Page 90 of How To Plot a Payback

I caused her breath to come in quick pinches and her chest to rise and fall rapidly while her face looked like a sheet of paper.

She put on a brave face and tried to play it off, but there was no getting around it: I was to blame for this. And maybe he wouldn’t hurt a fly, but the fact is I meddled in things I knew nothing about and would be absolutely to blame if he did.

Maybe she could forgive me, but I couldn’t.

Yes, spending an afternoon with Lavender is just like playing Russian roulette, but I owe her now. And I’ll show up for every playdate she wants if it makes up for my actions.

“Oh, you didn’t!” she cries when I show up at the park. “This is adorable.” Lavender grabs the plaid bandanna from me. “Bernie!” she cries, clapping her hands. Bernie, who is racing around a twig of a tree with no end in sight, makes no sign of coming. She waves the bandanna. “Bernie!”

She goes on like this until at last I give a whistle for Miles, so high-pitched the squirrel digging through the bag of popcorn near the trash can a few yards off lifts his head. Miles, who has been leisurely watching Bernie circle the tree, perks up, pulls back slowly on his legs to standing, and begins walking toward me.

Bernie, of course, sees his friend is moving and comes barreling straight for us.

He barrels into my legs and knocks over my tumbler of coffee. Coffee pours out the side, and I quietly right it.

“Here, Bernie, look what we’ve got for you. Now stay still,” Lavender says.

Bernie has gotten quite a bit bigger since I first met him, and from the looks of it, so has his puppy behavior. He jumps up on Lavender half a dozen times, each time stamping paw prints of orange dust along her white denim capris. She doesn’t seem to mind, but then, given the massive holes in her dusky-blue jumper, I’m not surprised.

“What a good dog. Good dog.”

I raise my brow. Look away.

“What?” she says suspiciously.

“Nothing,” I reply, reaching for my tumbler. I take a sip of what’s left, which is now only a single drop.

Lavender goes on trying to tie the bandanna around Bernie’s neck, but he twists this way and that.

At last I exhale.

“Bernie,” I say, reaching into my pocket. I pull out a chew toy. It looks like a penguin and squeaks with the barest of pressure. Miles hates this kind of stuff (he’s far too mature). But I figured—and it seems I am correct given how Bernie lunges for it—the toy was right up the puppy’s alley. As he gathers it in his jaws, I quickly wrap the bandanna around his neck, knotting it once before letting go and sitting back.

“Oh, look at you!” Lavender cries, and there she is, phone pulled out and snapping pictures as if her fingers are on fire.

One side of my mouth lifts in the tiniest flicker of a smile.

“What?” Lavender asks, jerking her head my way.

I note her finger hasn’t stopped tapping for pictures.

“Nothing,” I say. “It’s just, when you talk to him you sound like a doll who’s inhaled a helium balloon.”

She draws herself up. “I do not.”

“Don’t take offense,” I say, then point to the woman across from us, who is crouched low, taking photos of her Shih Tzu as it passes through a green tube and squealing as if her dog has just saved someone from drowning. “All of you do it, pretty much.”

She raises a brow. “All of us who?”

“Enthusiastic puppy owners,” I reply.

“Well, there I’ve got you then, because this isn’t my dog.” Lavender lowers her phone a little, casting what appears to be her first true glance around since we got to the dog park. We’re at the same one as before, the one she referred to as “our neighborhood park” on the phone, as though we frequent Lake Hollywood Park together instead of this being what it really is: our second meeting there.

It’s more crowded today, what with the March weather creeping into the low seventies and the skies being a cloudless blue. The Hollywood Sign on the hill glints beneath the 3:00 p.m. sunshine. Right on cue, some woman who has just set a dark chocolate Labrador puppy onto the grass beside a pink bowl labeled Glamorous in rhinestones begins clapping and cheering it on like she’s swallowed a squeak toy when the dog lowers its head and takes a sip.

“It’s your dog,” I say.

“No.” Lavender shakes her head. “I’m just fostering him. He’s Sonya’s.”