“How about this one?” Sloane asked, passing her phone back to Kristin, who sat at the other end of the gray corduroy sofa that dominated the living room of the small house Kristin shared with her mother in Bozeman.
Darcy and Sloane had been in Montana for the past two days to retrieve Darcy’s car from the tow lot and get it titled in her name. The quarters were close, and Darcy had been a little concerned that Kristin and Sloane would fight, as Sloane was not very used to even a temporary living situation where she was expected to clean up after herself, make her own food, and scrub her own bathroom sink.
But Sloane and Kristin didn’t fight. Instead, they argued. They’d argued for two days straight about Darcy’s wedding, even though Darcy had repeatedly told them that Teagan was going to have to come up with a ring and a less terror-stricken kind of proposal if he hoped to secure her hand in matrimony someday. On the third round of who should be maid of honor, Darcy had threatened to elope without either of them in the event she did get properly engaged. After a few moments of shocked, wounded silence, the two other women had moved seamlessly to arguing about Darcy and Teagan’s new dog.
Darcy and Teagan were going to get a dog together. It was the first thing Teagan had asked her for, after a big wind-up of a speech about how quiet the house seemed without the otters. Darcy had been half convinced he was about to ask her to get with child. A dog was an easy yes.
“ ‘Tater Tot is a six-year-old Lhasa apso-poodle mix. He takes twice-daily thyroid medication and is allergic to chicken and beef,’ ” Kristin read out loud. “I don’t think so. Four references required. No.”
Darcy pulled out her earbuds and paused Teagan’s dictation of a handout on Fisheries and Wildlife Science 302: Systematics of Birds. “I have references,” she protested out of sheer principle, even though she was only half listening to the other women’s conversation.
For the first time, Darcy was fairly certain she could pass the scrutiny of the most discerning no-kill shelter. She had a permanent address at a tidy little two-bedroom home in Beacon with a fenced backyard, and Teagan certainly had the financial resources to support even a dog who ate nothing but forty-two-dollars-a-bag prescription kibble.
“Forget this prissy little thing,” Kristin scoffed, turning the screen to flash a fat, fluffy white creature at her. “His beauty routine is probably longer than mine, and it takes four hours to dye my hair. No. You want a real dog. There’s a nice big Pyrenees mix up in Helena—”
Sloane immediately squawked in disapproval of the idea of a weeklong trip back to New York with a hundred-pound dog, and Kristin protectively hunched over the phone, scrolling through the adoption app with all the furtive, judgmental confidence of a married man browsing Tinder.
“We’re not getting a dog in Montana,” Darcy said to put an end to the burgeoning dispute. She had her eye on a purebred Labrador rescue back in New York whose profile suggested, in so many coded words, that he would turn his home to rubble if he didn’t get hours of exercise every day. But Teagan didn’t start his new swim coach gig at the middle school down the street for another month, so they were waiting on the bring-your-pet-to-work policy to make a final decision. “Besides, there’s barely going to be room for the three of us and all Sloane’s luggage as it is,” Darcy added, nodding out the window at her car.
“I’m not that bad,” Sloane protested. “You should see how Teagan packs. Like he’s worried he’s going to spill tomato soup on himself twice every single day that we’re gone.”
“Where is Teagan?” Kristin asked, lifting her head again. “I thought his flight got in a while ago? Didn’t you want to leave before noon?”
Darcy had been wondering that herself, but she didn’t have to check her phone to answer, because she heard a taxi crunching the gravel at the end of Kristin’s drive. She grinned and went to stand in the doorway. Kristin said it had snowed last week, but today was a beautiful, golden fall day in Bozeman, and the front door was open to allow Kristin’s five cats access to the great outdoors and its hapless migratory bird population.
This was her favorite time of year in the Gallatin range. Frost in the morning, then enough sunshine to toast her cheeks in the afternoon. Darcy crossed her arms as the taxi parked next to her car.
Teagan’s smile was a little abashed as he stepped out of the taxi, and Darcy guessed that the reason for it was the many plastic sacks of groceries Darcy could see crowding the back seat.
“So I stopped by Costco,” he began to explain both his tardiness and the groceries, but he didn’t finish his sentence, because Darcy closed the distance between them at a sprint, put both palms flat on his shoulders, and used the leverage to propel herself up and into his arms.
She heard the grocery sacks hit the gravel just in time for Teagan to wrap his hands under her ass and catch her as she wrapped her legs around him. His knees sagged a little, but he kept his balance.
“Hi,” Darcy said, locking her ankles behind his back and arms around his neck.
Teagan’s smile was still crooked but sweet as honey as he took a quick half step back against the taxi to avoid dropping her. “Hi, Darcy,” he said.
She kissed him, the kind of kiss you only gave someone you’d already kissed at least a couple hundred times and planned to kiss a couple million times more, all smooshed noses and aligned lips.
“I was afraid you’d been somehow beset by bears between the airport and Kristin’s house,” she told him once she thought he was properly impressed.
“Nothing bigger than a marmot,” he said after a couple of blinks. “And I fought it off, somehow.”
“The marmots are already hibernating,” Darcy told him with faux indignation. “Must have been ground squirrels.”
They smirked at each other in pleasant anticipation of annoying other people with their developing set of inside jokes for many years to come.
Darcy let go of Teagan and slid back down to her feet as the taxi driver grumpily opened his door to begin unloading additional groceries out of the trunk.
Darcy peered into the bags at Teagan’s feet.
“Are we going on a weeklong road trip, or are we founding a survivalist compound right here in Montana?” she asked, pulling out a five-pound jar of peanut butter-filled pretzels.
“I . . . guess we can do either?” Teagan said, taking stock of the growing pile of groceries. “Sorry. I’ve never been through any of the states between here and New York. I didn’t know if they’d have anything for you to eat there. I hear they’re pretty big on dairy in the Upper Midwest.”
“It’s fine,” Darcy said with studied nonchalance, secretly thrilled to eat five pounds of peanut butter-filled pretzels before they even got to Minnesota. She unlocked the trunk of her own car and began transferring grocery sacks on top of her luggage and Sloane’s. “We’ll just need to bring all our food in at night while we’re in the park so that bears don’t try to break in.”
Teagan put his hands on his hips and turned to examine Darcy’s car.
“Everything go okay? It wasn’t damaged?”
“Runs great,” Darcy said. “I had it inspected and got new windshield wipers and everything.”
“And the title?”
Darcy nodded. She’d been a little skeptical of bringing Sloane along on the first leg of her trip when Teagan had to stay behind to close on the sale of his condo. But Teagan had been absolutely right that Sloane was an emerging expert at making her problems into everyone else’s problems, and even if several employees of Montana’s DMV would be happy to never see her again, Darcy now had all her paperwork fully in order.
They finished loading Darcy’s car and over-tipping the taxi driver. Darcy pulled up her phone to check that she had enough podcasts downloaded to cover the next few days, then lifted a hand to shade the early afternoon sun.
“Sloane!” she yelled toward the house. “Are you ready to go? If we want to make it to the beaver ponds before dark, we gotta go now.”
There was some dark muttering about beavers from inside the house, but Sloane and Kristin eventually emerged with the last of Sloane’s things.
“Look,” Sloane said, holding up her phone screen. “The city shelter here has puppies. Ten of them. Looks like they’ve got some golden retriever in them.” Her phone displayed an image of a pile of blurry yellow fluff balls.
“We’re not getting a puppy. Much less ten puppies,” Darcy said, amused despite herself.
“I know! But I thought, maybe we could just stop and see them?” Sloane wheedled. “They’re still being bottle fed. We could hold one. Take a bottle-feeding shift.” She looked down at Darcy beseechingly.
God. That sounded fantastic. They should cancel all their plans and just play with the puppies. How did parents do it? Try to pretend like all the weird shit your kids wanted you to do didn’t sound super fun?
Darcy crossed her arms, trying to look implacable.
Teagan took the phone from his sister and made big, soft eyes at the picture of the puppies. Then he snuck a glance over at Darcy to check whether she was tempted.
“I don’t know,” he said, ducking Sloane’s imploring look. “We were planning to leave just after noon, and I made us late.”
“And look, I promised your brother beavers,” Darcy said, wanting to leave the decision up to Teagan. “At some point I’ve got to deliver.”
Sloane sighed in a put-upon way. “That’s why we reserved two rooms,” she said. “Do whatever you have to do tonight. Can we stop and play with the puppies, please?”
Teagan’s ears and neck turned bright pink, but he held onto Sloane’s phone.
“Um. So, I recall that the beavers are crepuscular,” he recited. “Which means they’ll be out tomorrow morning too, right?”
Darcy kept her face stern even as a smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.
“We’re only in Yellowstone for three days,” she said thoughtfully. “And I’ve got a lot planned. Up to you though.”
Teagan’s lips pursed. Go ahead, Darcy mentally urged him. Use your words.
Teagan handed the phone back to his sister.
“I think we can stop by the shelter and see the dogs. We’ll just take it easy today,” he said. “We can always stay an extra day in Yellowstone, right? It’s not like we have anywhere we have to be for weeks.”
Darcy grinned and pulled Teagan over by the waist to bury her face against the side of his neck. It was true.
“Yeah, sure,” she said, tossing her car keys in her palm. “We’re on vacation. We’ve got time.”