Page 51 of Sleeping with the Frenemy

Leo watched the bubble with the three dots show up and disappear a few times. HA. He’d gotten her.

She had no idea what to respond to that and he loved it. There was nothing he loved more than keeping Miss Control Freak Sofi on her toes.

“Which girl are you texting that has you smiling like that?” a voice asked, making Leo jump and look up.

His buddy Ahmad Singh stood in front of him with a slick smile on his face.

Leo stood and put his phone in his pocket. “Your mother, obviously,” he told Ahmad. “She was just thanking me for last night.” He grabbed Tostón’s leash.

“I’m glad you showed her a good time. Now I know to step my game up for my date with your mom tonight.”

It was a long-standing joke between them ever since they’d watched the Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake “Motherlover” skit fromSaturday Night Livein the middle of the night during a shift years ago.

They made their way out of the dog park. Leo would’ve apologized to his dog, but Tostón was more than happy to leave. He practically dragged Leo out the gate. “Please, as if my mom could ever overlook that ugly mug of yours,” Leo teased Ahmad.

The truth was that Ahmad’s father had been a model for many years and Ahmad looked just like him. He was a good-looking guy and he knew it, just like Leo knew that his own looks were nothing to scoff at. The other guys at their station referred to them as “the calendar boys,” claiming they looked more like they were from a sexy firefighter calendar than from the academy. At first it had bothered the two of them and they’d bonded over their dislike of being seen as pretty boys. But they had both proved themselves many times over since then. Everyone they worked with knew they were legit.

“Just for that I’m going to work you until you cry like a baby,” Ahmad told him. He’d been putting Leo through the wringer for at least an hour three times a week. They worked out at their old coworker’s gym that was a few blocks from the dog park. Their buddy Derek had his own dog he brought to work with him every day, so he had no issue letting Leo put Tostón in his office while they worked out. Leo had hoped that Derek’s eleven-year-old boxer, Blue, would help bring Tostón out of his shell, but as far as Leo could tell, the two dogs basically ignored each other and napped in separate corners.

“Vega! Drop those hands or I’m going to give you weights to hold,” Ahmad yelled at him.

Leo immediately dropped his hands to his sides. He already had on a sixty-pound vest. He did not want dumbbells on top of that. Not when he still had so much more left to do. He stepped off the tall wooden box only to step right back up. Box climbs were one of the easier parts of the workout because Leo had always had good stamina and endurance, but with the heavy vest tugging on his shoulders it was hard for Leo to ignore the way his arm tingled.

Ahmad and Derek had come up with a workout that was designed to mimic the movements Leo would be doing during the test. They also claimed to have made it harder than it needed to be because “then the test will feel like a breeze.” Leo wasn’t sure about that seeing as he had yet to make it through the entire workout without his shoulder/arm causing him to mess something up.

“Stop trying to run through the whole test in your mind,” Ahmad barked. He and Derek were off to the side sitting in some janky-ass lawn chairs while drinking beers like they were at a lakefront barbecue. Bastards. “Focus only on the movement you’re doing. You keep psyching yourself out by thinking too hard.”

As he stepped off the box for the final time and took a few seconds to catch his breath, Leo snorted. “I think that may be the first time in my life that anyone has ever accused me of thinking too hard. Usually they beg me to think at all.”

Ahmad threw his empty beer can at Leo, almost hitting him in the chest. Luckily Leo ducked. “What the fuck,” Leo yelled. “You could’ve hit me in the face with that!”

Ahmad ignored his chiding in favor of continuing his own. “Stop doing that. You always act like you’re nothing but a meathead who can carry a tune. You’re one of the smartest people I know.”

“That doesn’t say much for the people you hang around,” Leo tried to joke, but Ahmad wasn’t having any of that.

He stood up and got in Leo’s face. “Dude, do you know how many members of my family are doctors, lawyers, engineers, or just overall highly educated? I hang around some very smart people, but none of them can problem solve on the fly like you can. They’re all super regimented and stifling to everyone including themselves.” He grabbed the straps of Leo’s weighted vest to give him a shake. “You see the world and people in a different way, and it allows you to get to the root of the problem. Sure, you daydream more than the average person, but it makes it easier for you to shuffle through a bunch of options quickly to find the best idea.”

Leo didn’t know what to say to that. He’d always viewed his tendencies to jump right in as a sign of his impulsivity. He didn’t brainstorm before he acted, he just acted. Most of the time it worked in his favor and sometimes it didn’t. “I appreciate that, but I think I’m just lucky.”

Ahmad picked up the discarded can. “You’re wrong, but I’m not going to argue with you about it. I’m not your damn therapist on top of being your free personal trainer. Now get a fucking move on instead of wasting all of our time. I know you’re trying to stall.”

He was right. Leo was trying to stall. He dreaded the next part of his workout—carrying two forty-pound buckets a hundred and fifty feet then back without stopping. Normally that would be nothing to him, but his grip wasn’t as strong as it used to be and he struggled to maintain hold of the bucket for the entire time. Usually by the time he was done, his hand and arm had checked out at least for a few minutes. But Leo didn’t have a few minutes to recover during the test. He had to make it through all of the tasks without stopping or messing up if he wanted to pass. Not for the first time, Leo wondered if he would ever be able to actually do it. Every time the workout seemed to get harder instead of easier. He knew that wasn’t good. But he’d promised himself that he’d get back on platoon duty and while he had the tendency to disappoint everyone else in his life, he would never disappoint himself. So he sucked in a few more breaths, told himself to fucking man up, and ignored the pain while he continued his workout. Just like he always did.

A bit later, Leo and Tostón bypassed the front doors to Casa del Sol and instead went around to the back where the building shared a large courtyard with the clinic and the main building. There he found Abuelo Papo and Doña Fina sitting at a patio table with what looked like glasses of lemonade.

“Look who it is,” Abuelo said in Spanish. “My favorite grandson.”

“You told me to come over,” Leo pointed out. “And just to be clear, I’m telling everyone you said that.”

“I was talking about the dog,” Abuelo said.

“Rude,” Leo responded.

Abuelo ignored Leo and held out his hands. “Come here, Tostón. Come to your abuelo.”

Tostón started wiggling in excitement, so Leo dropped the leash. Let him maul Abuelo with overexcited puppy affection. That would show him.

Except Tostón didn’t go to Abuelo. He went right to Doña Fina and tried to jump in her lap. “Ay!” she yelled. “No, Tostón! Bajate!”

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