“We sometimes trade off,” I said, disappointment making my stomach drop. Why was I upset that he’d rather someone else walk his dog? I tried to tell myself it was because it would mean I’d miss out on getting my first regular client. But as I looked up at him, at his deep dimples and his unfairly long lashes, I knew that wasn’t really the reason. “But I can tell Dave you’d prefer he walk your dog. Happy to pass on the message.” I gave him a big smile, then looked down at Bertie, trying to mentally convey to the dog that this would be a great moment to start the game up again and make another run for it, anything to add some distraction. But Bertie just looked up at me with another one of his dog smiles, tail thumping on the kitchen floor.

“Oh, no,” Clark said quickly, his ears turning red again. “I’m—that’s not what I meant. I was surprised, but . . . I mean, it’s nice to see you again. I didn’t think that I . . . um, would,” he finished, a little haltingly, his voice fading out again at the end of his sentence.

I nodded, starting to smile. He really was cute. And I liked that he seemed a little bit awkward, like he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands right now. I was so used to Topher’s slick confidence that I’d forgotten what this could look like. “Right,” I said, when I realized I’d been staring at him. I pulled myself together as I stood, looping the leash once around my wrist. “So. Okay. I’ll take him around the neighborhood. Usually, when it’s just one dog, these are about twenty minutes, unless you want something longer, or a hike.”

Clark shrugged a bit helplessly. “I mean . . . twenty minutes sounds good,” he said. “Whatever you think.”

“Well,” I said, gripping on tightly to the leash as Bertie started straining toward the door, whining, like he couldn’t understand why we weren’t outside yet. “I should get him out.”

“Right,” Clark said, nodding a few too many times. “And I should get back to work. Or . . . get back to trying to work.”

I looked at him and realized how nice it was that he was close to my height. I was always looking up at Topher, feeling like I was getting thrown slightly off-balance. “Yeah,” I said, smoothing my hair back from my face with one hand and giving him a half smile. I hadn’t used my flirting moves in a few weeks, but they were coming back to me as I looked up at him, then down again. I took a breath, secretly hoping that there weren’t any rules against dating people whose dogs you were walking. “So I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, raising an eyebrow at him. “And, you know, maybe—” My phone buzzed with a text, and then another one. “Sorry,” I said, taking it out of my pocket, figuring it was another endless text chain with my friends. But I looked at the screen quickly and saw that they were from my dad. I didn’t see what they were, just that he’d texted three times.

“Everything okay?” Clark asked.

“Fine,” I said, dropping my phone back in my pocket and giving him a quick smile. “Just . . . stuff.”

Bertie whimpered, louder this time, and lunged for the door again, causing me to run a few steps to get my footing back. I knew whatever moment we’d maybe been about to have—if there even had been one—was now over. “See you,” I said, trying for casual, only to have this undercut by stumbling two more steps after Bertie. I maneuvered us out the front door, hoping that maybe he was still watching us go.

Almost exactly twenty minutes later, I brought Bertie back inside. He hadn’t been bad to walk—he kept trying to pull when we first started, but I did what Maya had told me to do with dogs who were pullers and kept the leash reined in tightly. Once he seemed to see what the new protocol was, he was fine on the leash, albeit determined to sniff every tree we’d passed on our half-mile loop.

I stepped inside the house and unclipped Bertie’s leash. He ran toward the kitchen, and I followed, a few steps behind, watching as he made a beeline for his water dish—B.W. painted on the side—and started slurping loudly. I tucked my hair behind my ears and pressed my lips together, hard and quick, the way Palmer’s sister Ivy had taught us when we were in eighth grade. I looked around, but there was no sign of Clark. And I knew that logically there was no reason for him to still be there.

Even so, I took my time as I hung up Bertie’s leash and double-checked he wasn’t tracking dirt all over the house. When I started to feel creepy about being in someone’s house when my job there was done, I gave Bertie a quick pat on the head, then headed out the door, making sure to lock it behind me.

Once I was walking to my car, I pulled out my phone again and looked down at the texts.

ALEXANDER WALKER

Hi—I was thinking we could get dinner tonight.

The Little Pepper? 7 p.m.

The Little Pepper had been an Asian fusion restaurant the three of us had gone to together a lot when I was younger, but it’d been closed for years now, torn down after a fire. It didn’t surprise me my dad didn’t know it was gone—I was honestly shocked he remembered we’d ever gone there. My dad never talked about our past, except in the campaign stories I’d heard him tell over and over again, until they were just well-polished anecdotes and not memories.

I got into my car and cranked the AC, still looking down at my phone.

ME

Little Pepper’s closed.