Pawsitively in Love (9 page)

“Well, I most assuredly approve. I can see you with an accomplished older guy. Your dogs, the leather couch, a book, and a fire. You’d look good in tweed.”

“Shut it.” Austin shoved Cole. “There’s not going to be any tweed. Especially since there isn’t going to be any dating. Weren’t we going to take Mags for a walk?” Maggie looked up from where she’d been lounging on the plush rug beneath the coffee table. She looked happier napping, and Austin was full from Cole’s dinner and the three beers he’d downed.

“I don’t feel like it,” Cole moaned. He flopped dramatically down on the couch. Cole was good at dramatic. Austin had never been able to replicate his innate skill. “I think we should hang out on our balcony and watch all the healthy, fit people, and smoke.”

“I don’t smoke,” Austin said.

“Neither do you,” Peter reminded Cole.

“Details,” Cole said with a sigh. He glanced back at the computer screen. “Oh my
God
, what a douche.”

“What did Evan do?” Austin asked. He’d leaned back on the couch, but he sat up to see the computer screen.

“No, not Evan. He’s beautiful. The Chad is at it again.”

“Oh God, I hate that asshole. What now? Does it have something to do with my sister? Don’t tell me if it has to do with Mary Beth. I’ll probably kill him.”

“No. Just general douchey-ness.” Cole turned his laptop around and showed Evan a picture that he’d posted only a few minutes before. “I don’t know why I even accepted his friend request.”

Austin shrugged. “So you could mock him. Same reason I did.” He leaned closer. “What does that say? Hashtag ballers? Really?”

Cole burst into snickers. “Yeah for his dental school class reunion. Hashtag try too hard is more like it. Ballers. Jesus.” He snorted again. “They’re
dentists.
”

Still, he went to school.

Austin knew his family tried not to make a big deal out of it. He was good at what he did, he was successful and happy, but there’d been this thing in his family, at holidays, with the cousins and the aunts and grandparents. The way they’d reacted, without trying to react. He felt the judgment even though they tried really hard not to judge. He felt like he wasn’t as good as Mary Beth, at least not in their eyes. School was important to them, a mark of a successful life.

Maybe someday he’d get over worrying about what people thought of his lack of education. Probably not.

AUSTIN COULDN’T
shake Chad’s dumb Facebook picture out of his head. Even the next day when he was at work, looking at the accounts for the shop, he didn’t feel any better. He was profitable, quite comfortably so, and he had been for months. But somehow his success felt shallow when it wasn’t backed up by the same prestigious degree that Mary Beth had. Somehow “I own a dog salon” didn’t quite compete with “I’m a dentist,” even if he was getting close to making at least as much as her.

Jessica knocked on the door. Austin knew it was her because at the moment, she was his only afternoon employee. He had a few applications on his desk, but he hadn’t gotten up the gumption to deal with hiring and training them.

“Hey, Austin. I scheduled an extra nail clipping this afternoon. I figure it would only take a few minutes. Is that okay?”

Austin looked up from his computer. “Sure. I’m just avoiding my pile of applications, so I’ll do the nail clipping.”

“You hate nail clipping.”

“I hate screening applicants even more.” Austin wasn’t meant to manage people. He was great with animals and great with customers. But he’d never been cut out to be an employer. Every time he had to hire or fire someone, that fact became clearer.

Jessica laughed. “You want me to do it? I know what we need. It’s not a big deal.”

“Would you really?” Austin wanted to kiss her. Platonically, of course. “I have so much paperwork to do, and I’m not in the mood.”

“Sure. I’ll take care of it. Lemme see the pile, and I’ll start making some calls after our last appointment today.”

“That would be fantastic.” Austin collected the pile of applications and handed them to her.

Over the months, Jessica had become more of a co-owner than a simple employee. Austin had been flirting with the thought of opening a second shop. If he did that, he’d definitely make her the manager of the new one—if she wanted it of course. She practically did as much work as he did already, so he couldn’t see why that would be a problem.

“What’s up today? You seem kinda down,” Jessica asked.

Austin wasn’t a huge fan of discussing his shortcomings, but Jessica had gotten to be one of his closest friends. She knew about his issues with Chad and that he wished he’d gone to college.

“Same old shit, basically. I’m fine. Just one of those days when nothing I do is good enough.”

“I don’t understand why you get like that. I mean, I have a degree and I work
for
you. Look at what you’ve built here.”

Austin didn’t want to insult Jessica by saying her job was pointless. But they washed animals and clipped their nails. It wasn’t medicine. Or dentistry.
Shake it off.
“You want help with the shampoos?” he asked. It was his fault, after all, that he hadn’t hired a replacement for Russ yet and Jessica was swamped.

“Yes, please. And I’ll have someone new in here by the end of the week.”

EVAN WAS
both tired from the end of the school year, which always seemed to drag on forever, and antsy. He had five days of school left. And then freedom. But there was a lot of work to do before then. He usually liked weekends—it was his time to chill out with Dexter, get his house cleaned up, relax, and maybe go shopping for groceries if he was low, but he had some odd, tight string of tension running through him, and he needed to
do
something. Something other than grading one of his last few rounds of papers before he inputted his grades. Somehow that didn’t count.

Dex had wrangled his way onto the couch next to Evan—he figured his rule of no couch for Dexter was probably out the door—and he had his shorn little body snuggled right up against Evan’s leg. Evan had spent more time scratching Dexter’s soft belly than he had reading the papers that were piled up on his lap.

“You want to go for a walk, boy?” he asked.

Dexter looked excited, but pretty much everything Evan said to him got that reaction, so he didn’t take that as an absolute yes. Still, when he got up and took Dex’s harness and leash off the wall hook, the full body wag told the story. Dexter was more than happy to go for a walk. Evan gently maneuvered his puppy into the harness and grabbed his phone and his keys.

It was a great day outside, sunshiny and cheerful. Dexter ran around in circles for a little bit, tangling Evan up in his lead before he managed to calm down enough to walk in a straight line. They took off through the neighborhood at puppy pace, which wasn’t very fast. Especially when Dexter stopped to smell every other blade of grass. Evan didn’t mind. He was happy to get outside.

They’d only gone a few blocks when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Evan didn’t recognize the number.

“This is Evan Partridge,” he said when he picked up the phone. He was seriously hoping it wasn’t some last-minute crisis with a student. He only had a few more days left. Evan wasn’t sure he had it in him to deal with another meltdown.

“Hi. Evan, um. I’m sorry if I caught you at a bad time. This is Austin from the pet salon. I just wanted to check in on Dexter. And you.” He trailed off like he had more he wanted to say but didn’t know how to say it. Austin. Not exactly a student. Evan smiled. He tried not to find Austin adorable. Despite everything, it was still nearly impossible.

“We’re both pretty traumatized,” Evan teased. “I might have to take Dexter in for counseling.”

“Really?” Austin must not have heard the joke in his voice. He sounded horrified.

“Well, Dexter is currently on a walk, chasing a butterfly and having the time of his life, so I think he’s actually going to be okay.”

Austin chuckled. “Thank God. I thought you were serious there for a second.”

“No. Not serious. I think we’ll both recover. It was nice of you to call and check, though. Kind of above and beyond after the offer of perpetual free grooming. Dex will be the cleanest dog in Tacoma.”

Austin chuckled nervously. Evan felt embarrassed for him. Whatever was happening on the other side of the phone must’ve been pretty painful.

“Um, I actually had another reason to call.” He sounded like he was cringing. “I know this is super… well, I shouldn’t be doing this, but my friends are going to play volleyball at the waterfront this afternoon, and I was wondering if you’d like to come.”

Evan was surprised. By Austin’s request and the shot of heat that melted its way through his belly. “Um, volleyball?”
Smooth, Partridge. Smooth.

“Yes. We don’t take ourselves very seriously, so don’t, like, worry about being good. It’s more of an excuse to have a picnic and hang out in the sun.”

“I can do that. This is a friend thing, right?” Evan asked. He didn’t want a repeat of the last guy. The one who called him pretty but empty and said he didn’t have time for someone so fake. It would be nothing but bad news for him to get involved with Austin, the dog-salon guy—adorable or not.

“Yes, of course. Friends.” Austin sounded a bit disappointed. Or Evan was projecting. Either way.

“Great. It’s just that, well….” Evan didn’t know why he was explaining this to someone he barely knew. He just felt like he needed to. “I’m not very good with dating. I just don’t… really do it.”

“No, it’s fine. Really. I honestly was just asking for you to hang out. I didn’t even know you were into guys, so, yeah, it’s not a date.”

He thought I was straight?
Evan was taken aback by that, for sure. It was the first time someone had said that to Evan in a while. He was just used to everyone knowing. Or assuming. “Definitely gay. Definitely. But bad at dating. I make a much better friend.”

He felt a little weird stone in his belly when he said that. Like maybe it wasn’t the best thing to say, or even right, because what experience did Evan have being a friend, but he knew it was. Evan had been through the casual dating thing enough times to know it would be so easy to slip into a… situation with Austin. He was funny, charming, sweet, and he seemed like he’d be the guy who was looking for a relationship, which he’d project onto Evan. Then Evan would end up disappointing yet another guy. Someone he could be good friends with. He didn’t have that many friends in Washington yet. Even fewer if he didn’t count Dexter.

Wow, way to put a hell of a lot of emotional baggage onto volleyball.

“So, um, anyway. Do you want to come?”

Evan smiled into the phone. “I think I do.”

IT WAS
a super warm Saturday afternoon on Ruston Way. Austin had felt so bad about not hanging out down there the other day when he’d gone to see Cole and Peter. He figured he was making up for lost time. Paws had been fairly empty, so Jessica shooed him out with the promise to clean and lock up. The park by his parents’ house would’ve probably been less crowded, but it didn’t have Puget Sound right there spread out in front of them or the smell of saltwater and sunscreen. Besides, since it was so close to Peter and Cole’s place, Cole couldn’t come up with some excuse for why he couldn’t come. The real reason was that Cole was desperately allergic to anything that smacked of exercise. At least until he forgot that he hated it and started having fun.

Austin dragged the whole volleyball net setup out of the trunk of his car and was about to start putting it together. Maggie hung out on a blanket he’d already laid out, like he’d trained her to do. She wouldn’t run off unless he gave her the okay to do it. He’d spent hours and hours on that, and on days like this in a fenceless park with lots of people and cars and distractions, he was very grateful that he’d done it.

When he had the volleyball net set up and was sitting with Maggie, already hot and sweaty, Colleen, plus Cole and Peter with their friends Vanessa, Kelly, and Brie came rolling up.

“Took you long enough,” Austin grumbled. “I already set everything up.”

Cole shrugged. “You could’ve waited. You know how I am.”

Austin did know. And he’d probably walked right into setting everything up by being the punctual one.

“We have odd numbers,” Colleen grumbled. “Austin, one of us is going to have to find someone to date soon.”

“Well”—Austin blushed—“it’s not a date, but we won’t have odd numbers either. I invited someone to play.”

“Tell me it was Evan,” Cole said rather loudly. Peter elbowed him. “What? I want our boy to get some play.”

“It is Evan, but it’s platonic,” Austin said. “
Platonic
. Seriously, Cole. Don’t say anything.” Cole hadn’t said any actual words, but the squealy howl was just as bad as words. Or worse.

“When have I done something like that?”

Everyone else laughed.

“When have you ever not?” Peter asked. “Unless I manage to get to you first.”

“I’m injured.” Cole collapsed onto the ground. Austin reached over and punched his shoulder.

“I’m serious, though. We had a talk about how he’s not into dating right now. It was kinda awkward. I don’t want any more of that okay? Just keep everything nice and platonic.”

“Oh, ouch,” Colleen mumbled. She’d sunk onto Austin’s towel with him and was currently scratching Maggie’s belly

Austin hadn’t talked about Evan too much with Colleen. He didn’t know what to say other than something ragingly embarrassing. He’d had enough embarrassment for the week already. No need to add any more.

“Yes. Ouch. So be nice when he comes. Everyone’s friendly, no hinting at anything else.” Which was probably like waving a red flag in front of a group of bulls, but he’d said it already, so oh well.

Now that he thought of it, Austin didn’t know how Evan would fit in with his friends. Peter was about Evan’s age, and sensible. A teacher too. But the rest of them were probably so immature compared to him, odd, artsy, or, like Austin, spent their day with cats and dogs. Not exactly the sophisticated professor-y crowd.