Just as I was pulling into my parking spot at the marina, my phone buzzed in my pocket, and my heart fucking somersaulted. I put the Chevy into park and pulled it out. But it wasn’t Rosie calling. It was a local number, no ID. Normally, I’d have ignored it. But maybe she was stuck in a pay booth somewhere. Maybe she’d dropped her phone on her jog, and she was calling me from the bait and tackle shop for a ride. Maybe, just maybe, it was her. So I hit the answer button.

“Hi, this is Doris from Truelove Emergency Veterinary Hospital. I’m looking for…”

Oh, fuck. The dog. The dog. I’d completely fucking spaced about the dog. “Yeah, yeah, this is me. Is she okay?”

“She’s fine, sir, but we can’t find her owner. We’ve done everything possible, but her chip comes back to an out-of-service cell phone, and there’s no physical address on file. We’ve taken photos and put them on the website. We’ve also sent them to the newspaper, but nobody has claimed her.”

That poor thing. Fucking hell. Takes a flying leap after a dragonfly, dog-paddles to safety, and now she’s got nowhere to go. My heart gave me a hard pinch in my chest. I did manage to man up, though, and kept my hand off my chest. I put it to my forehead instead. Way more manly, even if my heart did fucking ache.

“So what do we do?” I looked out at the docks as two fishermen in orange vinyl waders sorted crabs by length, using an old plastic caliper attached to a rope.

“Well, we’ve got two options, sir. We can hand her over to the pound…”

With the mention of the word, I flashed to the place in my head. I’d donated my labor and supplies to fix their roof. Though they did their best—I was sure of that—the place was a fucking hellhole. Seemed like every half-crazed fighting dog that animal control picked up in the state ended up there. It was like an ASPCA fundraising ad in living color. The very idea of that pipsqueak of a dog in the middle of all the pit-fighting, half-starved… But she’d said two options. Calm down, dude. One step at a time. “Second option…”

“Well…” said Doris, and she cleared her throat. In the background, some dogs barked, howled, woofed, and yapped. “You could foster her. Just for a short while!”

Foster her? I couldn’t even keep a goddamned houseplant alive for more than a week. I’d once fish-sat for a buddy of mine, and the fuckers almost ended up exploding from too much food. I wasn’t qualified to care for a two-dollar betta, never mind a sentient mammal. “I can barely take care of myself, Doris.” I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. My eyes were red, I hadn’t shaved in days, and I’d fucked Rosie so hard that my balls still ached. Goddamn it. And also—I inhaled deeply and tugged the fabric of my T-shirt—I could still smell her on me. Her. Sweet, salty, fucking perfect. “I’m just barely getting my shit together as it is.”

“I understand that, sir, but you might be her only hope.”

Christ. Rosie would know what the fuck to do about this dog situation, totally. She’d fly into action. She’d be making phone calls, doing Google searches on missing dogs, calling the goddamned radio station. Making flyers, knocking on doors, the whole deal. But I looked down at my phone. She hadn’t replied to me yet. There was nothing but a big gray space after Call me.

Last night had been fucking magical. But really good magic? It could change things, and maybe not for the better. At the very idea of losing her, I felt bummed out. I felt worn out. I felt sick about it. But that didn’t fix the problem. On the other side of town, there was a Chihuahua named Cupcake in one of my bath towels, waiting. Rosie might not be answering me, but that dog needed me. Right then, I needed…to be needed. “If I foster her, then what?”

“We ask that you foster her for seven days. If nobody claims her, you can either put her up for adoption or keep her.”

“Christ, Doris,” I said, staring at myself and pulling my eyelids down with two fingers as I did. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with the foster care. Seven days?”

“Seven days.”

I sniffed hard against my hangover and fired up the Chevy. “I’m on my way.”

* * *

The first thing Cupcake and I did together was go to Petco, where I drowned my heartache in some serious retail therapy. I’d never done it before, and it was fucking awesome. She rode in the front of the cart, where I’d made a bed out of her towel. She put her little paws on the bar and held her head high, like a gutsy little explorer, cruising through a brand-new universe on her spaceship. I leaned down, and she gave my lips a little kiss as we trucked through the aisles toward the dog beds. That was when I saw them.

Dog sweaters.

They were so weirdly misshapen, so funny looking on their little hangers, that I couldn’t help but hold one up to Cupcake. A half-priced Christmas sweater with snowflakes on the chest. Behind that, though, there was another one. Blue and white stripes, fuzzy yarn. Rosie had one almost exactly like it. She’d worn it when I’d helped her go chop down a Christmas tree last year. She’d spilled hot chocolate on it, a trickle right on her breast.

I took it off the hanger and slipped it over Cupcake’s head. I helped her awkward little legs through the equally awkward sleeves. The thing fit her like it was made for her. “How’s that?” I asked. I straightened the collar.

She lifted up her chin, proud and confident. Love it!

Never in my whole fucking life had I ever thought I’d be looking at dog sweaters, but she just looked so fucking cute in it that I felt like I wanted to buy a hundred of them. My thoughts got caught up in a vision of the two of them together, matching. In front of a roaring fire. Christmas tree in the corner. Snow falling. Mulled cider.

I’m so fucked.

We retail-therapied our way through the beds, the bowls, the leashes, and harnesses. I didn’t know what was best, so I bought all of it. I went heavy on the pink and heavy on the sparkles, exactly like Rosie would have. Because if I was going to do this thing, if I was going to take care of a funny little Chihuahua, I was going to do it for real.

In canned food, I stocked up on the top-of-the-line boutique stuff, top-shelf venison and sweet potato. I considered the bags of food and noticed the matching brand touted being grain free.

I looked at Cupcake. “Grain free is probably good, right? You’re not a cow or a chicken.” I scratched the underside of her chin with one finger. It was soft and slightly wet. “No grain, right?”

She wiggled her nose. Definitely not a chicken! Then we headed to cookies. I let her sniff the bags on a bunch of different ones, and noticed she really went crazy for peanut butter. My kind of dog. We went through the toys. I would’ve gotten every fucking one on the shelves, but she didn’t seem to want them. I offered her a fuzzy snake, hardly bigger than an earthworm, but she didn’t want it. A miniature duck? No takers. But then I offered her a tiny hedgehog, no bigger than a lemon, and she gave it a happy little death shake. Sold.

When I got to the register, the big guy behind the desk, whose name tag identified him as JERRY. GROOMER couldn’t keep the smile off his face.

“I got a theory, man. Real men are okay with pink,” he reassured me as he carefully freed the price tag from the sweater and scanned it without even asking me to take it off her. “And dog sweaters, too.”

I sniffed. I adjusted my belt. I gave Cupcake a pat. “Totally.”

Exactly $212.73 later, I pushed Cupcake out to my truck and bundled her into the passenger’s seat, which was way more difficult than I’d imagined. First, I had to take off the sweater, because it was like seven million degrees. Then, I had to figure out the harness. Who the fuck knew two buckles and a few nylon straps could be so goddamned complicated? But she was a supergood sport about my total ignorance over where to put her legs and what strap went where. Finally, I got her squared away. I thought. Mostly. Good enough to get her back to my boat safely, anyway. I hooked her harness to the seatbelt so nothing awful would happen to her if I had to come to a sudden stop and got her snuggled into a little bed-box that I’d hung off the headrest. I put my keys in the ignition and turned to her. She gave me a happy puff of her nostrils, as if she was actually saying, Thanks so much!

Every goddamned thing inside me told me to take a picture of her. Just one. For Rosie. I hesitated for one second. I didn’t want to push, I didn’t want to go over the top. I didn’t want to come on too fucking strong too fucking fast.

Cupcake leaned out of her box for a kiss, and I couldn’t resist. As she licked my face, my heart swelled right up, same as it had with Rosie, in a way. That pure, simple happiness—the thing that makes life worth living. As Cupcake licked me, and I smelled that sweet dog smell, I knew I couldn’t turn my back on these feelings. Fuck it. I’m gonna keep at this. I’m not gonna lose Rosie’s friendship, I’m not going to stay quiet, I’m not going to play the gentleman. If she wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, fine. Fine. But plaster-cracking, mind-blowing, earth-shaking sex or not, I was fostering a tiny dog in a sparkly collar, I was motherfucking stoked about it, and there was no way I wasn’t going to share it with Rosie. I snapped a selfie of Cupcake and me together, and it popped up on my screen. I looked happy. She looked happy. It was a happy fucking selfie, and there was nobody on the planet that I wanted to send it to more than Rosie.

So I just fucking did it.

And then prayed, with my thumb over the send key, I hadn’t overstepped. I prayed we hadn’t crossed past the point of no return. Within seconds, the typing dots popped up, and there was her answer:

The relief. Fuck, the relief. It was a goddamned good thing I was already sitting down. I let myself relax against the steering wheel. Cupcake squeaked a tiny pink ball, hardly bigger than a big gumball.

I couldn’t wipe the smile on my face, and I actually laughed out loud when Rosie replied with a whole handful of clapping-hand emojis. I didn’t think I’d ever laughed out loud reading a text, even from her. It was like my heart was wide open, bursting at the seams. I felt my nose sting as a sheen of relieved tears made my vision sparkle. It was okay. Maybe we’d be okay. For a second, I thought about pushing her about earlier. We need to talk about last night, or You didn’t need to run away. None of it seemed right, and all that was way too important for a text. I needed to be content with her having answered at all. The rest, that would come in time.

I’ll take more photos when I get her settled.

Tucking my phone into my pants, I looked out at the coast once more. For the first time since I woke up, I felt human again. I felt okay. Maybe things had changed, but at least she was talking to me again. At least she wasn’t radio silent. Because I might not get a chance to have her again like I had her last night, but I’d take her however I could get her. Even one visit to heaven was enough.

Cupcake put her little front paws on the edge of her box and looked out at the world. I liked her style. A lot. She was gutsy, with her chest puffed up and her ears perked. I gave her a pat and she wiggled her tail, but she didn’t turn toward me—all of her attention was centered on something outside. I followed her gaze and saw Fletcher, walking his dog, Captain. I beeped my horn, and he gave me a wave when he saw my truck.

“Hey, man,” he said, coming up to my window as Captain lifted his leg on a garbage can. “Holy shit! That her?”

I scooped her up and unhitched her from her harness. “The lady herself.”

Fletcher told Captain to sit. After a ten-second delay, he actually did. I watched his huge nose open and close, catching whiffs of lady Chihuahua in the air.

Fletcher cradled Cupcake in his arms like a baby. The juxtaposition of all his tats with a tiny chicken-shaped dog in pink was a fucking riot, and I thought about taking a picture of him for Rosie, too. But then maybe not. Maybe that would be too much. Maybe. So many fucking maybes.

“You good?” Fletcher asked. “You look pretty rough, man.”

I rubbed my face. “Just hungover. But yeah, good. I think.”

Fletcher didn’t look convinced, though. The guy was like a goddamned human lie detector. “Grab a coffee with me, and we can take these two to the dog park.”

* * *

Cupcake stood by a clump of fuzzy dandelions in the shade as Captain began to make his move. It was ridiculous, like one of those YouTube videos about unlikely animal friends. A guinea pig and an ox or whatever. But Captain didn’t care. Neither did Cupcake. She held perfectly still as he took a few big, slow steps toward her and then carefully lowered his head to her underside. She lifted her front paw to make room for his snout underneath her.

“I don’t know, man,” I told Fletcher, ready to spring into action at any moment. One snap of those jaws and Cupcake would be a goner.

“Chill out,” Fletcher said and sipped his coffee. “She’s got him wrapped around her finger already. Speaking of that…” He gave me a mock-dead-arm punch. “You and Rosie?”

I tried to level him with the most serious stare I could muster, and I shook my head. “Not talking.”

“Don’t pull the tough-guy routine with me, dude. I know how you feel. I’ve got eyes. I saw the lamp swinging when you kissed her.”

I scratched my forehead and looked up at the leaves, where a squirrel was gnawing on some type of nut. It froze with it clenched between its paws, mid-nibble.

“So did you…” he said, raising an eyebrow in place of some godforsaken fucking euphemism.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” I snarled.

Fletcher lifted his hand, a shit-eating grin on his face. “All right, all right.” He adjusted the button on his polo and pretended to do something with his phone. But I could feel his eyes on me, every few seconds, double-checking, triple-checking. The guy was the best poker player I’d ever met. He could skin any card shark alive. He ran a pool bar for a living, for fuck’s sake. He knew bullshit, and he had me all figured out. Because I was full of it.

Still, though, I wasn’t a guy who kissed and told, or fucked and talked. Most definitely not about Rosie. So I sipped my coffee and watched the dogs. Captain had lowered himself down on his front paws, ass up in the air, bobbed tail wagging. Cupcake had her ears back, and her little tail was perfectly still. Captain thumped the grass with his forepaws.

“You did though, didn’t you?” Fletcher said without looking at me, coffee cup halfway to his mouth. “I can see it on you, like a fucking glow.”

Captain let out a low, closemouthed bark. It sounded like he was underwater—a half-volume woof.

Which Cupcake returned with a feisty, piercing marf that made Captain spin in a crazed circle.

“I don’t glow.”

“Yep.” Fletcher tucked his phone into his pants. “Now you do.”

And the dogs took off in a figure eight around the park, with dust flying behind them and dandelion fluff floating on the wind.

* * *

After Captain and Cupcake ran around so much that I thought Captain was going to have a heart attack, Cupcake and I headed back to my boat. But as I pulled into my reserved spot, I realized that in the last couple hours, shit had gone seriously tits up. It looked like a crime scene. Caution tape, guys in reflective vests, official-looking dudes with clipboards—and right in the goddamned middle of it was my boat.

With a mini yacht lodged in the side.

But it wasn’t just my boat. It was my house. The Rose Marie, named after… Guess who?

Yeah, maybe I’d always been fucked.

Now the Rose Marie looked pretty fucked, too. Two guys in a tug were trying to dislodge the yacht’s bow from my sternside. One of them made a slicing motion across his throat, and the diesel engine on the tug went silent.

I got out of my truck, leaving Cupcake buckled up and cool in the AC. The dock manager, Rich, waddled down to me, with his jeans swishing and his ancient Adidas sandals flapping. He smoothed his T-shirt over his barrel chest and beer belly. “Well, son, we had a bit of an incident! One of the renters got their portside mixed up with their stern.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Hell of a thing!” bellowed Rich. Twenty years working at the marina had totally obliterated his conversational voice. Every word he ever said was loud enough to be heard two boats over. “She’s taking on some water! Not a lot, but enough that I reckon you’d best find yourself somewhere else to sling your hammock!”

I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger and thought about it. I could get a hotel, but I hated hotels. People everywhere, and I always felt like I had to keep my room tidy so the maid didn’t think I was a pain in the ass. I could try to crash with Fletcher, which wouldn’t be so bad because he had literally the most awesome man cave ever. But still, it was a big imposition, especially now with a dog. I had visions of Cupcake and Captain running up and down the steps nonstop. Twenty-four hours ago, this would’ve been a no-brainer—I’d have gone straight to her. But now that was different. Because the idea of being in her house, one room over, with this feeling that I had in my bones? And my cock? And my head? I’d never fucking sleep. I’d be like a moose in the rut.

“Hear me, son!” Rich yelled. “Find somewhere else to sling your hammock!”

I gave him a pat on the arm and put my sunglasses on. “I’ll go take a look.”

I stepped from the jetty onto my boat and opened the door. Where my kitchen banquette used to be, where I sat yesterday with Cupcake, was now the fiberglass front end of a boat. Christ. Rich was right, the Rose Marie was taking on water—not a ton, but enough, and more coming in. So I grabbed my duffel from the closet and packed up some shit—jeans, T-shirts, shaving cream, razor. Boxers. From the bottom of my bookshelf in my bedroom, I grabbed a shoe box full of important stuff. I had a safety deposit box, sure, but this shoe box was the sentimental stuff. The stuff that really mattered now. I took a peek inside and saw a row of old mixtapes, some with Rosie’s handwriting on the brittle, yellowing stickers, some with mine. SUMMER 1998, one of them said, with little hearts she’d drawn all over and colored in with pink highlighter. Mine was simpler and said To Rosie, From Max (Copy) and had my writing. But it was weird, because it was the writing from the younger me, almost like a different guy. That writing had been mine when life was simple, when I had nothing to worry about at all. Yet Rosie’s writing was exactly the same now as it had been then—identical, even the shape of her hearts. Those I knew from doodles I’d seen. She hadn’t given me anything with a heart in decades. But fuck, how I wished she would now.

Rosie’s tapes never had the tracks listed, and I remembered listening to them on my old Walkman in my bedroom, fucking dying to see what she’d put on next. I remembered they were like a window into her mind, and after I’d finish a tape, I’d listen to it again and again, memorizing transitions from songs so that when I’d hear one of them on the radio, it sounded strange that a different song followed. In my head Live’s “Lightning Crashes” was always followed by Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight.” That was Rosie’s music logic, and over time it had become mine too.

I closed the box, tucked it under my arm, and grabbed an old photo album from back in the days when we still took actual pictures, which I put in my bag, too. As I did, a photograph of Rosie and me slipped out from between the pages. We were young, just teenagers. Probably the summer of ’98 or earlier. I looked as pissed off as ever, but she’d already started to bloom into the beautiful woman she was now and had been for so long.

It was a prom picture. We hadn’t gone together, but we’d double-dated. In the photograph, she was planting a kiss on my cheek. I was trying to play the badass, looking uncomfortable in my tux, but she was all joy and happiness and love.

Memory lane. It hurt.

Before I could get much farther down it, I heard the noise I’d know anywhere—the sound of her lurching into a parking place in her Bug. Again, my heart somersaulted, went fucking wild in my chest. Zipping up my duffel, I stepped out onto the deck and saw Rosie on the jetty. She had an Ace bandage on her ankle, and there were chalky smudges of something on her legs and arms.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked as I planted my hand on the taffrail and jumped down onto the docks. “And how’d you get your car?”

“Word spread like wildfire! Took the bus,” she said, beaming and squinting in the sunshine. “I had to make sure you were okay!”

* * *

I blocked the sun from her, to make sure she was in the shade. Her hair was damp from a shower, and I recognized the chalky smudges—calamine. “That poison ivy?”

“Had an encounter with the woods,” Rosie explained, but then turned her attention to my boat. “What a mess!” She was wearing a little scarf around her neck—old-fashioned, almost. Fifties, Marilyn Monroe. All to hide the hickey I’d given her.

Fuck.

I stood closer than I might have yesterday, because I couldn’t help it. I had to be near her; I had to keep her close.

“You okay?” I asked, glancing down at her ankle.

She wiggled her pink-painted toenails. “Running is dangerous, Max.” She wagged an admonishing finger at me and smiled.

The commotion of the docks made a strange space of calm between us. Everybody bustled around, but I felt like we were in our own world. I took another half step toward her. “You ran away from me. You didn’t have to do that.”

She exhaled long, slow, and dramatic. “Sorry. You know how I am with awkward conversations.”

I did. I’d noticed that when it came to uncomfortable things, she practiced what I’d call a policy of aggressive avoidance. I’d just never been on the receiving end of it before. “It’s all right. I get it.”

Her eyes looked sad, almost full of regret, and it made me feel like she’d punched me right in the sternum. I didn’t want her to regret it. Even if we never did it again, I’d cherish it forever.

“I’m sure I can find an Airbnb,” I said, reaching for my phone. “Can’t imagine it’ll take that long.”

From one jetty over, Rich boomed, “Wouldn’t count on it! Insurance, dry dock? Could be weeks!”

I watched Rosie swallow a laugh. It was one of our many running jokes, Rich’s bullhorn voice. Sometimes she’d do impromptu impressions of him out of nowhere. I’d call her up to see how she was doing, and she’d scream, “Doing fine, son! Red sky at night, sailor’s delight!” But now was no time for joking around, clearly. She collected herself and shifted her lips off to one side. No lipstick today, but sexier than ever because now, I knew what they felt like. Everywhere.

“Come on,” she said, placing her hand on my arm. “Don’t be silly. Come stay with me.”

Holy shit. Yes. That. Yes. “I don’t want to be a pain in the ass.”

“Max! I don’t want you wasting your money on some place with mildewy towels, polyester sheets, and a bad Wi-Fi connection.” It was like she’d just rattled off the three deadliest sins. “You can use my guest room.”

Which was right next to her room. Christ. “It’s too much trouble. Thanks, though,” I said, raising my hand. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. This is no time to assert your masculine independence. There’s a hole in your boat.” She put her hand on her hip. “All right? My house is your house. Same as always.”

Her house. Her staircase. Her bed. Her body. Mine.

But of course, she was right. It was the only logical thing, and it was what every single fucking fiber of my being was telling me I needed to do. “Positive?”

She nodded, serious and certain. But then I realized that beyond the obvious complications—her, me, sleeping in the same house? Shiiiit—there was yet another layer. John Denver singing “Yesterday” played in my head. “Rosie, what about….”

She took a deep breath. “Max. We have to put that behind us. It happened,” she said in a hushed whisper. “It was amazing, but we can’t. We just can’t.”

Amazing wasn’t the fucking start of it, but actually… “I meant, about Cupcake and the little dictator.”

“Oh!” Rosie gasped. “I thought you meant, you know.” Her eyes moved up and down me, and her fingers moved to the scarf tied around her neck.

I ran my fingertip up the back of her hand, careful not to let anybody see it, but sure to let her feel it.

She watched my finger, breathing hard. Then she straightened her shoulders, blinked once, and stepped back from me. She reached out her hand, like we were shaking on a bet. “We’ll figure out the animal situation. But you agree? Roommates? Back to normal?”

I didn’t know how the fuck we were gonna do it—I could imagine the rose snaking around her hip, I remembered how her nipple tightened in my mouth, I remembered her telling me she was coming, that she was going to let go. I had to try though. One visit to heaven would have to be enough. “Deal.”