“He’s not a street animal,” I say. “He’s a dog. A small, well-behaved, incredibly quiet dog.”
“With fleas?”
“He does not have fleas!” Hopefully.
Tiffany lowers her phone, but her glare sharpens. “You have thirty minutes. And then I’m calling the front office.”
“Please—”
She holds up a finger. “No. This is your mess. I am not getting evicted because you had a hero moment in the middle of the night and adopted a feral animal off the sidewalk.”
“He’s not feral!”
“Thirty. Minutes.”
And with that, she spins on her heel, snatches her Hydro Flask, and storms out, radiating the righteous fury of someone who has never once violated an apartment lease.
Okay. Cool. Great.
I need a plan.
Preferably in the next thirty minutes.
I scoop Waffles off the bed, zip him into my hoodie the same way I did the night I first rescued him, and bolt across the street toward campus with the gut-sinking realization that I might’ve just torched my entire future for a creature with four legs and a questionable bladder.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m still walking with said creature zipped into my shirt. Waffles squirms. And I realize sweat has soaked through my bra.
Every passerby looks suspicious.
Waffles wriggles again, and I whisper into my own neckline, “I swear to all that is holy, if you blow our cover, I will cry.”
This was not the plan.
Well, to be fair, there was no plan. The plan was “save the dog, figure it out later,” which has backfired spectacularly.
Where do I even go?
Option A: The library. Quiet. Warm. Full of judgmental grad students who hate noise and love reporting things. No.
Option B: The med building. They’ve got couches in the student lounge and strong Wi-Fi. Also, cameras and bioethics majors who would absolutely not approve of me hiding a contraband canine under a layer of fleece.
Option C: My last resort. My most desperate, dignity-destroying, chaos-inviting option.
No. Nope. Not happening.
I’m not going to Rowan King.
He already has leverage. Walking back into his space uninvited, holding Exhibit A of my inability to function would be handing him ammunition and begging him to use it.
Besides, it’s not like he’d even open the door...
Would he?
Waffles lets out a tiny whine and nuzzles closer to my chest, and my heart clenches. Stupid dog. Stupid, perfect, soft-eared criminal.
I glance at the time on my phone.
Tiffany’s Pilates class ends in ten minutes.
