Lingus (19 page)

"She's still a bitch," Nikki and I said at the same time.

Zoey just rolled her eyes and laughed. "You two kiss your daddies with those mouths?"

"I do more than kiss your daddy with this mouth," Nicole added with a snort before we all laughed.

Chapter 26

I had barely closed the apartment door before I was whipping out my phone to call Tristan.

"Hey," he answered, two rings later.

"Hey! Are you busy?" I asked, knowing he was probably at home doing a big, whopping nothing.

The goofy man snorted. "Not at all. I'm watching a movie and trying to read. How was the show?"

"Good! It was fun, and Zoey dropped me off with all of my limbs intact," I told him. He'd already been warned about Zoey's god awful driving skills and the fear she put into my heart each time she was behind the wheel. Then again, I guess I could've offered to drive instead but I didn't.

"Nice."

I hesitated for a single moment, trying to decide whether I really wanted to tell him about Ashley or not. I mean, what if he decided he wanted to go see her since she was in town? That thought alone made me want to projectile vomit.
Friends
. You're friends, I reminded myself. If he saw my ex, I'd want him to tell me. I'd be curious to know whether the guy had gained weight.
Ha
.

"So, we were at the venue and this girl screamed at Zoey. Her name was Ashley," I started to say. His response was a low grunting noise, signaling me to continue. "I think it might have been your ex-girlfriend. She was really pretty with huge boobs? Reddish-brown hair and blue eyes?"

Tristan stayed quiet for a moment. "Did she have an annoying voice?"

"Is that a trick question?" I asked.

He chuckled. "Why would it be a trick question?"

I made a low noise in my throat that sounded amused. "Because she's your ex? Maybe you guys are still friends, I don't know. I don't want to talk shit about someone you're still fond of!" I laughed.

"Kaaaaat," he grumbled, but I could hear amusement in his tone. "We weren't friends. Ever."

I know he didn't mean for his statement to be a verbal punch to my ovaries but it was. They'd never been friends. Ugh.

Chapter 27

"Have you ever had a dog before?" I asked the man also known as Robby Lingus.

We were sitting in his Audi, heading to the shelter closest to my apartment. Since Saturday night, every other text message he'd sent me had been regarding our trip to look for a dog. Not once did he ever bring up Ashley again but the damage had been done. My stomach hurt for hours after we'd hung up, and I decided right then that I wasn't going to let it bother me any longer.

So, when the dog related text messages kept coming, I went with it. He admitted to me the day before that he thought of getting one because he was tired of being lonely at his house. I was excited for him. I loved dogs even though I could never admit that to Matlock. The only reason why I didn't have one was because the deposit for a dog at my apartment complex was way too expensive. I managed to get some writing done and was waiting for him on the steps to my building when he pulled up after work.

"Yeah, I had a dog growing up. Old Gozer was my best friend," he said wistfully.

I raised my eyebrow at him, recognizing the name. "Please tell me you named him Gozer after the
Ghostbusters
character." Gozer was the demon-woman at the end of the movie; my dad and I were obsessed with Ghostbusters when I was little. I think he secretly had a man-crush on Dan Akroyd but he'd never officially fess up to it.

His face flamed pink as he gave me a sheepish smile, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. "I did," he snorted, embarrassed. "I had a crazy crush on her until I found out about Spanish-language soap operas."

Immediately, I imagined a teenage Tristan masturbating to stunning Hispanic women on the Spanish channels and it made me laugh. "Your soap operas were my Men's Health magazine!"

"What's with you and older men?" he teased, throwing an empty water bottle from his console at me.

"They're just like fine wine!" I laughed, hitting his forearm with the bottom of the plastic bottle. I couldn't help but take note of the fact that his nice, blue dress shirt was rolled up at the sleeves and unbuttoned at the top. God, so he was so handsome it was unreal.

"There are men in there old enough to be your dad!" he said, turning to face me when we stopped at a red light. His eyes narrowed in my direction. "Please tell me you haven't dated an older man before."

"Well..." I trailed off, trying to keep the expression on my face straight but I couldn't. I had a horrible poker face, and then a snort blew out of my nose when he gave me a horrified expression. "I haven't, I promise. The oldest guy I've dated was six years older than me."

"How old
are
you, goldie?"

I was not ashamed of my age at all, and I didn't think I ever would be. My mom still looked like a teenager right before she died, and one of my student's dad's thought I was joking when I told him I was the teacher.
Heh
. "I'm twenty-five, Mag. How old are you?"

His eyes widened at my admission. "You are not twenty-five."

"Yes, I am." I told him, perking up expectantly. He was going to tell me I didn't look a day older than sixteen, I could feel it.

"No way. You've got to be at least thirty," he laughed.

"Fuck you," I laughed in response, whacking him with the plastic bottle again.

He winked at me before turning his attention forward. "I'm kidding! You look like you're eighteen max. I just turned twenty-nine."

I did the math in my head; if he was twenty-nine and almost done with law school, what did he do after finishing his undergrad? He’d never mentioned taking time off between schools. Before I could think anymore about it, he'd parked the car in front of a drab looking little building. "Mag, what did you do between your bachelor's and law school?"

The sigh he let out was long and drawn out while we walked up the building. He held the door open for me, ushering me in. "Remember I told you it took me some time to figure out that I wanted to go into law? I was pre-med in college and went to medical school for two years. Then, I figured out that the last thing I wanted to do was medicine, so I dropped out."

There was a sweet looking lady with hair that resembled white cotton candy sitting on the other side of a table, who cleared her throat to gain our attention. "Hello darlings. Can you sign in for me, please?" she asked in a sweet voice.

We made our way over to the table, where Tristan started signing in for the both of us. The lady was looking at me with a smile. "You two are precious together," she mused. "Come to find a new addition to your beautiful family?"

I saw Tristan's head shoot up not missing a beat, and he nodded at the old lady. "We sure are, we want to get a dog."

Her cute little face pruned up in a smile. "I am sure you two will find a perfect companion back there. You can go through those doors. All the animals are in separate rooms," she said, indicating toward the heavy metal door behind her with the sweep of a hand. "Have fun, sweethearts."

Tristan's arm slung over my shoulder a moment later, his side pressing into mine as he led me in the direction of the door. He opened it up for me, and then threw his heavy arm over my shoulder again. "Well precious, let's find us a dog."

We made a plan to start on one end of the building and make our way over.

"So, you went through two years of medical school, and then quit?" I asked, thinking of the amount of money that four years of pre-med and two years of medical school must have cost, only to get flushed down the drain at the end of the day.
Shit
. I still owed a good chunk of money for my graduate school and couldn't imagine how much more he could've possibly owed before starting law school.

"Yeah," he mumbled as we walked down the aisles still pressed together. There were so many dogs of all colors and sizes that it made my heart hurt looking at them. "I had to go back and take more classes before I applied to law school," he explained.

Each cage had a dog in it, and I pulled away from Tristan to crouch by the gates separating me from the friendlier dogs. Some of the dogs barked when we walked by, others growled, but a good portion of them were all too excited to have visitors. We made our way out of the first room and into the next one, where I saw about ten dogs that I wanted to adopt for myself.

"I want to take all of them home," I whispered to a particularly sweet pitbull that was licking my palm through the holes in the fencing.

"Choose one," Tristan said, squatting down next to me before pressing his hand against the gate to also get a lick.

When we started to get up, the honey colored pitbull whimpered, and I had to bite my lip not to cry. She was so sweet it broke my heart, but I just didn't feel like she was the right dog for Tristan. My dad and I had two dogs after mom died, and he let me choose each one of them. I just had this feeling when I found each of them, it was a type of connection telling me that the dog was destined to be mine. Even though I wanted to feel it, the cute pitbull baby didn't feel that way to me. Tristan sensed my emotional turmoil because I felt his hand on my shoulder as we went through to another room. It was getting harder and harder for me to go from room to room, looking at the countless dogs that deserved to be adopted.

"Hey," he whispered right next to my ear. His hand trailed down from my shoulder, over my arm until it slipped right against my own before interlocking his fingers with mine. "Don't be sad, just find one you like and we'll take him or her." He squeezed my hand.

There were so many sad faces looking at us while we walked by that tears pooled in my eyes. I wanted them all‚ even the mean ones, but I hadn't found the right one yet. His hand was warm and reassuring in mine, long fingers wrapping my shorter ones in a meeting of long and slim. We were getting close to the end of the row of dogs when I heard something that sounded like a whisper coming from up ahead. There was another whisper again a minute later. I pulled Tristan toward the cage where the whispering came from, only for me to let out some sort of squeak.

He was there. A massive looking puppy with four huge paws that floated in the air, he had a massive, square head with oversized, floppy ears resting against the floor. Best of all— his legs spread wide and his massive balls were pressed against the fence. The puppy had a dark fawn coat. He was all puppy fat and rolls, and as soon as I dropped to my knees I heard another whisper... and it was coming out of his ass. The smell was so awful I had to pull my shirt up over my nose as Tristan started gagging.

"What the hell is that smell?"

I pointed at the puppy's crotch. "He farted!"

Tristan made a face and started reading the information listed on the outside of his crate. "He's eight months, a mastiff-great dane mix, and it says he weighs... holy shit, he weighs a hundred and forty pounds, Kat."

The oversized puppy rolled over onto his tummy with one ear cocked back and the other flopped over his face. He was looking at me with big brown eyes and a slowly wagging tail. "This one," I said softly to Tristan but kept my eyes on the big boy sitting up across from me.

"This one? You're sure? I was thinking more about a small one. You know, maybe like a terrier or a yorkie."

I had to snort at the idiot behind me. "You want me to buy you a carrying bag for your yorkie, Miss?"

The dog started licking the fence when I put my hand against it. "Whatever," Tristan laughed before dropping to balance on the balls of his feet next to me. The giant puppy looked at him and wagged his tail even more. "Fine, get him if you want, but if my mom doesn't want to watch him for me then you're stuck on babysitting duty."

Nicole's words from a few days before reminded me that he was leaving without telling me. "Oh yeah... Nikki told me you're leaving next weekend for work?"

"Just a weekend," he replied in a low voice. He was up on his feet again, holding a hand out to help me up. "Let's go start the paperwork to take him home," he said, effectively cutting off any talk about him leaving to do his porn stuff. The puppy started crying when we walked away so I pushed Tristan, taking a split second to enjoy the press of my fingers against his back like a deprived hussy, to hustle him out of the room faster.

Over an hour and one hundred and twenty-five dollars later, I was getting dragged through the parking lot while holding Tristan's son's leash. He was big and cl, but Tristan was walking fast and the puppy was trailing right behind him. You could tell he was enamored with his new owner, like he realized and appreciated the gift Tristan had given him. When we got to the car he muttered an "Oh fuck," when he looked at the leather covering his backseat and shrugged. "Oh well."

"I think you should try to let him pee before we take him anywhere," I warned him.

"We're just going down the street," he protested, waving the unnamed puppy in. While we waited for the adoption paperwork, I helped him make a list of the things he'd need to go buy his son before going home.

The giant baby just stood there looking at Tristan like he was an idiot for a good five minutes. After five more minutes of careful weight distribution, Tristan finally hauled him into his arms and shoved him into the backseat as gently as possible. As soon as we were both inside, the dog's large, square head popped into the space between the two seats with his long, pink tongue dangling.