“I’m not sure that’s the purpose of either of those things, sweetheart,” I told her honestly, watching as she spun back around to glare at me.
“I know that, but it’s the world we live in, Raoul. People do their thing,” she mimicked typing on a keyboard, “and they say mean shit. And why are we even analyzing this? Go on any site, and you’ll see it for yourself. It’s not right, but it’s what they do.”
“Sweetie, I think the point he’s making is that none of this is right,” Rissa said, walking in to join us. “But the main issue is that you’re safe and that you stay safe. You’ve got to work with the measures he’s putting in place to do that, ok?”
Surprising me, Rose walked slowly over to where I was sitting and lowered herself into my lap. “I know. It just sucks that people do this shit.”
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” I murmured into her hair, tucking her head under my chin.
Winking at me over her daughter’s head, Rissa turned around and went back to the kitchen leaving us alone again. Stroking her finger over the tattoo on my wrist, she asked, “Will you go and get a tattoo with me?”
There were a lot of things I’d do for this female, a lot of things I wouldn’t ever have done for any other one, but that? “Fuck no.”
Before she could argue back and try to convince me to do it, her mom yelled, “Come and say goodbye to us, Rose. Your dad has a doctor’s appointment in just over an hour.”
And that turned my morning on its head, because it meant that we could be as loud as we wanted to tonight, and that gave me a lot of ideas about things that I wanted to do to her to make her scream. It also meant I could plant the prank I’d had sitting in my car for the last three days while she was at work, and this one would get both her and my brother.
RoseTen hours later…
“Your job sucks balls,” Garrett growled, letting us in through my front door with Ranger at our feet. He’d been silent the whole way home and then through us retrieving the dog, and I’d played it smart and given him that time to think about whatever it was that was playing on his mind. Not once had I expected it to be about my job, though. “And what is up with that blonde chick? She grabbed my balls when I was coming out of the bathroom, Rose. That’s a whole new level of fucked up.”
“Be grateful she didn’t drop to her knees,” I muttered, kicking my shoes off and groaning. Today had been a busy day at work, and the injuries we’d treated were downright weird. The world went through phases like that, and more often than not it was thanks to a full moon. We hadn’t had one last night, though, so it was hard to excuse the shit I’d seen. I even had a patient who had a screwdriver stuck up his ass, apparently thanks to him slipping while he was fixing something with it.
Walking past, he made his way toward the kitchen with me on his heels and Ranger bringing up the rear. We’d been discussing the cookies his mom made earlier in the day, so it was like an unspoken cookie feast. I was trying to decide whether I wanted milk or a glass of wine with them as we passed a small table that had belonged to my grandmother, when I heard a fsssst and turned to frown down at the dog who was backing away from me.
“Seriously? You just went potty and you couldn’t do that out there while you did it?”
Walking back to see what was going on, Garrett reached us just as another fsssst sounded, and he took a step away from me. “Look, I know we’re close and all, but that’s crossing a line.”
“It wasn’t me, you moron,” I hissed, hearing another fsssst and glaring over at our canine companion. “It was the dog.”
And that’s when I got the first whiff of something. It wasn’t chemical, it wasn’t floral, it wasn’t gas… at least not the utility type of gas. It smelled like a skunk or like Ellis used to smell after eating tamales.
Garrett’s eyes widened when it reached him and he grabbed for the neck of his t-shirt, pulling it up over his nose and mouth. “Yo, seriously.”
Fsssst!
Hearing it again and knowing now what followed it, I copied what he’d done, and held the t-shirt I had on under my scrub top over my nose. “Open the door and let him out.”
Before he could say anything or tell me to do it myself, someone started knocking on the door. Eyeing the door, Garrett muttered, “That’ll be my family. They said they that they’d come over when they got back from that all you can eat Mexican place.”