I feel for the guy.
I lean my head against the wall and let my eyes wander over the framed images of pets along the wall. The fluorescent lighting is a godsend compared to the dimly lit restaurant, even if the only thing here for me to study are pictures of hamsters and cats.
It's a long while before the door opens and Summer comes back out. She looks like an angel with her blonde hair beneath the fluorescent light, her eyes shimmering with relief. "He'll be fine," she says.
"He will?"
"Yes. They'll keep him overnight for observation and I will pick him up tomorrow afternoon. They've given him medication, and active charcoal that's meant to counteract the chocolate, and…" she buries her face in her hands. "I can't believe I was so careless!"
I step closer and throw caution to the wind, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. It takes me several long moments to find the words. "Well," I say. "You did the right thing by getting him here so quickly."
Summer nods into her hands and leans into me, like she's grateful for the support. Like I'm actually comforting her. "Thank you. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't called right then."
"You would have figured it out."
She takes a deep breath and lifts her head, shimmering eyes meeting mine. "Oh God, you were on your date. Did I interrupt you?"
"I called you," I remind her, "and no, it was no problem. Let me take you home."
She nods and puts her hand on my arm, fingers curving, and lets me guide her to the door. "Thank you, Anthony. Truly."
For the second time in a week, I find myself in Summer Davis's living room near midnight. It's a dangerous habit.
She's kicked off her shoes and taken her hair down and is now lying on the couch across from me, turning a ruined box of chocolates over in her hands.
"Dave brought them when he came by to pick me up," she says. "I put them on the hallway table. Ace must have knocked them off somehow, but he's never done anything like that before."
"Hard to resist if chocolate truffles are scattered all over the floor."
She pushes up from the couch and throws the remnants in the trash with firm movements. "Never again," she says. "From here on out, my household will be one hundred percent chocolate free. I'll never own a piece again in my life."
"Drastic," I say. "You couldn't have it in, like, a sealed Tupperware container?"
Summer pours us a glass of water each before sitting down on the couch opposite me again, pulling her legs up beneath her. "You're good at thinking rationally, you know."
She drains half of her glass and pushes back a tendril of hair. "Today was far too much excitement for me."
"Do you want to talk about him?"
"Ace?"
"Yes. Why do you bring him into the office most days? Actually, why do you have a golden retriever in central New York?"
She sighs and looks down at her hands. "He might be happier upstate. But he does alternate between living with me and with my parents, so I think he gets the best of both worlds, but… well. It's kind of a funny story. He was supposed to be a guide dog."
"What?"
"Yes, a guide dog for the blind."
My jaw tightens. "Is that supposed to be a joke?"
"No," she says, eyes intent on me. "I mean, unless you find it funny? But no. My parents have raised retrievers for as long as I can remember. There are always one or two puppies in each litter that my mother earmarks as guide dogs. She'll foster them, too, before they go to the Foundation for the Blind for advanced training. Anyway, Ace failed halfway through his."
She turns her glass around, voice growing warm. "He was seventeen months when they withdrew him from training. Too easily distracted, you see. But he has the biggest heart, and he had so much training still in him… So my parents adopted him right back home."
The tight, suspicious fear in my chest softens at her words. A coincidence, then, that her dog was once destined to help guide the blind. Yet the reminder of blindness is unwelcome. It doesn't belong in this warm space.
Not around her.
"Your parents sound idyllic," I say.
"You think?"
"Perfect marriage, perfect kid, raising dogs… yes, I do."
Her smile widens. "Perfect kid?"
"You can't have been difficult to raise."
"You're making assumptions."
"Yes," I say, "but tell me I'm wrong?"
"You're not," she admits. "And they are pretty great. Over the last year, I've really wanted Ace with me here, too, and they've understood. He's helped."
"Helped?"
"Yes, with… well. I told you I had a pretty bad break-up a year ago."
"You did."
"Having Ace here has been lovely." She looks down at the glass of water in her hands, twisting it around. And just like that, I have to know more.
"Sorry to hear about the break-up."
She shakes her head. "Don't be. It was good, that it happened. I shouldn't have been with him."
"Then I'm happy to hear it."
"Yeah. I'm happier now, too." She puts her glass down and takes a deep breath. Gives me a look that makes it clear we're changing the subject, my insatiable curiosity be damned. "So, how was your third and final date? I understand that you might be trying to spare my feelings because of Ace… but put me out of my misery, will you?"
There's a smile waiting in the corners of her lips. Whatever acidic words I'd once longed to spew at the end of the bet are gone. They've withered in the presence of her light.
"She was lovely," I admit.
"Wow," she says, eyes on mine. They're impossible to read. "I didn't expect such a rave review. Was that why you called me? To admit defeat?"
I just look at her.