“Auggie,” I said, before correcting him while our dog practically purred. “She’s the world’s best bedbug-sniffing dog.”
“Wait, you weren’t working at the Four Seasons, were you?” Quattro asked, glancing up at Dad. “Corner room. Fifth floor? My dad woke with a couple of bites.”
“I can’t say,” said Dad, who may have had confidentiality agreements with all his clients, but his lifted eyebrows basically confirmed that he had, in fact, been working at the hotel. Then he scratched his stomach like it was his skin that had become an all-you-can-eat buffet for bedbugs.
I coughed, because I knew what Reb would say about this synchronicity between his dad and mine at the Four Seasons, me and Quattro at the Gum Wall. She’d quote her psychic of a grandmother: This is fate. My heart raced as I rebelled against that thought. I’d had my fill of Don Juans and Doms. No more boyfriends, older or otherwise. I could have kissed Dad on the cheek when he told me that we should get going, since Mom was waiting for him.
Quattro shook hands with Dad again and stroked Auggie’s head one final time before he hopped onto his bike. As Dad and Auggie strolled toward the street, Quattro raised his eyebrows at me, daring me to chicken out. “So, tomorrow?”
I snapped the latch on my messenger bag shut and told him, “Ten. I’ll meet you in the lobby. Don’t be late.”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
Halfway down the block, I caught up to Dad and Auggie. The tiniest inkling of foreboding stirred inside my stomach. A six-hour road trip with a perfect stranger? What had I done? I breathed in a deep calming breath: Dad had talked to him, and Auggie had allowed Quattro to pet her. Those were two good signs. Still, I couldn’t help glancing over my shoulder at Quattro as he pedaled in the opposite direction. Without turning, he lifted his hand to wave, as if he knew I would be watching him. I swung back around. After tomorrow, Quattro would be just another small, forgettable footnote in my love life, never to be seen again.
Chapter Two
Here it was, bright and early on a crisp Sunday morning, a time when most normal girls were hard at work on their beauty sleep. Me? Not only couldn’t I sleep last night, since my traitorous mind kept rewinding to mental snapshots of Quattro, but then I had to go and download the pictures from yesterday’s photo safari. Quattro’s flaming orange Polarfleece added the missing vitality from all my previous shots of the Gum Wall. Stunned, I must have studied the series for a good hour. One photo was even portfolio worthy. Sleep was pretty much impossible after that, so I was awake when Dad switched on the overhead light, blinding me in my tiny bedroom.
“Good,” he said, “you’re up.”
“Dad,” I groaned, since awake didn’t mean alert.
He waggled a glass vial enticingly as if it contained a magical elixir. I knew better: The stoppered test tube was filled with bedbugs—ugly, crawling bloodsuckers he had scooped out of an apartment complex two days ago. “You mind hiding this?”
From down in the kitchen, I heard Auggie bark, high-pitched and happy, which meant that my mom was up, fixing the first of her three daily Americanos sweetened with both chocolate and vanilla syrup. Before Auggie could eat her own breakfast, though, she had to complete her sniff-and-search exercise. She yipped again, raring to work. I hadn’t been bragging emptily to Quattro yesterday: Auggie truly was the best canine bedbug patroller in the Northwest, a high-energy mutt we’d rescued from a pound two years ago.
“Hey, kiddo,” said Dad, leaning against the doorjamb, “I’m really sorry about missing our photo safari. Next weekend, we’ll go.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. He turned to leave. Given Dad’s spotty track record, I had my doubts. If it weren’t for his pictures hanging on our walls, I’d wonder if he actually looked for excuses not to photograph. His commitment to customers had trumped birthday parties, soccer play-offs, and even one of my cousins’ weddings. My brothers had a bet riding on Dad missing our long-awaited climb of Mount Rainier this summer and wanted me in on it. But I hadn’t answered any of Max’s texts since my breakup with Dom, and I wasn’t going to start now.
I yawned. Around four in the morning, I had done some serious online ogling of a professional-grade camera, the same one that my favorite National Geographic photographer had raved about in an interview. After three years of shooting senior portraits and children’s birthday parties, I could finally afford to buy the camera, but I still hadn’t. Couldn’t.
Afraid? I heard Quattro ask.
Frugal and discriminating, I retorted in my head now, as I swung my feet to the floor.