It Started with a Dog by Julia London

Author:Julia London [London, Julia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2021-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Jonah and Harper were both so busy the rest of the week that he saw her only twice. He was taken aback by how much he missed her—he wasn’t usually the type to pine. When the two of them finally caught up for burgers near the end of the week, he made some excuse about needing to feed Truck and enticed Harper home with him.

Truck was so excited to see Harper that he lifted his leg as if he intended to mark her, but Jonah stopped that in the nick of time. So Truck tossed his massive body onto the ground and presented his undercarriage to Harper. She obliged him with a two-hand belly rub, and that was it—Truck would be devoted to her for the rest of his dog life.

Jonah gave her a quick tour of his house. It was definitely a bachelor pad, but he’d hired an interior decorator when he’d bought the place. He’d always thought the furnishings and window treatments were too color coordinated. He wasn’t a great housekeeper, but he didn’t like clutter, so there wasn’t much of a mess, save his running shoes, his basketball, and a skateboard he hadn’t used in ages propped up against the entry wall. He had a few books on the shelves, mostly science fiction and engineering books. But what he had in abundance were pictures. Framed pictures of his family through the years, of his friends. There he was in a baseball uniform standing next to a birthday cake at the Lucky Star. There he and Allen and Andy were handing out cups to runners in the Austin marathon. There were his parents, their arms around each other, dancing in front of the fireplace in his childhood home. There was Amy with her glasses shaped like old-fashioned television sets, making an espresso behind the counter.

“Wow,” Harper said as she slowly examined the shelves, her fingers trailing along the edges as she took in all the pictures. “It’s your whole life.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“How lucky you are.”

He showed her his lovely brown houndstooth upholstered couch, and how one of the cushions was missing its stuffing. “I need to get that fixed.”

“Truck?”

“I didn’t actually see him do it. And he claimed no knowledge. But I found him lying in the middle of the chewed pieces of foam. And he pooped foam for two days.”

“Hmm,” Harper said, and smiled at the dog, who was standing next to her. “Sounds pretty circumstantial to me. You can’t convict on circumstance. Isn’t that right, Truck? Isn’t that right, big boy,” she cooed to the dog.

Truck lapped it up, leaning against her leg and looking up at her with big brown cow eyes.

Truck had left the two armchairs alone, Jonah said, because he was too big to fit in them. There was a dark brown wooden coffee table, one leg gnawed.

Jonah showed Harper down the hall, past a spare bedroom and into the master bedroom. He thought this room was well done by the decorator.

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