Page 108 of Shameless

I pass Napoleon to Crew and close the distance between me and Jules, stopping just short of touching him. “Hey,” I murmur. “Are you ok?”

He lowers his head to place a soft, shallow kiss on my lips. “I am now. Morning beautiful.”

His arms close around me and I inhale his clean, slightly spicy scent.

I sigh when Jules relays the conversation he’s just had with his lawyer. “I hope the judge will consider the evidence that Jasmine isn’t a good mom and that they’ll see that you’re the only choice for a guardian. Why place Jenna with strangers when she has a father who loves her and wants her?”

Jules squeezes me tightly before releasing me. “It’s what I said to Gordon. But apparently things aren’t as straightforward as we think. Anyway, what are you guys doing here? I thought we were going to have a BBQ at home? Tom bought shrimps, burgers and dogs, and some tomahawk steaks.”

I explain that I realized I didn’t have my phone this morning. “This is the last place I saw it.”

“Hmm,” Jules muses. “I haven’t seen it. But Tory and a few of her engineers were here this morning to test the electric system on the new boat and they might have cleaned up. Let’s see, if they found it, there aren’t many places they could have put it.”

Jules walks toward the same cubby where he looked for a towel yesterday afternoon.

That was less than twenty-four hours ago and yet so much has happened, that it feels like a lifetime.

“Bingo,” Jules says, the second he looks inside the cubby. “They must have found it and put it in here. I’m sorry though, it isn’t in great shape.”

I look into the cubby and sure enough, my phone is sitting on top of that old, ratty gym bag that was in here yesterday and a spiderweb of cracks on the black screen tells me I might need to shop for a new one. “That asshole owes me a new phone too,” I seethe. “I hope his balls are still sore after Naps bit him and I kicked him.”

Woof.

Napoleon perks up when he hears his name, scurrying out of Crew’s arms and into mine. “Look at what that bad guy did, Naps.” I tell the pooch, picking up my damaged phone to examine it better.

Napoleon sniffs at it, his tiny brown nose twitching with diffidence.

Woof, woof, woof.

He starts barking furiously at it, squirming to get out of my arms.

“What’s gotten into you?” I squeal as the chihuahua leaps out of my arms, landing on top of the gym bag.

Grrr.

Napoleon’s deep growl is downright threatening as he bites the bottom of one of the bag’s handles. He shakes the black material, growling at it as if it was some kind of prey.

“What?” Crew chuckles. “Are you trying to tell me that we need to work out more?”

Woof.

“I think he wants the bag,” Stefan observes, amused by the way Napoleon is pulling furiously at the bag handle.

“Yuck. What could you ever want in there?” I laugh. “I can’t imagine finding anything other than some dirty socks or sweaty underwear in there.”

“Maybe there’s a protein bar inside,” Crew says. “Naps has the sense of smell of a shark. He’d find the smallest speck of food in an ocean, or even an empty protein bar wrapper tucked in the pocket of a gym bag.”

Jules shakes his head. “You act as if you’d never been fed in your entire life, Naps. Forget about that old, smelly bag. Remember last night I promised you filet mignon after you found Jenna? Tom picked you up some and he’s going to grill it for you.”

Grrr.

“Nope,” I laugh. “He really wants whatever’s in that bag. At this point, I’m quite curious to see if it’s a protein bar or if Napoleon has some kind of socks or underwear fetish.”

I pull the bag out of the cubby. “Jules, can you close the lid? I’ll put the bag on top so we can all take a look.”

The two handles of the bag are still tied together by Velcro. When I separate them and start opening the zipper, Napoleon starts barking furiously at the bag.

“Dude, chill.” Crew tries to soothe him. “I promise that if there’s a protein bar and it isn’t too old, I’ll give you some.”

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