The Dog Park Regular Remembered My Name, My Dog's, and My Divorce novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Mondays and Thursdays

Tara sets her rules on the park bench and Beau agrees to every one with a thumb on the inside of her wrist. Boyd wants the dog on weekends. She texts Beau "Wednesday" without thinking.

On Monday I sat on my bench at 6:40 with my back to him and my terms ready.

I had written them in my notes app at midnight, standing in my kitchen in a T-shirt.

I had read them over to make sure I sounded calm.

Waffles was lying on my foot.

Tank was lying on the gravel between the benches, which put him close enough to touch both of us, because Tank leans on everyone.

Two of the bench ladies were three seats down arguing about a pound cake.

I held my coffee in front of my mouth and talked into the lid.

"Rules," I said.

"Morning, Tara," he said.

"Good morning. Rules. One. Mondays and Thursdays. That's all."

"Okay," he said.

"Two. Nobody here knows. Not the bench ladies, not the man with the corgis, not the woman with the doodle who tells everybody everything."

"Okay," he said.

"Three. You leave by eight. You don't stay over, I don't stay over."

There was a short pause, and the slat behind my back creaked.

"Is that all?" he said.

"That's all."

"Can I ask one thing?" he said.

"You can ask."

"Why those?" he said.

Because Boyd had come home at all hours for four years and I had learned to sleep alone in a full bed.

Because I was thirty, and he was twenty-three, and I could do arithmetic.

"Because I'm not looking for anything," I said. "I'm looking for Mondays and Thursdays."

"All right."

He sounded so calm about it that I turned halfway around, annoyed, and found him already standing.

He came around the end of the bench with the ball in his hand and Tank's rope toy in the other.

"Come on," he said. "You throw like you're apologizing to it."

"I do not."

"You throw left-handed and you let go too early," he said. "Come here."

"There are people."

"There are always people," he said. "Nobody's looking at a man teaching a woman to throw a ball."

That was not true, and we both knew it, and I stood up anyway.

He stood behind my right shoulder.

Waffles's leash was looped around my left wrist, the nylon biting a little at the bone.

I held out my left hand for the ball.

He put it in my palm.

Then he slid his thumb under the leash loop and laid it against the inside of my wrist, on the pulse, and held it there.

It was a small touch.

It was the smallest thing a man has ever done to me in public, and my whole arm went warm to the shoulder.

"Draw it back," he said, low. "Like that. Now wait. Wait. Let it go when your hand is up by your ear."

I let go.

The ball sailed halfway across the field, and both dogs went after it in a gray-and-brown blur.

"Better," he said.

His thumb didn't leave my wrist.

Three benches down, one of the ladies said, "I'm telling you, buttermilk, not sour cream," and the other said, "Sour cream keeps it moist," and I stood there with Beau's thumb against my pulse and nodded at the argument.

I could feel my own pulse going under his thumb, faster than it had any right to.

I wondered if he could feel it too.

He did, because the pad of his thumb pressed down once, gently, and rubbed in a slow circle.

"Wait," he said. "She'll get to the pound cake in a minute. Keep nodding."

I nearly laughed.

I kept nodding.

When the ladies finally moved on to somebody's hip, he let go, and I felt the air on my wrist.

He walked around behind the bench and stood there with his back to me.

He stood there for a long time.

He didn't turn around, he didn't pick up the rope toy, and he didn't call Tank.

I watched the back of his neck go red right up to where his curls started.

"What's wrong with you?" I whispered.

"Nothing. Give me a minute."

"You're all red," I said.

"It's a cold morning."

"It's seventy degrees," I said.

"The wind's coming from the north," he said, which was nonsense, and I decided it was weather.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I took it out, because I always did, and read it standing up with one hand on the back of the bench.

Boyd.

Hey Tar. I got a place with a yard now. I'd like Waffles on the weekends, it's only fair. I don't want to make this ugly. People have already got the idea you went cold on me, I'm not saying that, I'm saying be reasonable.

I read it twice.

I had not gone cold on anyone.

I had gone quiet for four years in a house where no one asked why.

Behind the bench Beau had turned around at last.

He looked at my face and at the phone, and he didn't ask.

"Mondays and Thursdays," he said, very low. "I'll be here."

I put the phone in my pocket.

Waffles came back with the ball, dropped it on my shoe, and leaned her whole round body against my shin.

I picked her up with a grunt.

"Thank you," I said, and I didn't know which of them I meant.

That night at ten, my phone lit up on the nightstand.

It was a photo of Waffles asleep on a gray quilt with her chin on a pillow, one ear flipped inside out.

I had picked her up from his porch at six-fifteen after he'd taken her to the bike shop for the day, because I'd said yes to that at the fountain.

He had handed me the leash and not one inch more.

He had taken the picture before I came.

Under it he'd typed: She wants Thursday.

I looked at the quilt for a long time.

I typed Wednesday, and sent it before I thought, and lay there with the phone on my chest, waiting for him to tell me my own rule.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend