Chapter 7 Naomi
SEVEN
NAOMI
Missed Communications
“Go ahead and do your business, Bartholomew,” I informed the Australian Shepherd that had just spent a full minute sniffing a particular tree after the four other dogs with him had already completed what they needed to do. “I promise you, it’s the same tree you mark every Sunday I walk you.”
I swore he rolled his eyes at me, but eventually he crouched and got to work while I readied another doggy-bag.
Sundays were my slow days, as I’d built up enough of a client base to support myself with just weekly work, but I had a small handful of legacy clients who I adored and had to work the weekend shift once a month.
Well, I didn’t know if four counted as a handful, but whatever, I was happy to take their little ones out while they were stuck in the office.
Mostly little ones, of course, as the St. Bernard-Leonberger mix, appropriately named Baron, was nearly as tall as me, and taller if he stood on his hind legs.
Thankfully, he was about as gentle as a dog could be.
Sometimes, I had to stop him from being bullied by his brother, an opinionated Boston Terrier who went by Robo-robo and always seemed determined to be the alpha on our walks.
“That’s a good boy, Bartholomew!” I praised, as unfortunately, the Australian Shepherd would only respond to his full name.
Every.
Single.
Time.
But as much as I loved my once-a-month Sunday crew and all their quirks, my mind was very much elsewhere. In fact, it was the same place it had been ever since I’d ended up standing alone in the middle of a thunderstorm.
Why had I gone in for that kiss? I lamented inwardly as I cleaned up after the dog, then got our cadre moving again.
Ugh! I wanted to kick myself!
I knew better than to just kiss someone out of nowhere on a first date.
I had thought I had a read on the moment, but clearly I was far too swept up in things, because I shouldn’t have forgotten about Rowan’s consent.
Even if he was a dude, that didn’t mean he just wanted to be macked on by someone he just met.
I just... everything had been going so perfectly.
After disaster after disaster of dates, I’d been so starved for a positive reaction that I’d settled for scraps with Jason.
Just a couple of hours with the charming and devastatingly handsome Rowan had shown me what it should really be like and that there could be so much more than just the bare minimum.
The whole thing had thrown off my normalcy meter.
Unless it was a human thing?
It wasn’t like I was completely inept in their society. All but two of my clients were humans, and I had gone to summer camps with humans. Since I didn’t live with the pack, I shopped among them, traveled among them; it wasn’t like I was an alien in a foreign land.
Still, maybe it was all just a case of mixed signals and me not knowing enough to realize it. I had put my foot in it a few times during the date, but I really thought that I had covered myself appropriately to not be suspicious. Apparently, that was not the case.
“I’m literally chasing my tail around in circles here,” I groused to myself as we made our way to the corner. We had another ten minutes until we would get to the closest dog park, but everything seemed to be taking forever. “Just call him already!”
I pulled out my phone, telling myself I would text him an apology and fix everything with perfectly written prose, but as I opened our last text and stared at the cat gif, I locked up.
The same way I’d locked up ever since I’d arrived back home, soaked to the bone with flat hair, runny makeup, and squeaky boots.
Cane, the Jack Russell Terrier, let out a sharp, annoyed bark. I looked over to see that his brother, Jack, the Cane Corso, was stepping on his lead. Shoving my phone back into my pocket, I untangled the two and got going again.
“Let’s all just have a really fun time at the park, okay?” I said more to myself than to them. “Forget all our troubles?”
I didn’t know what kind of troubles my dogs had, considering their parents were well-off enough to pay for someone to walk them for more than an hour, but they all agreed with me in a chorus of adorable sounds.
Although I was certainly far from over the situation, I had to admit that my work brought me just the right amount of joy so I could forget about it for a little while.
Between throwing a ball, copious belly rubs, and keeping a keen eye on the body language of other dogs they interacted with at the park for any signs of danger, I was properly distracted from my situation.
And by my situation, I meant being so desperate on what was possibly the most perfect date I’d ever had, that I quite literally physically chased off a great man.
However, even with going a little overtime on the walk for free, eventually my crew needed to go to their various homes and wait for their families to return from work.
Which, naturally, meant that I needed to go home as well.
Did I procrastinate? Of course! I stopped and got myself an overly sweet coffee, a sub from one of my favorite places within walking distance of my home, and also made a special visit to the bodega cat on the corner.
While I wasn’t a cat person for the most part, I still liked them.
Some had such funny or dramatic personalities, and who didn’t like purring?
But in some ways, even without an inner wolf, I was a bit of a stereotype and dogs got my vibe.
Unfortunately, I could only dilly-dally for so long, and eventually, I ended up inside my apartment, half-empty drink and cold sub in hand with nothing to do.
Naturally, I beelined toward the computer, and sure enough, the name at the top of the online player list on our server was Tweety.
Hey! How was your walk? You were out a bit later than usual, was her message in chat before I could so much as open my inventory to remember what part of my block pallet I had been on.
Me: Yeah, the dogs had a little extra energy so I decided to spend a little extra time at the park on the house, then I stopped and treated myself on the way home.”
TweetyGurl96: Love the self-care. You wanna hop on call?
I was about to say sure when another user in the chat sent a message.
He didn’t chat often, but he’d been very helpful when I’d built a mechanically complex, difficult farm that involved a creature that could teleport.
His username was MaximusMapper, and he did have a habit of painstakingly mapping out the entire server every two months to mark the progress we made in our personal areas as well as the community ones.
MaximusMapper: Good to see you, Puppers! Haven’t been on the same time as you in a while.
Me: I know! I was pretty sure he was a human.
We were nowhere near as close as Tweety and me, but I still appreciated his presence and taking the time to talk to me.
Some people thought of the digital world and the connections made there as fake, but I felt closer to him than I did to pretty much anyone in my pack.
Do you wanna hop on call too?
While I wouldn’t really be able to dish to Tweety with him there, I could always wait. Considering how deeply I knew what it felt like to be excluded, I wasn’t exactly keen to do that to him.
MaximusMapper: Nah, I’ve got the gf on call rn actually. I might AFK soon, but I wanted to say hi.
Me: Understood and hi back! I’ll ttyl!
MaximusMapper: Yuppers, Puppers!
Despite how melancholy my mood had just been, I found myself smiling slightly as I opened my messenger window and called Tweety. Although I would love in-person friends in addition to my online ones, I was ever so grateful they existed.
“Girl, you haven’t said a peep about the date since you sent me that ‘home safe’ text. I figured you needed some time to process, but I have been dying over here. Please tell me that you haven’t been able to talk because you were swept up in some sort of torrid, whirlwind romance?”
I wanted to say yes. God, I really wanted to say yes.
Because when I thought of Rowan’s unusual eyes, or the sharp cut of his jaw, or the way he really saw me in a way I’d never felt seen before, I melted all over again.
I knew it was crazy to say that about someone I only spent a couple of hours with, but I’d never felt both attraction and connection with a man like that before.
It didn’t matter that he was human and I wasn’t. None of it did.
But I could never go too far down that line of thought because then the image of his soaked back retreating from me at top speed shattered the entire scene completely.
“Girl…” was all I could say with a sigh.
“Goddamn it!” Tweety exclaimed before breaking into a truly impressive streak of expletives.
Although she didn’t have wings, she very much did fit the harpy stereotype.
Sharp tongue and beak. “The texts you shared with me seemed so promising! What happened? Was he a real dick? A fuckboy? Weirdly into podcasts that no one with a sense of empathy would like?”
“No,” I said slowly, embarrassment truly starting to sink in as I prepared to confess my stupid mistake to my best friend.
“Then what? Are you okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Suddenly, Tweety’s tone was more serious than ever. “Naomi, he couldn’t hurt you, being a human and all, right?”
I was touched by her concern, truly touched, and that gave me the courage to tell her the truth.
“No, he didn’t hurt me. He was wonderful in every way. Honestly? I felt like I was in a fairy tale.”
There was a very pregnant pause on her end, and I didn’t blame her. I was sure that if I was in her shoes, I would be incredibly confused as well.
“I think I got lost somewhere.”