“Thinking back on it, probably not. We took the litter to the vets the next day to get them checked out, and he probably pointed out the size difference between them all.”
Alex started laughing again. “You’ve held tight to the fact they believed you because they didn’t question it, haven’t you?”
“Maybe.”
Tipping his head back, he laughed harder. “I’ve got a fucking stitch in my side from laughing so hard.”
Good for him, but now I kind of wanted to call my parents to ask discreetly about the kittens.
“Shit,” I sighed. “They totally knew I was lying.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I stole a dog once. I used to see it tied up in the front yard of a well-known asshole in our neighborhood, and it never had food or water.
“One day, it could hardly get up it was that starved, so I took it home with me. I knew the owner would kick up shit about it because he did it about everything, so I got a marker and colored in the dog’s tail and front paws with it so he didn’t figure it out. He’d stuck missing posters up everywhere, but the photo in it didn’t have a black tail and two black paws, so no one figured it out.”
That was… that was really cute.
“Didn’t your parents figure it out?”
“Absolutely. Two weeks later, the dog came in from the backyard one night, and it’d been raining hard. I tried to play off the black paw prints on the white tiles we had on the floor in the kitchen as mud, but anyone could tell it was marker.”
He ran his fingers through the long hair at the back of my head, almost absentmindedly. “I told them the truth after an hour of insisting, and in the end, Mom and Dad agreed to go along with it for the dog’s wellbeing.”
“How long did you have to keep coloring the tail and paws in for?”
He snorted. “Three months. The guy got arrested for beating up his wife and was sent to prison. Pringle died in his sleep when DB was three, but he used to lie next to Lisa’s stomach when she was pregnant and wag his tail, and he was DB’s shadow after he came into the world.”
The story took on a whole new depth for me.
“My story was embarrassing, and yours was adorable. I love that he had even more family to love him before he died.”
“He definitely did,” Alex sighed wistfully. “Lisa insisted on him having a proper casket and funeral, and just before she died, she demanded that we exhume it and bury him in the same grave as hers when she eventually died, so that he had someone to hold onto him with love for eternity. We just had no idea she would die three months later from a brain aneurysm.”
Again with the fucking tears. I wasn’t an overly emotional person, but recently, I just seemed to have more than usual, and this story was my kryptonite.
“That’s beautiful,” I rasped, wiping under my eye. “Did the church allow it?”
“Her dad was the pastor, and he eventually agreed to let her have what she’d wanted so badly. It didn’t take a lot of persuasion, though. Only a handful of words to make it happen.”
My body bucked with a sob, making his arms tighten around me. “Sorry, I just find it so beautiful that they both got that.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, not sounding sad but sounding relieved.
After I got a hold of my woman balls and stopped crying, I decided to try and lighten the mood. “I kind of hope Neil gets buried with snakes when his time comes—which, FYI, I do not wish to happen anytime soon. I just hope when the day comes eventually, they find a hundred snakes and bury him with them.”
Alex lowered his chin to look down at where I was peaking up at him, wondering if he’d think I was a crazy, psycho ex-wife now. Instead, he was grinning widely at me.
“Why snakes?”
“Because he hates them,” I snickered. “Plus, he’s a total snake. Why not get buried with something that suits him so well.”
His laughter this time was silent but no less powerful than previously when it’d been barking out of him.
“You don’t think that makes me a bitter, psycho ex?” I checked.
Really, if he did, after what I’d said, was there even a way to prove I wasn’t? Surely that declaration wasn’t one an ‘I don’t give a flying fuck about my ex’ woman would give?
I knew I wasn’t like that, in all honesty, though. I just didn’t like him very much because of how he’d treated his child before, during, and after the split. Do what you want to me, but do it to my kid? Then I’ll bury you with a hundred snakes, easy as that.