The one who has the motorcycle?” I asked, closing the car door.

“Yeah. Or is that shitting where I eat? It is, huh.”

“You could always go back to your ex,” I said.

“I’d rather literally shit where I eat.”

Another text came through. This time a picture of Woofarine sleeping with his tongue out, looking like a little angel.

Chris took a lot of pictures of our dog. I think he took more than I did. I wondered if he posted them online.

We didn’t follow each other on our socials yet. I opened the app and searched for him. He had a private account, so I sent him a request. He approved it immediately.

I smiled and DM’d him.

Me: You’re up early.

Chris: The frog woke me up. I touched it with my foot, it was under the covers.

I slapped a hand over my mouth, laughing before going back to look at his grid.

As expected, it was completely full of pictures of Woofarine. That dog was his whole life right now. He was like a new parent with his first child, photos of everything. I was really glad he agreed to let me help him. I think he and Wooferine needed each other.

I scrolled down, double-tapping until the Woofarine pictures stopped. Then it was mostly pictures of him with the guys. One of him and Mike at the gym, a few at the concert the night we met, and then a little further back was a close-up of him holding a frail, wrinkled hand. The photo was in black and white and the caption was him letting everyone know his mom had passed and she was with his dad now.

Both his parents were gone.

I swiped left to a picture of him as a little boy with his parents at a wedding, probably twenty years ago. He was in a little brown suit and she was holding his hand there too. His dad was on the other side, a smiling, much older version of Chris. I didn’t even know them and I felt the twinge of sadness just looking at it.

Yes, my dad was a piece of work, but at least I had my mom. I couldn’t imagine being alone in the world. I knew he had the guys, but it wasn’t the same thing.

I didn’t want to like the post. I didn’t think he wanted to see a notification on something he was trying to work through. I went back up and looked at his highlights. He had one for book quotes. I smiled and tapped it, swiping through to see which ones I knew. I paused at a passage I recognized.