Page 46 of Freeze Frame

DAVID

It had beenyears since I’d had the desire to try and cook something special for someone. My last attempt was a birthday dinner for Jax when he turned ten. And even though we ended up ordering pizza, he claims to have appreciated the effort.

Why I insisted on doing it myself instead of just ordering in, putting it in dishes, and hiding the take-out containers so I could pass it off as my own, I’d never know. Sometimes I was too honest for my own good.

Josh told me that he had something he wanted to discuss with me. Though he said it wasn’t anything bad, it still made me nervous. There were plenty of not-bad subjects he could want to talk about. Like… did he want to top me exclusively? Could I work with that? Probably, to be honest. Maybe he wanted me to look after Nitro more often for him instead of taking him to doggy day care or over to Lukas’s when he worked.

Maybe it was about his job. Was he scheduling a new shoot with someone? It would be the first one since we’d started seeing each other. I stared around at the mess that was my kitchen andheaved a sigh. I didn’t know how I felt about that. I was mostly okay with it. Mostly. Because I was starting to understand that I wanted some rules about that, about his job, and that didn’t feel particularly fair of me. He’d been doing this long before I came along, and who was I to dictate rules to him now?

Just… I didn’t like the idea of him using the same toys he’d used on me on other people. And I definitely did not want him working with my son. A job or not, that was just fucking weird. They’d worked together before we met, and that was fine. But it was a hard limit now.

The state of the kitchen matched my state of mind. Everything was chaotic. And then I heard a faint rustling sound. Turning around, I saw Wally’s hind end sticking out of the pantry. I must have left the door open in my scatterbrained attempt at cooking.

“What are you doing, huh, buddy?” I crooned sweetly as I approached. When I caught sight of what he’d been eating, the bottom dropped out of my stomach.

“Oh, buddy, what did you do?” I might not have had a pet before, and maybe I wasn’t the most knowledgeable person on the planet, but I knew that dogs were allergic to chocolate. Deathly allergic.

Scooping Wally up into my arms, I hurried through the kitchen, snapping the burners off on my way through. One crisis at a time was enough, thanks. The last thing I wanted was my house to burn down. Wally seemed fine on the way to the vet’s office, but I didn’t know how long that would stay true. Worry sat in my stomach like a boulder. If anything happened to him, I wasn’t sure what I’d do.

The drive should have taken twenty minutes, but I made it in fifteen. I bundled a still okay-looking Wally up in my arms and rushed him inside. Blue happened to be working, and his eyes went wide when he saw me. My fear and anxiety must have beenwritten on my face because he wasted no time bellowing for Rex before rushing over to me.

“What’s wrong?” Blue asked, gently trying to get me to loosen my grip on Wally.

“Chocolate. I was cooking, and I left the pantry open, and he ate chocolate.”

Rex came out at that moment. I’d met him before, and I had to admire the way he was able to keep a clear head and a calm demeanor even as lunatic pet parents—me—lost their shit in his waiting room.

“Wally here apparently helped himself to some chocolate,” Blue said to Rex and he dropped his hands, giving up on getting me to let go of Wally.

“How about we have a look at him then?” Rex said, still as cool as a cucumber.

It was like nothing fazed the man. A dog was dying, and he was acting like it was any other Friday. I followed him and Blue into an exam room, and Blue looked at me with sympathy.

“David, you have to hand him over so we can examine him. You can stay here the whole time,” he assured me, and only then was I able to let go of Wally. Blue carried him to the exam table and set him down. Wally stood on all fours and shook himself from nose to the tip of his tail.

“How long ago did he ingest the chocolate?” Rex asked, listening to Wally’s heart and breathing with his stethoscope.

“Like… fifteen minutes. Twenty maybe.” My heart hammered so hard I worried that Rex would be able to hear my frantic heart over Wally’s.

“And how much did he ingest?” Rex furrowed his brow and kept listening to Wally’s breathing.

“He ate four mini muffins.”

Blue stopped mid-step, thermometer in hand. “Mini muffins?”

“Chocolate chip mini muffins,” I specified, feeling like the world’s shittiest dog owner.

Rex looked at me and smiled. “While your concern is valid, I don’t think there was enough chocolate chips in those mini muffins to harm him. Mini muffins usually have milk chocolate chips in them. And while the reaction from dog to dog will vary, typically the ratio is about one ounce of chocolate per pound of dog before it reaches toxic levels. Dark chocolate is, of course, toxic in much smaller amounts.”

“So he’s okay?”

“Most likely, yes,” Rex said. “But we’ll induce vomiting and give him charcoal to absorb the toxins. Just to be on the safe side.”

“You probably want to wait outside,” Blue told me, putting a hand on my arm to comfort me. “There’s coffee in the waiting room, and I made it fresh not too long ago so it should be nice still.”

“Are you sure?” I looked at Wally, who was happy to absorb all the affection Rex was showering him with. It felt wrong to leave him, like if he had to suffer, then the least I could do was witness it.

“It’ll be easier on both of you. Trust me. I promise we’ll take the best care of him.”