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Everly erupted into laughter. She waited until she’d opened the door to her dressing room and stepped inside to reply.
“Now I’m wearing Gritty everywhere.”
CHAPTER 21
“How do you live here?”
Everly watched Logan balance a giant pizza box on one arm as he dug into his camera bag for his keys. They were on the verge of having cheese-side-down slices for dinner, but she was too in awe of his apartment building to do much more than stare. It was a beautiful brick walk-up with only one unit per floor, and his was on the top. Everything was so clean and well-polished and orderly. She had no idea cameramen earned this much money.
Her mouth fell open. “Oh my god, do you still live with your parents?”
He cocked his head. “What if I do? You basically live with your brother.”
“Touché.” Everly took the pizza from his overburdened hands. “But seriously, I’m not prepared for parents.”
“Good lord, I don’t live with my parents. This was my grandfather’s place. I’m the only grandkid, so he left it to me in his will.” He cringed as the barking inside the apartment reached a crescendo with the slide ofhis key in the doorknob. “That’s one of the reasons I moved back here. No rent.”
He popped open the door, then took the pizza from her so they could maneuver their way inside. “No matter how cute they look or how much they bark and whine, you cannot give them attention until they sit down,” he instructed.
The front door led into a narrow hallway that was basically an acoustic blast zone for his two dogs. One was tiny, no more than eight pounds, with a white, wiry body, black fur around his ears and eyes that was trimmed in brown, and the curliest tail Everly had ever seen. She recognized him as Alan from the pictures Logan had shown her at the Ren faire. The other, Ravioli, was an English bulldog, old enough that he’d gone gray around the muzzle and head. He was a thick boy covered in wrinkly skin, his folded ears flopping with every waddle at Logan’s heels.
Though she wanted desperately to drop to the floor and snuggle them, Everly respected the rules and paid them no mind while they hopped in circles. Alan had escalated from barking to yowling, as if they were murdering him simply by denying him pats.
The first to plop his butt down was Ravioli, who gazed up at Logan with liquid brown eyes and a big, drooling smile.
Logan set aside the food to shower the bulldog with praise. The way he cooed was so diametrically opposed to his typical gruff nature that Everly choked on a laugh.
Alan finally stopped his baying and also sat, earning him a good scratch from Logan under his chin.
Everly eased to the floor so she could pet him, too. “Do you sing to them?” She’d assumed it was something every animal enthusiast did until Logan frowned.
Panic ignited in her chest. Was this his threshold for “too much”? Singing to dogs?
His jaw tightened as he watched Alan, who’d rolled over onto his back, his paws kicking every time Logan found that perfect spot. “Only at dinnertime.” He spoke the words so quietly they were almost inaudible.
Everly cracked a grin. Either she wasn’t a weirdo or they both were, and she was fine with that. “At my grandmother’s farm all the dogs had their own songs for everything. Meals, walks, bath time.” Shemighthave made most of them up herself.
Logan’s expression softened. “Oh man. A farm. That’s the dream.”
Her heart picked up speed. She kept discovering that they loved the same things: dogs, tattoos, a good Regency romance, visual arts, farms. Each one became a little knot stringing them invisibly together.
She’d never had anything more than Matten-Waverly in common with James.
“Not a surprise, given your aesthetic.” She gestured to his shirt.
His eyebrows dipped low. “Plaid is classic.”
“On flannel, it reads more like lumbersexual.”
“That’s not a real word.”
“Look it up.”
He actually pulled out his phone, but Alan started gnawing on the corner of it, and he gave up. These dogs had him wrapped around their paws. “Tell me about this farm,” he urged.
Everly wasn’t sure where to begin. With the expanse of bright green fields that stretched out from every side of Grandma Helen’s two-story white farmhouse like oceans of grass? With the wraparound porch where the barn cats had their meals, then poured themselves bonelessly into the wooden rocking chairs to nap? With the tractor her grandmother let her drive way too early? With the way that, back then, she’d never felt more herself than when she was running across the fields, covered in mud, followed by herds of goats and packs of dogs, singing at the top of her lungs?
She could only imagine how Grandma Helen would have reactedto Everly being onOn the Plus Side.The whole town would have been over to her house twice a week for rowdy watch parties. She would have made her granddaughter feel like a rock star, a celebrity, someone to be proud of, instead of a walking potential embarrassment like her mother.
