19. Owen

19

OWEN

As I dry the hot cocoa pan with a dish towel, Tobey surveys the digs.

“Not gonna lie. I felt a little bit like a Navy Seal coming to rescue you,” he says, sighing happily.

“The Navy Seal Friendsgiving Cabin Retrieval Operation? Codename: Fetch the City Guys?”

“Exactly. I was all covert ops when I was driving up the hill, braving the elements,” he says.

“Don’t Navy Seals save people from water and foreign dictators?”

Tobey waves an arm airily. “Melting snow. Bad road conditions. It’s all the same.” He swats my arm. Friendly dude, this guy. “C’mon, work with me. This is like my one and only opportunity to come through and be badass.”

Smiling, I tuck the pot away in the cupboard. “You save animals’ lives. That’s already badass.”

He raises a make-a-point finger. “That is true. I’m going to start calling myself the Badass Vet.” Tobey lifts his wrist, checks the time on his watch. “Is your friend taking the world’s longest shower?”

I flash back to yesterday, to the way I ribbed River about his time spent getting ready, then to last night. The two minutes we spent in the shower cleaning up after sex. Will it be the last shower I take with him? Or the first of many?

I wish I knew.

“Some guys like long showers. But he’ll be out any second, I’m sure,” I say, using my best diplomatic-PR-guy voice, sliding into my I-can-smooth-over-any-situation tone. “Why don’t we load up?”

“Like a Navy Seal would do. I like it,” Tobey says, and we grab the cooler with the veggies, River’s with the pie, then my backpack.

Trudging outside, I head down the steps through the thin blanket of snow. It’s hardly a blanket now though. More like a sheet.

That’s good, technically. We can get to Nisha’s. See all my friends. Have a good time. That’s the point of this.

We load up the van, then return to the house, where River waits in the kitchen.

With damp hair, and question marks in his eyes, he says to Tobey, “If my dog collects my socks and brings them to her dog bed, does that mean she’s building a nest, giving me gifts, or has a foot fetish?”

Tobey laughs. “Gifter. You have a gifter. Means she loves you,” he says, then holds out a hand for River to shake. “I’m Tobey.”

“I’m River. Nice to meet you, and thanks for the rescue. There is no way my hot little tamale of a Honda would have made it out today, even though the roads look a lot better.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll drive you back here to get your car,” Tobey says, and that timing sounds great. I can run the laundry, make the bed, and do any final straightening in the cabin. Our driver taps his watch. “But my cousin is demanding. She wants what she wants. And she wants the two of you.”

He pats my shoulder and River’s, then tips his forehead to the van. Time to vamoose.

River grabs his bag, heads to the door and tosses one last look behind him. Maybe it’s just me being stupidly hopeful, but that sure seems like a lingering look.

Ten minutes later, I’m in the middle seat of the vet-mobile, wedged next to a few dog crates, with an exam table behind me. River’s in the front, and Nisha’s cousin is scrolling through podcasts. He points to one. “Check this. An unsolved murder right here in the Tahoe region. You want to listen to that? It’s bone-chilling.”

“Ooh, is it the Templeton case?” River asks, dripping with curiosity, then he course-corrects. “Wait, wait. I hate murder podcasts. Can’t do it.”

Tobey arches a brow as we roll through town. “Are you sure? It sounded like you liked them.”

“I forgot how much I hate them,” River says with a can-you-believe-it shrug.

Tobey chuckles. “You forgot you hate them? How does that happen?”

River taps his temple. “My brain is seriously sluggish in the morning. Happens to the best of us.”

The man I slept with last night casts a glance to the back seat and winks at me. That wink and that seriously sweet gesture are going to have to feed me for several hours, I suspect.

Time to pretend I’m at work, talking to a reporter, making conversation. “Hey, Tobey. What’s it like being a mobile vet? You must have all kinds of stories.”

The rest of the ride I learn that he finished vet school at age twenty-one, since he finished college at age eighteen. I also hear about a parrot that wouldn’t stop swearing, a cat that refused to eat anything but potatoes, and a dog with a blueberry allergy.

It’s fascinating. Truly, it is. This just isn’t the way I wanted to spend the morning.

But that’s entirely my fault for waiting too long.

Soon, we roll into Tahoe, cruise past downtown, and head for Nisha’s place. When we pull up in front of the barn-size home she rented, she’s outside, one of those tent-like sweaters that falls to her knees wrapped around her, her silky brown hair blowing gently in the breeze. With one hand on her hip, she wags a finger at me. “I saved you,” she says when I get out of the car.

“With your imaginary helicopter,” I say. Friends truly do have the best of intentions. I’ve got to remember that. I can certainly handle a day of bonding with some of our buddies before I grab a private moment with River. Surely, the perfect opportunity will present itself.

Nisha jerks me in for a hug.

And wait.

There’s something there that wasn’t there before.

A bump.

I step back. “Nisha . . .”

She dances a jig, her smile wider than the sky, her deep brown eyes twinkling with all the stars. “We’re going to be moms,” she says with a smile, patting her basketball belly. “Hailey and I are having a baby. We wanted to surprise everyone. And I wanted to tell you in person, obviously. That’s why I had to fetch you. I wanted to share the news with everyone and you’re the last one here so now everyone knows.”

I beam, thrilled for my good friend. “I’m so happy for you and Hailey. How far along are you?”

“Seven months,” she says, then waves at River, calls him in for a hug too.

He slides in so naturally, wrapping his arms around her. “Congratulations to you and your wife,” he says, giving her a kiss on the cheek too. “When are you due? Are you going to have a shower? If so, you’ve got to try the guess-the-baby-photo-of-the-guests game, but please promise me you won’t play that awful dirty diaper game?”

“How do you know so much about baby showers?” I ask, flummoxed.

River shoots me a breezy look. “Give someone a drink and they talk about everything. Just last week, these two guys in leather were planning a baby shower for their surrogate. I also told them to avoid the dirty diaper game.”

“Are they going to play a leather game instead?” Nisha asks.

“If there is one, I bet they will,” River says.

“I don’t even know what the dirty diaper game is,” I say.

Nisha pats my arm. “Trust me, O. You don’t want to know.”

We go inside, and all my PR peeps are here including Reese Fallon, a fun and brainy sports publicist I outsource work to sometimes. She’s a rising star in the San Francisco sports publicity world, and she’s also involved with one of the baseball players on the team I work for—our All-Star second baseman, Holden Kingsley. He’s a great guy, and I truly like working with him.

But all of a sudden, I feel like I’m at work.

And I have to slide into let’s-keep-everyone-happy mode.

Everyone excluding me.