“Really?” Toby asked, smiling at Clark, then glaring at me. “And why is this the first time we’re hearing about it?”

“It’s just . . .” Clark hesitated. “I mean, it’s not my house. It’s my responsibility for the summer, so I didn’t want anything to happen to it. . . .”

“Wait,” Wyatt said, raising an eyebrow. “You live there alone?”

“Yeah,” Clark said, and I fought the urge to bury my face in my hands.

“This,” Palmer said, grinning, “is awesome.”

“Thanks for the invite, brother,” Wyatt said, hitting Clark on the back as Tom winced in sympathy. “Party at Clark’s tonight?”

“Text us the address?” Bri asked, and I nodded, knowing there was no way to get him out of it now. I glanced at my phone and realized I really did need to get going—one of my dogs, Wendell, had a tendency to gnaw on doorframes when I was running late. I gathered up the rest of my things, pulling my sundress over my bikini and stepping into my flip-flops.

“So I’ll see you guys tonight,” Clark said, starting to leave, taking the beach bag from me and slinging it over his shoulder. “I’ll, um, get some snacks? Like chips, maybe?” He turned to me, and I nodded, reaching out my hand for his and giving it a squeeze as I realized that this was probably the first party he’d ever thrown. “And Toby?” She looked up at him from where she’d surreptitiously been putting on lip gloss. “For every curse, there’s a cure. You know that, right?” Wyatt looked over at him, frowning, and Clark added quickly, “It’s a thing in my books. You know, with the dragons.”

“We should go,” I said quickly, feeling the need to avert my eyes from Toby’s expression and how hopeful she suddenly looked.

? ? ?

“Tell me their names again,” Clark said as he looked at the five dogs in front of us.

“Well, that one’s Bertie.” Bertie was currently running circles around Clark, who was trying to untangle himself, in what was pretty much a perpetual loop.

“Thanks for that,” Clark said, wobbling slightly as Bertie lunged for a squirrel.

“And that’s Rufus,” I said, pointing to the terrier mix who was chewing his own leg. “Jasper, Pippa, and Wendell.”

“Whatever happened to Rover and Spot?”

“I’m walking them later tonight,” I said, and Clark laughed. He leaned down to kiss me, and I kissed him back, hoping that the five dogs on their leashes would keep calm for a few moments.

It had taken me three weeks, but I was finally getting the hang of this dog-walking thing. My car now had towels spread over the backseat and was stocked with treats and water and collapsible bowls. I could tell the difference now between a dog sniffing with purpose and just trying to stall and look at a squirrel a little longer. I’d found my favorite brand of plastic bag—orange, biodegradable, from Raiders of the Lost Bark, whose name thrilled Bri to no end. She’d almost lost it when I’d told her about their other business, Temple of Groom. I had learned that my sweetest dog was Waffles the pit bull, and the most ornery one was Trixie the bichon, who looked like the meekest dog ever, just a white ball of fluff, but it was all a facade. She was the alpha and would growl down dogs who outweighed her by a hundred pounds. I’d learned that the big dogs were usually pretty happy to roll with things, while it was the little ones who were the most stubborn. I’d found out the hard way what happened when you were walking six dogs and a cat streaked across the road. I knew that Lloyd always wanted to smell the flowers, but if you let Leon do it, he’d sneeze for the rest of the walk. And I’d discovered that Bertie seemed to have no sense of how time worked—if he saw a squirrel in a tree, he’d run back to that same tree every day, like the squirrel would have been waiting there that whole time. “Bert springs eternal,” Clark had dubbed it. But mostly I began to realize that I was good at this. And there was a feeling of accomplishment when I drove back after a walk with a dog in the passenger seat and three dogs in the back, everyone tired and happy and panting out the windows, a feeling I’d done something that I’d never felt in any of my internships or summer programs before this.

“Remind me where we were,” Clark said, when we broke apart. He gestured for me to give him another leash, and after a moment’s consideration, I gave him Rufus—I knew he and Bertie got along.

Our saga of Marjorie and Karl had continued to expand, taking quite a few twists and turns. The fact that Marjorie originally intended to kill Karl had pretty much been quietly forgotten by both of us, and I was always trying to give the road bandits they encountered some kind of ailment that I would then try to get Marjorie to diagnose, despite Clark always vetoing this.

Clark had started today’s installment in earnest when we’d picked up Pippa, but almost right from the start I’d had issues with his current direction. “I was telling you that Marjorie wouldn’t say that,” I reminded him.

“Oh, right. Well, I think she would. It makes sense for the story.”

“Ugh,” I said. “Not going to happen. She’s not going to get up and admit to everyone in a crowded tavern how she feels about Karl.” I realized that Wendell was in danger of getting tangled with Pippa and switched him over to my other hand.