The Happy Ever After Playlist - Abby Jimenez Page 0,3

ended up being a sleepover. I also grabbed a chew bone and a ball to keep him busy. I didn’t need this Tasmanian devil destroying my house.

I wasn’t familiar with his breed. I forgot to ask the vet. He looked sort of like a small golden retriever. It wouldn’t surprise me if he turned out to be half honey badger. He was a little wild. What dog jumps through a sunroof?

Whatever he was, he was not what I was supposed to be doing today.

Today I was supposed to be with Brandon.

Setting a bottle of Woodford Reserve against his headstone. Sitting on a blanket on the grass next to where we laid him to rest, telling him how much I missed him, how the world was worse for him not being in it, how hollow I was and it wasn’t getting better with time like they said it would.

April eighth was the two-year anniversary of his accident. Not the date of his death—he lived a month before he succumbed to his injuries—but the date of the crash. That was really the day his life was over. My life was over. He never woke up. So today could never just be some day.

The year held a lot of days like that for me. The day in December when he’d proposed. His birthday. My birthday. Holidays, the date of the wedding that never happened. In fact, most of the calendar was a minefield of hard days. One would crest, I’d live through it, and then another one would roll toward me in the constant ebb and swell that was the year.

Another year without him.

So I had planned to distract myself today. Have my visit to the cemetery and then be productive. Get some paintings done. Eat something healthy. I’d committed to not sleeping through the day like last year. I’d promised myself I would ignore that the month of April smelled like a hospital to me now and reminded me of fixed pupils and beeping machines with tempos that never changed.

I glanced at my phone again.

Nothing.

Chapter 2

Sloan

♪ affection | Between Friends

Ten days. I’d had Tucker for ten wonderful, fur-on-my-bedspread, wet-kisses-in-the-morning, tail-wagging days.

I knocked on the door of Kristen’s house, grinning from ear to ear. When she opened it, she stared. “You fucking did it.”

“I told you I would.” I beamed, edging past her into the house, not waiting to be invited in. Tucker and her little dog, Stuntman Mike, circled each other, tails wagging, noses to butts.

She closed the front door behind me. “You walked here? That’s like seven miles, you crazy bitch.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. My reemergence into daylight had been shocking friends and family alike lately. “I have to use your bathroom. Is Oliver awake?”

“No, he’s down for his nap.” She followed me down the hall. “God, you’re really loving this dog thing, huh? Oh, which reminds me,” she said, “I made him something.” She disappeared and came back a second later holding up a dog tee that read I JUMPED ON SLOAN THROUGH A SUNROOF AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS T-SHIRT.

I snorted. Kristen ran an online business from her house that sold merchandise for dogs.

I went into the bathroom, and she tucked the shirt under her arm and leaned on the door frame. Josh wasn’t home, so we fell immediately back into our old roommate habit of never closing doors between us.

“He’s incredible. I’ve never seen an animal so well trained,” I said. “Somebody must have really spent time working with him.” I washed my hands and looked at my flushed face in the mirror, tucking some flyaway hairs behind my ear.

“Still no callback from that Jason guy?”

I hadn’t heard a word from Tucker’s owner. Tucker had spent the first two days peeing in my house despite his expensive antibiotics, and I’d spent two days taking him outside as much as humanly possible to save my carpets.

It was miraculous how motivating a puddle of dog pee on your floors could be. Seriously. Better than a personal trainer. My Fitbit had never seen so much action.

I, of course, got no painting done at all while I was walking him. But this body had a tan for the first time in longer than I could remember, and I had to admit that the exercise felt good. So even after his infection was gone, we kept up the walks.

Today I felt particularly ambitious, so I decided to walk to Kristen’s house to see her and the baby. I figured if I