Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Ezra
Poplar Park was one of the only parks in Wildflower that allowed dogs to go off-leash, so it was where I always took Rocky on runs. As usual, he was bounding around me, far enough away that he didn’t trip me and send me crashing to the ground. He would dart off every quarter mile or so, trying his damnedest to catch a squirrel, but it was futile.
If it didn’t make him so happy, and if he didn’t need to burn off all his energy, I would never go running. I was in good shape but I was still forty, and after a few miles my knees and my right shoulder protested from high school baseball injuries. The only time I’d enjoyed running was when my kids were babies. It was one of the only ways they’d napped and it was the first and last parental trick that had worked for both of them. I’d basically pretend-ran in slow motion to keep their unstable heads from wobbling all over the place.
So at least while I ran with Rocky, I could think about how nice that had been.
And think about how Rocky and all the animals I met at work were kind and accepting. No matter how many times people said to quit anthropomorphizing them, I knew they’d be the same if they could speak. Sure, some animals were prickly or scared at first, or they got restless and a little aggressive as a result, but I always patiently brought them back.
They never minded if I was quiet or didn’t know how to answer.
Suddenly Rocky started barking non-stop, like a cat who sneezes twenty times in a row, and took off like a shot across the grass towards one of the stands of silver poplar.
Groaning, I picked up my pace, my damp hair flopping on my forehead.
I caught up to him crouched playfully, his forelegs bent and his nose twitching above his paws, his haunches up high and his tail wagging so fast there was a breeze.
On the other side of his nose was…
A tortoise wearing a harness?
“What the hell,” I muttered, “what kind of idiot would put a?—”
My words trailed off and I squinted at the tortoise, while Rocky wriggled closer.
Because there was one person I could imagine putting a leash on a tortoise, and it just so happened that he’d run over this particular homeless tortoise a few weeks ago.
“Scooter, there you are!”
Skylar barreled over, skidding to his knees next to the tortoise.
Rocky immediately attacked his face with slobbery dog kisses.
Swatting him away, Skylar honest-to-God giggled.
An unwilling smile tugged at the edge of my lips before I pursed them to hide it.
Rocky danced over to Scooter, his tail wagging like crazy, while Skylar stood up. He looked like he’d been dipped in water like a strawberry in melted chocolate, his shorts and the bottom of his red tee shirt dark and damp, while everywhere else was dry. When he saw me looking at his shirt, he pulled the bottom away from his skin and flapped it, as if that was going to instantly dry it out. All that flapping flashed his soft side and part of his stomach, the skin the same shade as his face like he went without a shirt outside a lot.
“How did you lose a tortoise on a leash?” I had to ask him, oddly glad he’d adopted her.
His face twisted up like he couldn’t believe this was a legitimate question to ask him.
“Well, we were walking after we were in the river, and I had so much water that I needed to pee,” he explained, waving behind him at the public restrooms. “They’re never clean and I didn’t want to take Scooter in there. And I figured, how far could she get? It’s not like it takes more than ninety seconds to pee, plus a few minutes to get over there and back. I estimated she’d get like thirty feet, tops, but she must’ve sprinted!”
I couldn’t help it, that made me laugh.
“Wow,” he said, grinning at me, “you have such a great laugh.”
“Oh, uh, I don’t think so,” I replied, rubbing the back of my neck awkwardly.
The grin fell off his face with a splat. “I wasn’t hitting on you,” he informed me icily. “Scooter and I will be on our way now. Bye, Rocky.”
It took a second for me to catch up to how fast his mood had changed, then another second to realize why , but then I called out in alarm immediately, “Hey, wait!”
“Nuh uh, not today, Satan,” I heard him mutter as he power-walked with a tortoise in a harness under one arm, the leash trailing behind like the train on a fancy wedding dress.
“Shit,” I mumbled under my breath, starting to run again, ignoring my poor knees.
Rocky raced ahead of me and helpfully cut Skylar off.
“I thought you were cool, Rocky,” Skylar said accusingly to my dog. But his dark expression broke when Rocky lifted his head and wiggled his butt, asking for more rubs.
“Damn it, hold on a second,” I declared as I came up next to Skylar.
He stopped petting Rocky for a second, but then he sniffed and started again.
I put my hands on my hips in frustration that he was refusing to look at me, even though I was standing next to him, talking to him. But when he snuck a few steps farther away from me on the pretext of scratching Rocky’s other side, my stomach churned awfully.
Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I watched his fingers comb through Rocky’s fur.
“I didn’t think you were hitting on me,” I mumbled.
“Hmph.”
Never had I heard someone say that, unless it was a cartoon character.
Clearly he wasn’t reassured or comforted by my sad attempt.
I looked over at the dogs streaking across the grass towards Rocky, making sure they looked friendly and that I could see their owner paying attention too. When he caught their scent, he wriggled in a half-circle to lick the hand Skylar had been using to pet him, then took off to meet the other dogs. They pranced and sniffed and whuffed, saying hi.
Too bad it wasn’t that easy to make friends among humans. Least for me, anyhow.
Digging my fingers into my pockets far enough that the elastic band of my jogging shorts tugged down an inch, I made a frustrated noise. “Damn it, I just hate compliments.”
My eyes slid back over to Skylar cautiously, sure he was ready to rip me a new one.
But he just slid his sunglasses down to the end of his nose so he could scrutinize me.
“That’s good,” he finally said, then bit his lip when he realized how it sounded. “Good that you rejected my compliment because you hate them, not because you hate gay guys.”
“I hate plenty of people,” I replied with a shrug, “if they hurt animals, hate their own kids, lie all the time, or laugh at other people.” When I saw Skylar starting to smile again, it made the churning in my stomach stop and I wanted to keep him happy. So I pretended I was hanging around with my kids, because I never worried they’d judge me, not seriously, and kept going. “And people who put the toilet paper under instead of over. Or hike their socks up their calves when it’s not a stylish, early 2000s knee sock fashion choice.”
Now that Skylar was smiling fully, I practically slumped with relief.
He bent to carefully set his tortoise on the grass, which I took to be a sign that he wasn’t going to run away again because he could see now that I wasn’t a homophobic jerk.
“We have a problem then,” he proclaimed while he made this flourish with his hands, going from next to his ears to level with his waist, “because I love to laugh at people.”
Even though I sensed it was probably a little bit the plain truth, I relaxed because he hadn’t judged me yet. He hadn’t told me that my small talk sucked. He was just talking to me.
“Adults who unironically walk their tortoises don’t have room to laugh.”
“Me- ow ,” he cried, then giggled some more.
Rocky barked his whiny, sad bark.
I looked over at him and saw that the dogs he’d been playing with were back on their leashes and their owner was waving at Rocky as she pulled her dogs away.
“That’s so sweet,” Skylar said with a sigh, “how much you love him.”
“Dogs are by far my favorite animal,” I admitted. “They love you as long as you take care of them. They know when you’re feeling down. Rocky’s been my best friend since his whole litter was brought in by one of the animal rescues for their first vet exams.”
Skylar watched Rocky lope over to us. He pushed his head into Skylar’s hand and then tipped over onto his back across my shoes, tongue lolling.
“What else do you love about animals?” he asked.
“Everything, really,” I answered, smiling at Rocky even though he was crushing my toes. “When I was a kid, I watched all the nature shows and read all the books about animals instead of people. Other boys were all about the claws and fangs and how predators kill other animals. But I loved learning about all the weird courtship rituals animals have.”
Nodding enthusiastically, Skylar said, “One of my first jobs was for a zoo in Florida, rewriting everything on the website, what tour guides talked about for adults and for kids, and everything on the signs outside exhibits and individual habitats. I tend to remember most of what I learn while I’m working. I haven’t thought about that in a while, but it’s coming back to me now. The best thing I did was talk to the zoo employees to ask them to tell me in their own words about some of the animals and why they loved them.”
“Well anytime you want to know more, you know where to find me,” I found myself offering Skylar without any reservations. “That’s the only thing I’m good at talking about.”
“I want to tell you that I’m sure you’re good at talking about plenty of other things,” he answered with a teasing lilt to his voice, “but I know how you hate compliments, so…”
That pulled another laugh out of me.
When his smile got wider, I felt like I’d accomplished something, which was ridiculous because he seemed to smile almost all of the time anyway—when he wasn’t freaked out.
Feeling weird, I cleared my throat and pulled my feet out from under Rocky. “Uh, we’d better get going before Rocky falls asleep,” I said while Rocky got up and shook himself.
“Okay.” Skylar gave me a nerdy kind of wave. “It was nice talking to you.”
“You too,” I said, and unlike when I usually said it, it wasn’t just me being polite.