Page 29 of The Player Next Door
“Hey, I didn’t laugh at your drawing.”
Logan refused to concede the point. “But you did tease me for blushing.”
“Fair. Okay, hold on,” she said, unlocking her phone. “There’s this thing I do. It makes me happy, so I’m not embarrassednecessarily, but it is, as I said, deeply silly.” She called up the proper photo album and handed it over.
Logan furrowed his brow. “This is just . . . pictures of you with dogs? Wait, this is a lot of dogs,” he added, scrolling down. “Like, alotof dogs.”
“If I’m out walking around and I get to pet a dog, I ask the owner to take a picture of me with it,” she explained, chewing her lower lip. “And then when I’m feeling sad, I scroll through these pictures. It’s hard to be down when there are so many good doggos in the world, you know?”
Logan barely managed to stifle his snort. “That’s . . . cute. Endearing-cute, I mean.”
“Is it? Or is it an absolutely ridiculous thing to do?”
“It can be both,” he said evenly, eyes dancing.
“What if I told you I sometimes make Devi look at them with me, and it’s happened so often she has a three-dog limit. So sometimes I look through it and make sure I have my most recent top three ready to go.”
Logan handed the phone back to her. “Then I expect to see the current top three.”
“There’s a tie for third,” she warned. “Three ways.”
“Isn’t that cheating?”
“Devi is a very indulgent best friend.”
“Then let’s see the top five.”
“Okay, here are the three third-place finishers,” she said, finding the photos of a chihuahua in a sweater from last March, a pitbull mix she had seen by the path around Bde Maka Ska last week, and a Frenchie bulldog an administrative assistant brought to work one day.
Logan looked at them all seriously, nodding. “Very cute. I especially like the Norwegian sweater on the little one.”
“Right? I love puppers in clothes. The more human-looking, the better.”
He handed her phone back. “Who’s the second-place finisher?”
“This corgi. Saw her two weeks ago waiting at a bus stop with her human.”
“They do have hilariously tiny legs,” Logan agreed.
“I know, I love their hurried little waddle,” Clare said. “Okay, and then this beast is my current number one. Saw him on the patio at Arbeiter Brewing. He’s a malamute, which means he’s roughly the size of a house, but fluffier than a fluffy kitty.”
“Fluffier than a fluffy kitty.You really have a way with words.”
“Shut up,” she said, laughing. “He was very soft.”
“I can tell by the way you’ve got your face buried in his neck. He must have very patient owners.”
“They couldn’t stop laughing at me,” she explained. “Most people think it’s either funny or weird, but whatever. Like I said, it makes me happy.”
Logan put her phone on the table between them and poured himself another glass of wine, topping her off when she held out her glass. “We’ve established that you love dogs, but I can’t help but notice you don’t have one yourself. Why not?”
“My schedule, mostly. Dogs need routine, and sometimes I end up working long hours to finish up a project and I can’t get home to walk one. They’re not like cats, who are mostly self-sufficient. I could hire a dog-walker, I suppose, but I want to be there to play with it, you know? I’d just feel too guilty right now, so I spend a lot of time spoiling Kiki and weirding-out strangers.”
“What about a cat?”
“I like cats, but not enough to own one,” Clare replied. Logan nodded thoughtfully, sipping at his wine.
“I have a question for you.”