“Okay, so I had fries. I’m ashamed of myself. I have absolutely no will power whatsoever.”

Scratch my back for the next three hours, and I may forgive you.

I spent the rest of the night watching TV in bed, Prozac draped over my tummy as I scratched her back. Finally, I called it a day and turned out the light. But sleep didn’t come easy. My mind kept drifting back to Colin, wondering what a guy who didn’t cook was doing with a peanut cookbook.

Planning a recipe for murder, perhaps?

Chapter 15

Prozac continued to amaze me. The next morning she polished off her plate of Fit ’N Trim Tuna Tidbits with nary a whimper. Any day now, I expected to wake up and find her doing aerobics.

“I’m so proud of you, pumpkin face,” I said, kneeling down and scratching her behind her ears.

Please. Don’t call me “pumpkin face.” “Prozac” is bad enough.

She shot me a blast of tuna breath, then scooted off to her perch on the living room sofa.

I went to the refrigerator to see what I could rustle up for my breakfast, hoping against hope to find something edible. But all I saw was the same moldy Swiss cheese and martini olives that were there the last time I looked. I’d have to run out and get something.

I was just heading to the bedroom to get dressed when there was a knock on my front door.

It was Lance.

“I come bearing breakfast,” he said, holding up a care package from Junior’s deli. “Coffee and corn muffins. Slathered with butter.”

Prozac, who’d been snoozing on the sofa, sat up with interest. Food has that effect on her.

She jumped down off the sofa and came trotting over, her nose twitching inquisitively.

Do I smell bacon?

“It’s only corn muffins,” I said. “You don’t like corn muffins.”

She didn’t look convinced.

Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t.

“Say, Lance, would you mind if we ate our breakfast in the bathroom?”

“Huh?”

“I know it sounds silly, but now that Prozac’s on her diet, I feel guilty eating anything more than five calories in front of her. She has this way of staring at me like those big-eyed kids in the Save the Children commercials.”

“You’re crazy. You know that, don’t you?”

“Just humor me, okay?”

With an exasperated sigh, he followed me into the bathroom, where we ate our muffins perched on the edge of my tub.

“See?” I said. “Eating here’s not so bad.”

“Yeah, it’s real handy if you need to floss.”

“Aren’t you proud of me?” I smeared my corn muffin with a glob of strawberry jam. “Prozac’s actually been eating her diet food. And you didn’t think I could tough it out.”

“If you’re so tough, why are we eating on a bathtub?”