Page 25 of You've Got Hate Mail

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I didn’t know calico cats came that big.

“March, Fluffy,” Lavender says. “You need your exercise.”

The cat’s having none of it.

She’s splayed out in the grass with her back legs behind her, similar to the way my parents’ and sisters’ French bulldogs lie.

One more way I’m the oddball in my family.

I don’t have French bulldogs.

“Meow?” she says to the cat.

Nothing.

“Meow purr?”

Still nothing.

“Roar!”

I introduced her to my imaginary pet dragon when I started getting the impression Ginny was at the end of her rope with Lavender’s meowing this afternoon, and she’s added roars to her repertoire.

Which I won’t be mentioning to her father.

That definitely wasn’t my fault. Nope, nope, nope.

“Daddy, she needs a treat to walk,” Lavender says.

“Too many treats is why she has to exercise,” Heath replies.

“Exercise is stupid.”

“Exercise can make you feel good if you find the right kind that you like.”

“Nuh-uh.”

The good news? They’re mostly angled away from me, so I should be able to sneak past them undetected, especially if I skirt this side of the garden and go into the back door.

The bad news?

I need to stay neutral in this debate, but in my head, I’m Team Lavender.

Exercise is stupid.

At least the kind that requires the fancy gym memberships that my family gets me for my birthday every year or the weightlifting that my last stupid ex insisted I needed to do with him that made me strain my ass muscles because he refused to listen when I told him I couldn’t squat that much.

That kind of exercise is stupid to me.

So is that kind of ex.

I’d just started getting back to exercising my way—and dating my way—when?—

Well.

Whenthe incidenthappened.

Heath shifts his stance, and I realize he’s holding what looks like a kid’s fishing rod. “Let’s try the catnip again,” he says.

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