Page 37 of Pugs & Kisses

Ashanti leaned in close and whispered, “Torture chamber. Give me the full story or you get the torture chamber. There will be spiders.”

“Goodness, you’re annoying,” Evie said. She blew out a breath. “We’ll talk about it tonight at Ridley’s.”

“Fine,” Ashanti said. “It’ll help with Rid’s salty mood. You know how she gets on her birthday.”

“I plan on plying her with liquor and sweets,” Evie said.

“The Imperial March” from Star Wars started playing.

“That’s Kara,” Ashanti said, plucking her phone from her back pocket. “Why are you calling me when we’re in the same place?” She waited a beat, then said, “Oh shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Evie asked.

“There’s been an incident at the dunk tank.” She pointed two fingers at her own eyes, then at Evie. “Remember, I want to know everything.”

By the time they arrived at the dunk tank, Thad had taken care of the squabble between two Labrador retrievers and their owners. Evie checked in with Kendra, and once she’d made sure she was good at the Guess the Number of Dog Treats booth, she went to help with the photo booth.

The crowd continued to spend money like it was falling from the sky. By the time the carnival was over, they had taken in nearly eight thousand dollars for The Sanctuary.

“I cannot believe how successful this turned out,” Evie said as she connected Waffles’s leash to his harness. He’d spent the day in one of the daycare’s fancier suites. “I can’t wait to tell Bryson how much we raised.”

“Mmm,” Ashanti said.

“Because he has a stake in what happens with the rescue,” Evie clarified. “We’ve been working together on this for weeks.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Ashanti said.

Evie rolled her eyes. “Shut up. I’ll see you at Rid’s in an hour.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to leave Waffles here?”

“Rid said it’s okay to bring him,” Evie reminded her.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot about the soft spot she suddenly has for dogs. I’m a little suspect, if I’m being honest.”

Evie laughed. “It’ll save me a trip back here to the Lower Garden District, so I’m not going to question it. I’ll see you over there.”

She tried getting in touch with Bryson on her way to the grocery store to pick up Ridley’s gift, but he had just begun a gastropexy that would last at least another hour, according to the tech she’d spoken to.

“You are not sad that you can’t speak to him for an hour,” Evie assured herself, despite the melancholy encroaching on her good mood. She looked at Waffles in the rearview mirror. “Things are getting pretty ridiculous.”

Waffles tipped his head to the side, wrenching out a laugh from her.

“Sit tight. I’ll only be a minute.”

She ran into Whole Foods and picked up what she needed for Ridley’s birthday celebration, then headed for her friend’s condo.

Evie watched the numbers on the elevator climb as she balanced a container of berries and Chantilly cream cupcakes in one hand while carrying a bottle of Cristal she’d picked up from Total Wine in the one that also held Waffles’s leash.

It was a splurge, but today was Ridley’s thirty-fifth birthday.

Her friend didn’t handle birthdays well; a mid-milestone birthday like this one would no doubt have her in a salty mood.

The elevator stopped on the twelfth floor of Ridley’s downtown high-rise building and Evie headed for her apartment. She used her foot to knock on the door.

“Open up. It’s me,” she said.

A minute later, Ashanti answered the door. “Oh good, you have cupcakes. I wanted to buy a cake, but I was running late and didn’t have the chance to stop.”

“Is that Ev?” Evie heard Ridley call.

She deposited the cupcakes and champagne on the entryway table and walked over to where Ridley sat barefoot on the sofa.

“Happy birthday, honey,” Evie said, giving her shoulders a squeeze and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

“Enough with that,” Ridley said. “Grab those cupcakes and bubbly. According to that one over there, we have things to discuss.”

“Really, Shanti?” Evie said.

“Aht. Don’t blame her,” Ridley said. “I would have known the minute you walked in. I smell the sex on you.”

Evie rolled her eyes. “Let me get Waffles settled in,” she said.

“There’s a dog crate in the second bedroom,” Ridley said.

“A what?” Evie and Ashanti asked in unison. They looked at each other, then took off for Ridley’s guest room.

Evie entered the room and came to a sudden stop. “What in the world?” she said.

The crate was at least four feet wide and three feet high, with a gabled roof and an ultra-plush doggy bed inside.

“Do you think she’s dying?” Ashanti asked. “This isn’t a sign of her trying to buy her way into heaven, is it?”

“I am not dying,” Ridley said as she walked up to them carrying a glass of champagne. She shrugged. “The two of you always have your dogs. This way I don’t have to worry about fur all over my house.”

“Are you sure you aren’t dying?” Ashanti asked. She reached over as if to feel her forehead, but Ridley knocked her hand away.

“Stop,” she said. She gestured to Evie with her glass. “Lock Pancake up so we can get to eating and chatting, please?”

“His name is Waffles,” Evie reminded her.

“Whatever.”

Evie secured Waffles in the Ritz-Carlton of crates, then joined the others in the living room.

She lifted a square of the fig, prosciutto, and arugula pizza from the array of food spread across Ridley’s glass sofa table.

There was also a bowl of mixed nuts, a platter of fruit, and the cupcakes she’d brought over.

“Start talking,” Ridley said.

“Can we at least sing ‘Happy Birthday’ before I’m forced to divulge all my secrets?” Evie asked.

Ridley pitched a cashew at her. “Your ass shouldn’t be keeping secrets,” she said.

Ashanti cleared her throat. “You sure you want to go there?”

Ridley shot her a nasty look. “We’re talking about Evie now.”

“Can we talk about you after we’re done with me?” Evie asked.

“Come on with it, Ev. I’m not getting any younger here.”

“Fine.” Evie blew out a sigh.

“I’ll give you a head start,” Ashanti said. “She and Bryson are sleeping together.”

“About damn time!” Ridley said. “By the way, I kinda hate you right now, because that man is fine and I just know you are getting the kind of sex I need in my life. Tell me everything. Is he curved? Does he growl or is he a screamer?”

“Ridley!” Evie nearly choked on a chunk of fig. She laughed to the point that tears streamed down her face. “How are you so classy and so crass at the same time?”

“It’s an art form.” Ridley sipped her champagne and wiggled her fingers at her. “Now back to the basketball player.”

While noshing on bougie pizza and expensive champagne, Evie gave a highlight reel accounting of everything that had happened in the past week.

“You’ve been in his bed every night?” Ashanti asked.

“That man has you dick-whipped, Ev.”

“It’s not like that,” Evie said.

Although, maybe it was? It was quite possible that she was utterly dick-whipped after one week, if being dick-whipped meant that she thought about the time they’d spent in bed at least a dozen times every hour.

“I still can’t believe you waited all these years to sleep with him,” Ashanti said.

“I never would have slept with Bryson back then. I had just broken up with Cameron.”

“That’s why you should have banged the basketball player back then,” Ridley pointed out.

“Well, I didn’t,” Evie said. “It started as just a little innocent flirting—teasing and jokes, nothing too serious. As the summer went on, things started to get a bit more serious.” She shrugged. “And a little more, and a little more.”

“But no sex,” Ridley said.

“He did finger-bang me in the supply closet until I had the most intense orgasm I’d ever had up until that point,” Evie said.

“Yaaaassss!” Ashanti’s hands shot in the air like a referee signaling a touchdown.

“Now that’s what the fuck I’m talkin’ about!” Ridley said, snapping her fingers.

“He’s learned a lot over the years, because the four orgasms he gave me last night were so much better.”

“In one night! Oh, bitch, stop playing around and marry this man,” Ridley said.

“Can I be single for a few months first?” Evie asked. “It’s been a while.”

“Being single isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Ridley said before tipping her head back and emptying her glass in a single gulp.

Evie looked over at Ashanti, who cocked a brow in unspoken agreement.

“Uh, Rid, I know it’s your birthday, and I want to respect that, but don’t you think it’s time you did a little sharing too?” Evie asked.

“I overshare. Isn’t that what you two always tell me?”

“You used to,” Ashanti said. “But that all changed around the time Thad and Von held the soft opening for The PX. What happened, Rid?”

Ridley’s face immediately clouded. She refilled her champagne flute and dropped three raspberries in it. She shrugged and, with obviously forced nonchalance, said, “What makes you think something happened?”

“We’re not stupid, Ridley,” Ashanti said. “I know you slept with Von.”

She set the flute down with a thump. “Did he tell you that?”

“He didn’t have to! It was obvious the two of you were into each other from the moment I introduced you, but then you jetted off to London within days of meeting him and Von spent the next two months asking about you every single time I came around. Did he do something to you?”

“No,” Ridley said. “Of course not. He just…” She shook her head and let out a deep breath. “I don’t know. He scares me, okay?”

“Was he violent?” Ashanti screeched. “Because if he was, Thad will kick his ass! I will kick his ass!

“Not that type of scary,” Ridley deadpanned. She pitched her head back and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Why are we talking about this?”

“Because you aren’t acting like yourself. That’s what’s scary,” Evie said.

“Fine!” Ridley said. “Fine. Look, you both know me when it comes to men. I’m in their beds for a good time, not a long time. But with Von…” Ridley chewed on her bottom lip, then admitted, “I didn’t want to leave his bed.”

Evie’s eyes shot to Ashanti’s. They both stared at each other, mouths agape.

“Months later and it still feels like a fairy tale,” Ridley continued. “We spent two of the most amazing days and nights in bed together. He was so sweet, and so gentle, and so unlike any man I’ve ever been with.”

Evie slapped her palm to her chest. The soft, vulnerable woman sitting across from her on the sofa didn’t even sound like Ridley.

“So why did you leave?” Evie asked.

“Because it scared the living shit out of me,” Ridley said.

She held up her hands. “First, let’s get one thing straight.

I did not go to London solely to avoid Von.

My career comes first. Always. That special project in London was an opportunity to show my bosses that I’m better at this job than every other executive at my level.

The opportunity just so happened to drop into my lap exactly when I needed to get the hell out of New Orleans. ”

“So, are you done avoiding Von?” Ashanti asked.

“Probably not.” She bit into a strawberry, then waved Ashanti off with the fruit stem.

“Enough about me and my sex life, which is as dry as the damn Sahara at the moment,” Ridley said.

“That’s the other thing. I spent the last few months surrounded by fine European men and felt nothing. I’m still mad about it.”

“And you had the nerve to call me dick-whipped?” Evie clucked her tongue.

“Whatever,” Ridley said, throwing another cashew at Evie’s head. “Back to you. What are you going to do about your new boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend. Oh my God, I sound like a thirteen-year-old,” Evie said.

“Yes, you do,” Ridley said.

“But Bryson isn’t my boyfriend,” Evie said. “At least I hadn’t thought about him in that way.”

“Would it be such a bad thing if you did?”

Evie didn’t want to give voice to that feeling she couldn’t shake, that thing that hovered at the periphery of her brain, nagging her. But if there was anyone she could share it with, it was these two.

“What if he leaves?” she asked. “He did it once before. What if he leaves again without a word?”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Ashanti said.

“I didn’t think he would the first time,” Evie said. “But he did.”

“That was different. He switched veterinary programs.”

“He could get another job offer somewhere else just as easily as he switched programs as a student,” Evie said. “The probability is even higher now. He’s an in-demand, world-renowned surgeon. I’m sure he gets offers from around the country on a daily basis.”

Silence fell over the room, something that rarely happened when the three of them were together. Then Ridley said, “Start dropping those tracking devices around his house.”

Evie rolled her eyes.

“I’m serious. Just bring one or two with you every time you go to his place, and tuck them in his jacket pockets, suitcase, shoes.”

“Shoes?”

“Well, hell, I don’t know. I’m trying to help.”

“Maybe you need to have this conversation with Bryson,” Ashanti said. “Let him know that the way he left is still an issue for you.”

“You’re probably right,” Evie said.

The thing is, she and Bryson had already had that conversation. Yet, something about his explanation for why he’d left didn’t sit right with her. It was like Doc Landry’s incomplete story about all that was happening with The Sanctuary. Something in her gut told her that Bryson was holding back.

Maybe Ashanti was right. Maybe it was time she and Bryson got everything out in the open.