It Started with a Dog, page 6
“You have a couple of friends, Boobs and Caden, and you are totally into weather notifications because you get them all the time.”
He had to laugh at that. “What can I say? I like a good, solid forecast.”
“And now I know that your hair is a dark brown that women will pay top dollar to get, and your eyes are really slate colored, and not blue or the freaky red laser dots they are in the picture of you at Halloween. And you like horror movies.”
Jonah paused. “Wait . . . how did you—”
“Instagram. The picture of your dog floating on the yellow duckie? You captioned it You’ll float too, which is totally from It Chapter Two.”
He was impressed. “You’ve seen it?”
“Twice.”
Lord, he was a smitten kitten right now. The woman looked like this, laughed liked this, smiled like this, and she watched his favorite genre of movies?
The bartender arrived with the two beer glasses and a basket of chips and salsa. They each poured their beer into a glass. Harper held hers up for a toast. “Happy New Year.”
Jonah tapped his glass against hers. “Happy New Year, Harper.”
Their eyes met, and for a moment that seemed unusually long, they took each other in. And it felt nice, a warm, happy thing sliding through him like a bit of honey. But then he started to feel a little too warm and broke the spell. “I feel like I know you, too.”
“Tell me.” She picked up a chip.
“You like to eat, for one.” He pointed at the chip she popped into her mouth.
Harper nodded. “Too easy. I’m a big foodie and it’s all over my phone and I’ve already told you I’m a garbage disposal.”
“Street tacos?”
“Definitely street tacos.”
He held out his fist, and she bumped it.
“Okay. I know when your next gynecology appointment is, and by the way, if you have any changes in your insurance, you need to arrive fifteen minutes early.”
She laughed.
“I know you take spin classes, because your phone notified me of a monthly payment. I know you’re a heavy sleeper because of the picture I found that I sent you. I know that Mimi, who I take it is your grandmother, loves you, and has the habit of commenting on all your Instagram photos . . . and all the comments on all your Instagram photos.”
“Oh no,” Harper said.
He nodded. “A Happy New Year text was sent out to what looked like five people? And to every Happy New Year, Mimi said, ‘Happy New Year to you, too, honey.’ ”
Harper winced playfully. “She’s still getting the hang of texting. And she thinks Instagram is just between us.”
“I also know that you really like to take selfies in the mirror.”
Color crept into Harper’s cheeks and she gave a charming, self-conscious laugh of surprise. “Did you go through my entire photo roll?”
“I would need more than a week to scroll through the thousands of photos on your phone. But I did complete a cursory inspection. Didn’t you?”
The color in her cheeks deepened to an enticing shade of pink. “I might have skimmed them.”
Well, Jonah had done more than skim. He liked her mirror selfies and had scrolled looking for them. There were other pictures on her phone, too, pictures that allowed him to imagine her life, like the ones she’d taken with friends at recognizable sites around Austin and Houston. Or the selfie in front of the Paramount Theater in Austin for the Moontower Comedy Festival. With a beautiful, dark-haired woman in front of NASA in Houston. In a bar with several women, all of them in sparkly dresses and plastic tiaras. And there were photos of food trucks. And dogs, seemingly at random.
What he didn’t know was her job, which was not apparent in any of the photos. He never took work photos, either, not at his real job, and certainly not in the dingy office at the Lucky Star. But she did seem to be in and around the Domain a lot, an area of town where residences were intermixed with shopping, restaurants, and high-tech industry. He guessed her job was something in technology.
“So? Should we do it?” Harper asked between chips.
Jonah blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Exchange phones.”
“Oh. Right.” How quickly he’d forgotten the reason for being here. He reached in his coat pocket for her phone, laid it down on the bar, and slid it across to her. “No weird texts or pictures—well, I think my cousins might have taken a picture or two of me one night, but you knew that was going to happen. No unauthorized purchases. All the phone numbers associated with my family have been blocked because none of them listen and they definitely don’t take instruction well. I return this to you as I found it, minus the mint that was stuck to it from the floor of that van.”
“Gross. Thank you.” She reached into her bag for his phone and put it on the bar before him. “Thank you so much for the generous use of your phone. I sincerely hope you have an unlimited plan.”
That brought his gaze up.
She laughed, and the sparkle in her eyes charmed him. “Just kidding. Sort of. Oh, and likewise, no weird pictures or unauthorized photos on your phone, either.”
He slid the phone into his pocket. She dropped hers into her tote. “Now that the great phone caper is over, how was your holiday?”
“Good. I helped my cousin move. What about yours?”
“It was quiet. My parents left on a cruise, sooo . . .” She looked away, shrugging a little. “Oh, hey! You got a great new sweater. Izod. My dad wears them all the time.”
“So does mine. Bet you know where it came from.”
“Kohl’s, definitely.”
They laughed together, and Jonah wondered when had it ever been this easy? “Thanks for sending me a picture of the present, by the way. I needed that heads-up so I can get my happy face on by the time I see my parents.”
“I completely understand. My grandmother got me some sweats. But not cute joggers like everyone wears. I mean sweats, the kind you wear when you’re training for an Olympic weight-lifting championship. You know, thick and utilitarian.”
Jonah pictured her in thick utilitarian sweats. He imagined that she’d pair them with an old, oversized college sweatshirt and fuzzy socks, and tie her hair up in a messy bun on top of her head. He would like to see that. “What do you think happens to our parents when they get older? It’s like they think if you wouldn’t wear it when you were twelve, they must have a shot at it again twenty years later.”
She laughed.
“What’s the best Christmas present you’ve ever received?” he asked curiously.
“Oh wow, I have to think.” She ate a couple of chips as she pondered it. “It’s not very sexy, but the Christmas after I graduated college, my parents paid off my student loans. Now that was a great gift.”
So she’d gone to college. “No kidding,” he agreed. He was still paying his loans. “Where’d you go to school?”
“Rice. You?”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the University of Texas campus. “UT.”
She took another chip. “What was your best Christmas gift?”
“Truck,” he said instantly. “Truck the dog, I mean. I finished graduate school one December and I guess I’d been talking about wanting a dog. And then, one day, my mom found him wandering the street. He was just a puppy, but he didn’t have a collar and he wasn’t chipped. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“That is so awesome. It sounds like a Christmas miracle! He looks like an amazing dog.”
Jonah had to laugh. Truck was one hundred and twenty pounds of undisciplined goofball. He loved him. “He is . . . but he’s not well behaved.”
“No?”
“He’s horrible,” Jonah said, and he wasn’t exaggerating. Two weeks ago he’d come home from work and found the pantry door chewed and an empty bag of chips in the living room.
“Here’s a question,” Jonah said. “What do you do for work?”
She tilted her head as if trying to decide what exactly she did. “A better question is, what do I not do? My job is kind of hard to explain. I work for a guy who has a lot of irons in the fire.”
For some reason, that description reinforced Jonah’s idea of the tech world with office space at the Domain. He imagined a Jeff Bezos–type boss.
“For example, he e-mailed me over the holidays to tell me he was thinking of making candles. Like, manufacturing them with his favorite incense scent. Where did that come from? And why? Is there great money to be made in candles?” She shook her head, apparently still flummoxed by it. “Anyway, I’m in management. I help him manage some of his investments.”
Ah. A financial person in the tech industry. Jonah suddenly remembered that text her boss had sent. “Have you found out what you were right about?”
“I have not. But I’ll see him tomorrow and I will get to the bottom of that.”
He felt fondness for her waving through him.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m an aerospace engineer.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “That’s awesome! You design rocket ships?”
“Not rocket ships, although I would not be opposed. Satellites.”
“No way! Here in Austin?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Neptune Industries.” He didn’t mention that he was on a sabbatical to help out his parents. Frankly, he was enjoying this meeting so much that the last thing he wanted to think about was the Lucky Star.
They ordered another round of beers and talked about Austin. It was growing so fast, she said. She was taking spin classes at SoulCycle in the Domain, but they were expensive, and she’d started running when the weather had cooled. Jonah said he often ran on the Butler Hike and Bike Trail around Lady Bird Lake, and they should go for a run sometime.
She said a new horror movie was coming out soon, and he knew all about it. She said her favorite restaurant was the Knotty Deck & Bar, because she liked the rooftop and the cushy furniture they had in addition to the food. He said he was more of an old-school diner and his favorite restaurant was Matt’s El Rancho.
Harper gasped. “The cheese enchiladas.”
“To die for,” Jonah agreed.
Somewhere during the course of working their way to the bottom of the chip basket, Harper glanced at her watch. “Oof, I’m going to have to go,” she said. “I have a couple of things I need to do before work tomorrow.”
Jonah reluctantly looked at his watch, too. He’d told his parents he would swing by tonight. “Yeah, me too.”
“Hey, want a commemorative photo?” Harper asked, pointing to the photo booth. “Someday you can tell your kids about the time you lost your phone with actual evidence.”
They took photos of themselves holding up their phones, pretending surprise and then despair. They laughed in the photo booth until their eyes teared. They took the thin paper photos and tucked them away.
As they were leaving, she said her one regret was that she did not get to meet Truck. Jonah jumped at the chance. “Would you like to meet him after work sometime? We could take him for a late run down by the lake if you’re up for it.”
“Yes!” she said, her eyes sparkling again. “You have my number, right?”
Jonah laughed. “I do.”
They made arrangements to meet under the Loop 1 Bridge in a couple of days after Jonah checked his weather app and gave the all clear on the forecast.
On his way home, Jonah got a text. You’re even better IRL. Looking forward to making Truck’s acquaintance.
He texted back. You’re better in real life, too. I’m going to give that driver Amal five stars.
You know he didn’t get his five-star rating by accident.
Jonah laughed at the memory of that night in the van. Trust, he responded, and received a line of laughing emojis for it.
In a funny way, Harper was the best Christmas present he’d gotten in a very long time. “Sorry, Truck,” he said aloud, and grinned like a fool all the way across town.
Five
The Lucky Star was closed for the day, even though Jonah’s parents, his aunt and uncle, and even Amy were there. That they were not open New Year’s Day had been another point of contention between him and his parents—Jonah thought the store ought to be doing business. The Starbucks three blocks down was definitely open. The restaurants around them were open. People would be walking up and down South Congress enjoying a day off. Was there a better day to visit a coffee shop?
“But we’ve always closed New Year’s Day for inventory,” Uncle Marty had said, appearing almost bewildered by the conversation. “Our staff deserves a day off, Joe. And we have to do inventory.”
“But we can do it just as easily on a Monday sometime. And our staff might like the overtime,” Jonah had pointed out.
“But we like to have a cocktail when we do inventory.” This, from Aunt Belinda, who liked to have a cocktail with everything she did.
“Let’s table this discussion for now,” his dad had said. He’d looked exhausted, and Jonah had let it drop. And then, before he knew it, one of the four had announced to their staff members that New Year’s Day was a well-deserved holiday for them all and that, as they say, was that.
On his way to the Star, Jonah imagined them all with their legal pads and cocktails and pencils so short, it didn’t seem to make sense to keep them. Truck would be there, too—Amy had kept him while Jonah was gone.
He parked in the lot in back and let himself in with a key, shouting his arrival so as not to startle anyone. He was immediately assaulted by Truck, that enormous mix of husky and Great Pyrenees (at least that was the vet’s best guess as to what exactly Truck was). The dog was so excited to see Jonah that he slammed into a metal baking rack in his haste, almost toppling it, then twisted his huge body into a knot before launching at Jonah, paws to chest, trying to lick his face. Jonah stumbled backward into the door.
Truck was the worst-trained dog ever. Amy said that was Jonah’s fault. Jonah thought Truck was unusually resistant to command, but tomay-toe tamah-toe. Truck tried to lick Jonah’s face again, but this time, he caught the dog’s legs before he could knock him onto his ass. He answered Truck’s enthusiastic greeting with a vigorous scratch of ears and chest. “Hey, buddy! I’m happy to see you, too.”
He managed to get Truck off him and walked into the kitchen. He could hear Willie Nelson drifting over the restaurant from the speakers.
“Happy New Year!” His mother appeared from the big walk-in storage area. She was wearing a leather apron over her jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She looked like she was conducting some chemical experiment in the back. “How was Chicago?” She came forward, her arms out, and wrapped him in a tight hug.
“Great,” he said into her hair.
“Did you see the photos I sent?”
“I did eventually,” he said as she let go of him. “Did you forget I didn’t have my phone?”
“What?” She smiled and patted his cheek. “That was a week ago, wasn’t it?”
It was just as he’d told Harper—they didn’t listen. “How would I have gotten my phone back while I was in Chicago?”
She cocked her head to one side, her blue eyes searching the ceiling for an answer. And finding none, she said cheerfully, “Good point.”
“Oh. It’s only you.”
Jonah turned to see that Amy had entered the kitchen area. Her red hair was once again piled on her head, but she’d changed out her candy cane glasses for glitter frames. “Back so soon?”
At the sound of her voice, Truck rushed to her, hopeful for a treat. She petted his head while she gave Jonah a good once-over.
“You are, like, always here. Are you an orphan?” Jonah asked, leaning over Truck to put an arm around her and give her a quick hug.
“If I was an orphan, I’d adopt your parents. News flash—they like me better than you.”
“Oh, Amy, that’s not true.” His mother winked at her. “It’s a very close tie between the two of you.”
“There’s no inheritance if that’s your angle,” Jonah warned Amy.
She snorted. “Like you had to tell me that. Are you almost done, Darlene? I’m about ready to make a pitcher of my famous margaritas.”
“Famous! Then I’m finishing up right now.”
“Come on, Jonah, be my taste-tester,” Amy suggested.
A margarita sounded pretty good. They didn’t serve alcohol at the Lucky Star, but it was definitely an option on Jonah’s list of last-ditch efforts. Somewhere along the way, they’d gotten the license for it. If it brought people in, he was for it.
He followed Amy out into the restaurant seating area. Truck stayed on his heels so closely that he kept bumping into Jonah, his paws catching the backs of his shoes.
The main dining room, awash in Christmas lights and ornaments, had remained unchanged for decades. With its scarred wooden tables and chairs, the three window booths, and the framed, autographed pictures of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, as well as framed photos of old Austin, the place looked dusty and tired to him, particularly after going in and out of trendy bars and restaurants in Chicago all week.
Someone had rounded up his tabletop Christmas trees and stuffed them into a corner. They were bunched together like some dystopian landscape. What the hell was he going to do with all those trees?
“Joe, buddy. How are my sons?” Uncle Marty stood up from a table near the coffee bar. He had a ledger spread before him, entering the inventory. By hand, of course, because heaven forbid these guys invest in technology. There was still a push button cash register on the counter.
“Your sons were horrible. Bastards, the both of them.”
