wrong day, the wrong dog . . .” She sighed. “Well, whatever, it happened, and, like Megan says, I don’t have time to dwell on it because I am dwelling on solutions.” She glanced in the rearview mirror to see if the dog bought any of that. Bubbles was sitting in the middle of the seat now. Her tongue was hanging from one side of her mouth. She was panting as she stared out the front windshield like she hadn’t heard a word.
For what it was worth, Carly didn’t buy it, either.
The light turned green, but the cars stacked up at the light in front of her didn’t move. Carly instructed her car to call Brant. Not surprisingly, given the magnitude of his screwup, the call rolled to his voice mail.
“Brant! This is Carly Kennedy. You know, the one with the depressed basset hound? Well, guess what? You put a happy basset hound in my house! I want my depressed hound back! How could you do that? Where is Baxter? Whose dog is this? Call me back immediately!”
She ended the call and muttered her opinion of Brant the Dog Walker. The line of cars began to move, and she shot forward. In the back seat, Bubbles had stuffed her nose into a crack between the two back seats, snorting loudly. But then something outside caught her attention and she surged to the window and released a deep, baying howl of joy.
When they reached the studio, Carly grabbed her tote bag, the dog’s leash, and dashed inside.
She didn’t know what she expected—probably Victor and Phil pacing around each other, the models antsy . . . but no. Victor, with his rainbow hair and hand-painted jeans, was on a skateboard, slowly moving around the two models who were sitting on plastic chairs, their gazes on their phones. Phil was sprawled on his back on the beat-up earth brown couch that looked as if it had been picked up off the street.
“I made it!” Carly shouted, as if she’d just swum across the English Channel to get here.
“Great.” Phil slowly rolled up to a sitting position. He yawned.
Victor stopped skating and maneuvered his board around to face her. He looked her up and down and shook his head. “That’s not how you’re supposed to wear that.” He hopped off his board and strode across the room to her. He forced her arms into a T and began pulling and tugging at the weird wraparound jumpsuit thingy she was wearing.
Victor was twenty years to her twenty-eight, but sometimes the age gap felt much greater. He was still at that young and dumb age about so many things in life. The sole exception was fashion, and in that he had the talent to lead the charge into fashion-forward designs like a boy king. He was a creative genius, and that was not hyperbole.
“Hey, Bax,” Victor said to the very interested basset who was sniffing around his sneakers.
“That’s not Baxter,” Carly said as Victor jerked her around so that her back was to him. She had to drop the leash so as not to get tangled in it.
Victor snorted. “Yeah, it is. I’m looking right at him.”
“So funny thing,” Carly said. “This dog looks like Baxter, but it’s—”
Victor put his hands on her waist and made her twist again.
“But it’s not Baxter. There was a mix-up with the dog walker and somehow I—”
“Hey, are we going to do this, or are we going to talk about dogs?” Phil asked, and unfolded his lanky self from the couch.
“Yeah,” Victor said. He stood back and examined her for a moment, then gave a nod of approval. “But listen. I’m hungry.”
Carly waited for him to finish his thought. That apparently was the entirety of his thought.
“Hungry for what?” Phil asked.
Victor shrugged. “Whataburger?”
“I’d be down for that,” Phil said.
Victor looked at the models. “How about you ladies?”
“Fries,” one of them said without looking up from her phone. The other one held up two fingers to indicate two orders.
“What . . . you mean like now?” Carly asked, looking around at her assortment of fashion people.
“Now,” Phil said.
“You told me you’d give me thirty minutes,” she reminded him. “You said not a minute longer.”
“I’ll give you an hour if there is a Whataburger in my future,” Phil said, and crouched down to pet Bubbles.
“Car-ly.” Victor often said her name like that, as if he’d just remembered who she was. “I’m like, so hungry.”