Page 52 of Save the Date
“I figured.” He nodded. “Not much of a Southern accent.”
“I’m working on it. I’ve learned to say ‘fixin’ to’ and ‘crank the car’ and ‘carry me to the store,’ but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.”
“You should hang around my aunt Betty,” Jack said. “Born and raised here, never lived anyplace other than Savannah. Half the time, even I can’t understand what she’s saying.”
The drinks came then. He seemed to be studying her, waiting for something. It was making her nervous.Hemade her nervous. Fidgety.
Say something, she told herself. “How’s your…”
“How’s your dog?” he blurted out, at the exact same time.
They both laughed.
“You start,” he said. “How is Poppy? Over her trauma?”
“She’s good,” Cara said. “How about Shaz?”
“Not as depressed. I’ve started taking her to job sites with me now, and she’s kinda into that. Although Torie’s not crazy about having her at the house—she thinks Shaz intimidates Benji.”
“Benji?”
“Torie’s dog. Some kinda purse puppy. I don’t know what kind of dog he is. Ryan calls him a shih tzu.”
“But not in front of Torie.”
“No.”
“I’m lucky Poppy can just come downstairs to the shop with me most of the time. When I’m not there—is it weird that I leave the television on for her to watch?”
“Don’t ask me. I leave the Animal Planet on for Shaz. Or Sports South.”
“Poppy loves that too,” she confided. “That and Disney.”
They sipped their drinks. Cara decided it was her turn to study him. See if she could make him feel as fidgety as she felt.
He was easy to look at. Intelligent hazel eyes with crinkle lines at the corners, that made her think he laughed a lot when he wasn’t around her. He had the dry, weather-beaten skin of somebody who worked outside, a trace of five-o’clock shadow on his strong jawline. He’d taken off his hat, and his dark hair was a little matted, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who’d be self-conscious about that. His hands, clamped around his beer stein, were strong, sun-browned, callused.
Ryan told her that Jack was getting over a bad breakup. Torie had told her about the Jimmy Buffett impersonator.Why would anybody leave somebody who looks like Jack Finnerty?
“Kinda weird our dogs look so much alike,” Jack said. “I’ve been wondering about that.”
“You don’t see that many goldendoodles in Savannah,” she agreed. “I had to go to Atlanta to find Poppy’s breeder. Where’d you get Shaz?”
“I think Zoey got her in Atlanta.”
“You think?”
“We’d talked about getting a dog, in kind of an abstract way. Like, we were running in the park one day, and she said, ‘We should get a dog.’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And a few weeks later, I come home, and there’s Shaz. Don’t get me wrong. I like dogs. I love ’em. But it would have been nice if she’d discussed it with me.”
He sipped his beer. “It wasn’t the best time to bring a puppy into the mix. Relationship-wise. We weren’t really getting along anyway. So I was pissed at her, and she was pissed at me for being pissed about the dog. And we were both pissed when Shaz pissed on the floor, which totally wasn’t the dog’s fault. She was a puppy! It went like that. Anyway, we split up. Probably just as well.”
“If it was her dog, I’m surprised she didn’t take Shaz.”
“Not as surprised as me.” They both laughed at that. “She was with one of her girlfriends at a bar on River Street, she met this guy, he was playing there. I guess they hooked up right away.…”
His face darkened at the telling. “He’s a Jimmy Buffett impersonator, for God’s sake.”
“Oh my.”
