He leans back on the couch, arms behind his head, leaving a huge bubble of empty space in front of me. “Comes with the job,” he says. “Every good actor needs to notice how other people behave.”

Right. Remember, this is only a job for him. Also, I might need to take a cold shower.

I lift my butt from the coffee table and, pointing at the list in his hands, I say, “Just read it one more time before you go to bed. Blair will be here super early tomorrow morning.”

“Aye, aye, boss.”

“And stop calling me ‘boss.’” I scowl again and am rewarded with a devilish grin.

Definitely need that cold shower.

***

At eight sharp the next morning, Blair walks into the apartment, Chevron in tow. Diego and I are just finishing a quick breakfast of coffee, milk, and cookies, when I’m assaulted by sixty pounds of enthusiastic dog.

“Yeah, yeah.” I stroke Chevron behind the ears as she yaps away frantically, shaking her tail in a mad frenzy and trying to jump in my lap. “Good girl, I’ve missed you, too.”

Diego leans against the kitchen bar column and eyes Chevron skeptically. “Is this supposed to be the trained attack dog?” he asks Blair.

“Hey,” she says apologetically. “You were a perfect stranger living with my best friend. I had to use every possible form of intimidation.”

Diego lets out two low whistles in sequence to attract Chevron’s attention and crouches down.

Blair’s dog, never one to shy away from cuddles or to be wary of strangers, responds to the call right away. She yaps happily and barrels into Diego with renewed enthusiasm, almost knocking him on his butt. Chevron keeps yapping for a while and then rolls on her back, paws in the air, offering her belly for Diego to pat.

“Well.” Diego laughs. “If her strategy is to kill strangers with cuddles, she might succeed.”

Twenty minutes later, we’re in the car, me driving, Diego sitting shotgun, and Blair and Chevron in the backseat. We’re heading north on FDR Drive toward Old Saybrook, and the traffic doesn’t seem bad. We should get there in good time.

“So, Blair,” Diego says, after a stretch of road spent in silence. “Are you, at least, happy to go home for the holidays?”

“Fifty percent,” Blair replies.

Diego throws her a questioning look from the rearview mirror.

“I’m happy to see my dad,” Blair explains, “but dreading seeing my mother.”

“She a tough cookie?”

“More an insufferable snob, and she’s not very happy with my latest life choices.”

“Like?”

“Like quitting a career at a glossy magazine to work at a startup. And she’s still trying to convince me that my cheating Manhattan lawyer ex was better than my perfect Brooklyn startup-owner boyfriend.”

“Really? Why?” I insert myself into the conversation. “How can she?”

“Oh, you know Mrs. Walker, queen of suburbs living. Gerard is New York WASP old money elite, my mother’s son-in-law wet dream.”

“You should tell her Richard is royalty,” I say. “That should shut her up.”