Charming as Puck(23)

Also, fuck waiting for Kami to find the cow a home. “Why can’t we do it tomorrow?” I ask her.

“Because you’re a dick and I’m not giving you an excuse to bother Kami,” she replies sweetly.

“She’s got you there,” Zeus says.

Felicity smiles, and yeah, fine.

I’d do just about anything for my sister.

Right now, I’d do just about anything to get back in Kami’s good graces too. I wonder if Felicity knows about this morning’s delivery.

“You’re about cleaned out, so we’ll go get a table,” Felicity says. “Not like we have to hurry to unload anything.”

Right.

Because we’ll just have to load it back up when I get a new place in a few days. “Thanks.”

She smiles again. Nice to see her smiling so much. Even I can’t deny Ares has been good for her, even if it pissed me off to find out he was sleeping with her when he was supposed to be guarding her against a crazy ex-boyfriend.

“Better go make sure Mom’s not trying to give away anything. I think she has a crush on Jaeger.”

“That’s…”

“Disgusting?” she asks with a big grin.

“My mom has a crush on Hulk Hogan,” Zeus offers.

“You mean you do,” Ares says.

They’re still laughing when I head for the elevator.

This isn’t so bad, I tell myself. Things will get normal again. I’ll have a new place within a week. We’re playing the Boston Blades at home on Wednesday, and they’ll be tough, but I know we’re tougher. And Kami will forgive me, and I’ll get my game mojo back.

Life is about to be perfect once again.





Thirteen





Kami



The butterflies are back, and not just because I got called home from work early to deal with Sugarbear getting through the fence in my piddly backyard and eating Mrs. Ostermeijer’s mums. Placating my neighbor was fairly simple, but if Sugarbear gets through the other fence, it won’t be so easy.

And it’s not like I can just call up doggy daycare and ask if they take extra-large varieties for while I’m at work.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll take her to work with me. We do have a parking lot. And she loves my dogs.

So tonight’s butterflies are once again due to a date.

A real date. With Douglas. A man who isn’t a hockey player. And who wears glasses, and who Muffy assures me is no more than thirty-five. And who wants to meet at a wine bar downtown.

Nick knows wine exists, but he’s more of an Irish whisky kind of guy. Or Irish beer. Or sometimes a mix of the two.

Not thinking about Nick tonight, I remind myself.

Tiger howls when I dance into my slingbacks. Like I’m cheating on her for having a date. “It’s a work night,” I tell her. “I won’t be out late. Promise.”

Pancake rolls her eyes and flops to the ground in front of my couch. Dixie tries to trip me and bounces all over the living room. She’s a pinball, leaping off the couch, missing the recliner, bouncing off the wall, skidding to a stop before the TV stand.

“You three are fine.” They got an extra-long walk with Sugarbear after work, and then we played fetch in the front snip of a yard for half an hour while Sugarbear ate her grains in back, during which I only thought about Nick and the thirty apology teddy bears approximately three million times. “Dates are good for me. And so they’re good for you. Don’t you want someone else to play fetch with?”

Tiger flops on her back next to Pancake and makes her goofball howl again. Dixie skitters out of the room and dashes back in two seconds later with her stuffed monkey that she likes to play tug of war with. She drops it at my feet and pants up at me.

“After my date.”

She, too, flops mournfully onto the rug beside Pancake and Tiger. I unplug my phone, snap a picture of the three of them looking pathetically adorable, and send it to my mom. Then I head for the door.

Half an hour or so later, I’m being seated in a suede-lined booth big enough for two beside the exposed brick wall at Noble V, one of the trendier wine bars in downtown just down the street from Chester Green’s. Muffy made the reservation for us, claiming she owed me for dancing with William. My date hasn’t arrived yet, but I wonder if Muffy’s men are just the late kind. Plus, I’m ten minutes early, which is unusual when I’m heading into downtown at rush hour.

I guess the city’s campaign to get more people on public transportation is working.

I fiddle with the menu, glancing at the fine writing on the thick linen paper tucked into the leather menu cover. The wine is easy—they have my favorite Riesling from a small winery outside the city near the Blue Ridge Mountains—but too many things on the food list sound great for that to be an easy choice.

Nick would go for the hamburger, but I—dammit.

I don’t care what Nick would go for.

The salmon sounds good. Fish is good. Healthy. Sophisticated. Undoubtedly delicious here. I flop the menu down and glance around again.

Everything’s dark wood. High, exposed-beam ceilings. The bartender’s young and hot and wearing a black button-down, and the servers are all in total black too. And oh my god, that’s Doug Dobey, Felicity’s ex-boyfriend, talking to the hostess.