Total pages in book: 171
Estimated words: 167204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 557(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 557(@300wpm)
I smile faintly at my own private joke, then I back out of the screen and go back to messages so I can delete it.
There. Much better.
I open my book and try to focus, but it’s no use. My concentration is shot.
This is not how I wanted to go into class today, but apparently that’s what we’re doing. Awesome.
I spend a few more minutes on useless attempts to repair my fractured focus, but the book I’ve already read isn’t doing it. Instead, I grab my phone and text Killian.
“Made it to the Cutler lounge. Was not kidnapped or blackmailed along the way.”
“Glad to hear it,” he answers a moment later.
Unfortunately, because he was probably walking across campus and didn’t have his phone in his hand, that moment took too long. Searching for a different way to distract myself quickly before class, I opened social media. The algorithm knows me pretty well at this point, so the very first video it shows me is a sad song playing over a shot of a dog in a cage. It shows him there eagerly watching through the bars for a potential adopter to come meet him. His tail starts to wag and he dances with excitement when a man crouches down in front of his cage and hooks a couple of fingers through the bars to say hi. The dog licks his fingers, wagging his tail so hard his little butt wiggles, then it shows him dreaming about his forever home with the guy—playing fetch outside on a sunny day and tackling his imaginary owner to give him an abundance of face kisses and ear nibbles. But then the guy walks away from the cage, and the dog watches him go, his tail wags slowing until his tail stills altogether. Then the screen cuts to his sad reality of life in a little box all alone and shows him curled up on his bed with his head down like he’s sad. “He’s losing hope,” the mean screen text tells me, making my heart contract painfully. Then the text on the video tells me this sweet baby has spent 174 days in the shelter and he just wants someone to love him. “Could it be you?” it asks on the final screen.
And yes. Yes, it could.
His sad little face squeezes my heart until it physically hurts and I screenshot the video so I can send it to Killian.
“What do you think about getting a dog?” I ask with an emotional, watery-eyed emoji.
“No,” he sends back immediately.
“But he needs a home!”
“That video has 144k views. I’m sure he found one.”
“Bystander effect. Everyone else probably thinks the same thing,” I insist.
Plus, since the guy in the video was quite hot, half of the comments are things like, “Does the guy need adopting because I’ll take him” but I don’t mention that.
“He’s also located in California. Maybe your geography skills are a little lax, but that’s on the other side of the country.”
“Road trip!”
I can see him shaking his head in my mind’s eye, and the visual makes me smile. “Close that app before it gets you in trouble,” he commands.
“So bossy.” On impulse, I pull up my maps app and type in the route from Calhoun University to Baymont, California. The app processes my request for a second, then the map pulls back to show an entire portion of a globe with a blue map indicating our projected route across the entire width of North America. I’m only teasing him at this point, but I screenshot that and send it, too. “You mean to tell me you wouldn’t travel 3,000 miles for that squishy little face?”
“Correct,” he texts back promptly.
“How dare you. What if I got kidnapped and hauled to the other side of the country? I guess you’d just say, ‘well, it was nice knowing her.’”
“You are not a random dog in a random animal shelter on the other side of the country. I’d make the trip for you.”
This is a ridiculous thing to make my heart flutter, but it does.
Smiling, I text back, “Aww, my hero.” But then I add, “In that case, Aiden just showed up. He’s kidnapping me, but he said to make your life easier, he’ll tell you where he’s taking me. It’s here,” I state, attaching a cropped screenshot of the shelter’s address in California.
“Nice try.”
“I’ll see you in two days!”
“It won’t take two days. If I’m going to California, I’m flying,” he assures me.
“Ok, but don’t forget to bring a cage. It’s totally not for a dog. Aiden is making me get in a cage right now, and I have a feeling my mind will splinter and I will adapt quickly to this new environment, so we’ll need it to transport me back.”
“If you keep texting me about that asshole, I’M gonna put you in a cage to make sure you never talk to him again.”