The delivery driver looked like he was going to pass out.
“Vanessa. The shirt.”
She rolled her eyes, sauntering off to my car like she didn’t have a care in the world. Why would she? It wasn’t her nips showing to the entire world.
I scrawled my signature on the paper and crossed my arms over my chest. Disappointment flashed in his eyes.
He’d already turned to go back to the truck when Ness returned with my shirt. I slipped my arms in and hastily buttoned the middle button, just enough that I didn’t feel like I was flashing everyone around me.
“May I?” Ness asked.
The driver waved. “Go ahead.”
She hopped up onto the back bumper of the truck, gave me an anticipatory grin, and yanked on the handle holding the door of the truck shut. It rolled open with a groan of metal on metal, but when the contents came into view, my jaw dropped.
“What the hell?” I breathed.
Boxes upon boxes of dog food—the good kind too. Some for puppies, but mostly for adults. I took Ness’s outstretched hand and hopped up into the back of the truck with her, exhaling an incredulous laugh as I cataloged the contents, my hand skimming along the top of each stack. Puppy pads. Blankets, new dog beds. Dog shampoo, leashes, and toys.
My eyesight went blurry when I did the mental math on just the dog food alone.
“Ness, this is enough dog food for the next ... eight months? Maybe more.”
“I know.” She tore open the top of one of the boxes. The first thing she fished out was a sleeve of extra-strength tennis balls. “Oh man, Scout is gonna love these, isn’t he?”
I smiled. “Who did this?”
She shrugged. “I was hoping you’d know.”
The driver came around the side of the truck and peered up at us. “Where do you want me to unload it?”
Ness and I shared a look. “The big conference room for now?” I suggested. “We’ll have to disperse this to some of the foster homes,but we may need to take over one of the smaller rooms that doesn’t get used as much.”
She nodded. “I’ll go push those tables off to the side of the room. Should I email all the fosters and tell them to come in today to load up?”
I shook my head. “Let’s wait until we get an inventory of what we have.”
“Oh,” the delivery driver interjected, “I’ve got that right here.”
He ripped a piece of paper off the stack wedged underneath the clip of the clipboard and handed it to me. I scanned the list, mentally tallying how we’d need to divvy up this food.
Ness hopped out of the truck first and went to unlock the side door while he lowered a metal ramp off the back. As I was not in the mood to break an ankle by hopping out of anything, I waited until the ramp was connected and walked down that way. The sun was warm on my back, and I plucked at the denim shirt, wishing I could ditch it.
Based on the occasional looks the driver gave my chest as he descended the ramp, I decided that sweating was the preferable course of action.
It was odd to just stand and watch him load up his dolly, bringing stack after stack of boxes around to the side of the building. Normally, I was the one doing the heavy lifting—literally and metaphorically—but as I watched someone else do it, I felt the strangest sensation take root in my chest.
Relief.
I could breathe, just a little bit easier than I’d been able to breathe that morning. It was an embarrassment of riches, and I wasn’t even sure who to thank.
Ness sidled up next to me, fixing the pink ponytail on the top of her head while we watched the room slowly fill with much-needed supplies. “I sent Christian a text asking if it was him.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Seriously?”
She shrugged. “We had great phone sex yesterday. It’s one hell of a way to show his gratitude.”
I snorted. “Indeed. And was it him?”