“A little too much.” I begin to giggle, but that is not a tale I’m about to tell. “Sorry.” I give myself a little shake. “Oliver, this is Yara, my friend.”
“Hello.” Yara’s voice is suddenly very girly. “It’s nice to meet you, Oliver. Evie was just talking about you.”
“Was she?” He slides me a look that’s hard to decipher.
“She was just telling me how you met.”
“Really?”
“And I was just saying that not many men would’ve seen beyond the wedding dress.”
“And I was just telling her—”
“That I’m not ‘many men’?” He stares lovingly at me, but for the beginnings of a smirk lurking at the corner of his mouth.
“You’re a one-off.” Not a compliment.
“Are you also a vet, Yara?” He turns a pleasantly bland expression her way.
“Yeah,” I answer for her. “She has all the good drugs,” I add, because if he asks me later about this conversation, I’ll blame her illicit drug usage. “Again, what are you doing here?” I slip my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, suddenly not sure what I should do with them. I shouldn’t be touching his suit up, and given what I just told Yara, I probably shouldn’t wrap them around his throat either.
“I was hoping to whisk you away, but you weren’t answering your phone.”
“Oh.” I pivot, then swivel back. “I put it down somewhere. The question is, where?”
“She does this at least five times a day.” Yara directs this Oliver’s way.
“That’s not true.”
“I know,” Oliver replies over the top of my head. “Her glasses, too, I’ve noticed.”
“No, she definitely loses her glasses more.”
“I do not,” I protest. “I’ve been pretty good with them lately. I’ve lost them, like, once?” I look to Oliver for confirmation, catching the end of a satisfied-looking smile. It’s weird that he thinks he can hide it by rubbing a finger across his mouth. “Okay, maybe twice.”
“Something like that.”
“I have them right here,” I retort, reaching into my cardigan pocket.
“Then who do these belong to?” Yara bends to her bag again and pulls out a pair of glasses identical to the ones in my hand. “You left them on the table after we met for coffee last week.”
“Weird.” I reach for them, instantly knowing they’re mine, though I put them on, just in case. The prescription feels the same—the same as the ones I’ve been wearing on and off all day.
“Do you have two pairs the same?” Yara asks, unworried by my confusion.
“No. Yes. Well, I bought two pairs because they had twenty percent off the second pair. It wasn’t much of a bargain when you calculate how I had them only a week.”
“Sounds about right.” Yara grins.
“Strange.” I balance the new or spare pair on the fence post, when Oliver reaches for them, slipping them behind his pocket square.
“I’ll just hold onto these for you.”
“Whatever,” I mutter, unamused.
“Right, well, I suppose I’d better get myself to the clinic,” Yara says, bending to scoop up her bag. “I have a meeting to look forward to with the advocates of a cocker spaniel I operated on yesterday.”
My expression turns sympathetic. The downside of this job is handling the unhappy cases. “Things didn’t go well?”
