That was true. It didn’t make that panicky feeling go away. “Okay. I’ll do it. Where am I going?”
“I’m in the Hollywood Hills.”
“Text me the address and hopefully I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes.” I shared an apartment with Shelby in Pasadena, and given that it was a Sunday evening, I didn’t anticipate a ton of traffic.
“Sounds good. See you then.”
He hung up, and I just stood there in my living room, phone in my hand, trying to process what had just happened. Why would he call me? There were a million other mobile dog groomers. This made no sense.
Shelby breezed into the apartment. She’d spent the day with Allan and was in a great mood. “Juliet! Guess what? Remember that first-year associate at Allan’s office who was cheating on his pregnant wife with his secretary like a total cliché? Turns out the secretary is pregnant, too, and she showed up at his house and made a huge scene. His wife is divorcing his slimy butt.” She had dropped her purse and keys on the kitchen counter but stopped when she saw my face. “What’s up with you?”
“Um, Noah Douglas wants me to come over and wash his dog.” I put my cell phone down on the coffee table and dropped the remote on the couch. My pulse was jackhammering all over the place, making my blood feel too thick for my veins. I had to suck in a couple of deep breaths.
“What?” she shrieked.
“Not one word,” I said. I didn’t want her trying to turn this into something it wasn’t as I headed into my bedroom to get changed. I needed to calm down, not keep getting more amped up.
“That is not possible, because I have so many words!” she said as she followed me. “What are you going to wear?”
“Uh, my clothes?” What kind of question was that?
“You’re not going to get dressed up?”
“To wash his dog? No.” I went through a pile of clothing on my floor looking for a pair of jeans to throw on.
“I can’t believe you’re about to go over to Felix Morrison’s house and that you’re going to fall in love with him now. That man is so attractive. I’d let him Felix my Morrison any day of the week.”
“You’re engaged,” I reminded her as I pulled one of my business’s polo shirts out of my closet.
She sat down on the edge of my bed. “Obviously I’m speaking in a metaphorical sense, because I’m never going to date him. Mostly because I’m ridiculously in love with Allan, but also because he’s so obviously interested in you.”
“Asking me to clean his dog does not indicate interest,” I said, tugging my shirt on over my head.
“Hard disagree.” She paused. “If he asks you out, will you go?”
“No,” I immediately responded as I opened my top dresser drawer to get a clean pair of socks.
“But why won’t you date Noah Douglas?” She sounded like a little kid who’d just been told she couldn’t have an ice-cream cone. “He seemed so nice.”
“Your opinion is wrong. When I talked with him, he was infuriating, and I kind of wanted to stab him and I think God would have understood.”
“Pretty sure you’re not supposed to kill people. And you know that’s an important one, because it made His top ten.”
I sat down to put on my socks and shoes. “So did not gossiping, and yet . . .”
“And yet,” she agreed.
“Look, I get it. I’m a woman. I have eyes and ovaries or whatever, and I can see how hot he is. But you are getting your hopes up a little high. Like, that castle in the clouds from ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ high.” I tightened my laces. “You know I’m on a man sabbatical.”
“It’s not a sabbatical when you’ve never dated. That’s like saying you’re taking a sabbatical when you’ve never actually had a job. It’s not a sabbatical. You’re just unemployed.” She said this gently and I knew what she was hinting at, but she wasn’t getting any answers from me about it.
“Why are you so interested in my love life?” I asked, getting to my feet and going into the bathroom to brush my hair and put it up in a ponytail.
She followed me there, too. “Somebody has to be!”
I went back to my old standby. “I’m focusing on building up my business right now. I don’t want to worry about dating.”
“No one wants you to worry. Dating is actually in the fun section of the program. I’m just saying that whatever happens tonight, maybe you should try pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.”
“Which I don’t want to do, because it’s my favorite zone in the whole world. Much better than demilitarized or twilight. I prefer staying in it.” I got my toothbrush, put some toothpaste on it, and quickly brushed my teeth.
“You know,” she mused, “the one thing I regret is that we didn’t get a picture with Noah. Because no one’s going to believe that we met him.”
“We know, and outside of us, who is going to care?” We had been best friends since our mothers met in a Mommy and Me playgroup, and whatever other friends we’d made over the years all fell by the wayside when Shelby got sick.
“That’s true. Allan pretended like he was excited when I told him about it, but the only way he would actually care is if Noah got drafted by the 49ers.”
I considered putting on makeup, but I knew what a mess I was about to make of myself, so there was no point. After a moment of internal wrestling, I reached for a pale-pink lip gloss and spread it across my mouth.
Her eyebrows lifted in excitement at my small effort, and she said, “You know I still plan on us having a double wedding, and I’ve got two years to make it happen.”
This was something she’d decided when we were eleven, and she’d never gotten over it. “You saying something is a plan doesn’t actually make it a plan. I love you, but I’m under no obligation to humor you.”
“But I’ve had to let go of so many dreams,” she said in a small voice, and it made me feel unbelievably guilty and sad for everything she’d been put through. I turned around to hug her.
“I know. And it’s also okay to get some new dreams.”
“But if I can’t even get you interested in going out with a movie star, our double wedding is definitely never going to happen.” She mumbled the words into my shoulder.
I stepped back and just shook my head. “Noah and I are going to have a strictly professional interaction. You know me—I don’t like to mix business with disdain.”
“You may feel certain things about Noah Douglas, but disdain is not one of them.”
She hadn’t been the one sitting next to him. She didn’t know what she was talking about. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you remember when that palm reader warned us about dating a guy with two first names?”
“That was my reading, not yours. You’re free to date him.”
“You know that’s not going to happen. Tell me you know that I’m not actually going to date Noah Douglas.”
“Probably not,” she agreed. “But isn’t it fun to daydream?”
Personally, I’d found daydreaming to be overrated and a waste of energy. Real life demanded too much of my focus. I had gone into the kitchen to search for my keys. I had a bad habit of dropping them places and forgetting where. “Have you seen my keys?”