Who’s a Good Boy: Dog in This Fight #1 Read online

  After dinner and a nice simple ice cream dessert, I was feeling halfway content listening to Sienna give my parents a rundown of every page she’d completed in the activity book when I heard a bit of detachment start to creep into my dad’s voice. The sense of relaxation left my body a lot quicker than it had crept in.

  “Sienna, why don’t you do a few more pages in the living room, then come back and show us. We’ve got to have a talk with your mommy,” my dad said.

  “OK.”

  My heart sank but I pulled some coloring pencils from my bag for her and she scampered off to work on another puzzle or picture. He waited until it sounded like she was settled down in the other room before pulling out an envelope and sliding it across to me.

  “I don’t want it,” I said quietly.

  “Honey, just take it. I know you’re not getting enough to cover everything the two of you need. No daughter of mine should have to be on welfare.”

  A lump formed in my throat and all at once I felt like I was no bigger than Sienna, struggling to see over the top of the table from my seat. Now that I was twenty-three years old, the dreams I used to have were even further away than her dreams of being an artist were.

  One of those dreams was to carry my own weight, to stand on my own two feet with the family I was building, the ones I loved. James and life were beating most of those dreams out of me. These envelopes my dad gave me were taking care of the rest.

  On the other hand, he was right. I had enough to make rent for another two weeks, assuming I didn’t buy any groceries and the power company forgot to send the bill this month. Without this envelope, I couldn’t provide even an illusion of stability for Sienna, and that was even worse.

  I reached out and slowly dragged the envelope towards me. “Thanks. How can you spare it anyway?”

  “We had to extend our loan with the Poppletons. After the last few years, the banks won’t touch us with a fifty-foot barge pole. We’re lucky they’re being so generous, instead of taking the opportunity to watch the competition crash and burn. They’re a good bunch. Especially that James-”

  “Dad…”

  “Stan…” my mom chimed in weakly.

  “I’m just saying… James is a good kid, he’s always had a thing for you. Good family, always been a perfect gentleman when he’s been here, handsome, hard-working. You could do a lot worse… you have done a lot worse.”

  He had to get that shot in.

  “Dad… just once, please, could we not?”

  “Stan, you said…”

  “I know! I know… I just don’t understand why you’re so stubborn, Hazel. They’ve as much as said that they wouldn’t charge interest to family. James would marry you tomorrow if you said yes. He’s a damn good kid, and you would never give him a chance. You could finally be part of the family business, help us turn this all around. You’d be out of that crappy rental, and really be providing for our granddaughter like a good mother.”

  Every word made me feel like I was shrinking even further, like a balloon with a leak. A few more broken pieces of ‘me’ flowed out with that air.

  Maybe I was being selfish. What was I holding on for? What was I holding on to? If I married James, it would solve my parents’ problems. Sienna would never want for anything.

  I tried to imagine ‘me’ in that scenario, but I couldn’t see anything. Hazel Rivera would be as good as dead… but was it for the greater good? Who would Hazel… Poppleton be? Even thinking the name made me cringe.

  “Mommy, can I play with the doll house?” Sienna asked from the doorway behind me.

  “No honey, they’re Gramma’s, they’re just for looking at,” said my mom.

  This house was still like a museum where you couldn’t touch anything.

  Eugene lost his job first. I wondered how bad things would get before my mom’s rare doll houses were on the chopping block.

  “Mommy?” Desperation crept into her voice.

  “No sweetie, no touching. You can only look.”

  Here came the tears. “Mommy! This behavior makes me very d-disappointed!”

  Champagne Taste, Beer Budget

  Jeff - Before

  The clattering and banging of my dad in the kitchen got to a point where I couldn’t sleep through it anymore. Chopper had long-since abandoned my room in search of breakfast scraps, leaving my door wide open, which let in every sound from the rest of the house.

  It was already warm, going to be a scorcher of a day, so I pulled on a crumpled pair of shorts from my floor and a tank top from my dresser. While still in my room, I tried to keep my eyes mostly closed, as if holding on to the vague notion I might get some more sleep, but once I was past my door I settled for the bleary look.

  When I entered the kitchen, the toaster popped up with four slices of golden goodness.

  “Twenty years old, still got the timing of a teenager,” said my dad.

  “Hmm?”

  “Take a seat, sleeping beauty. Toast with honey?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” I slumped in a chair at the table.

  “Rough night? You look like hell.”

  “Yeah, couldn’t get to sleep for some reason.”

  Truth was, I couldn’t get Hazel out of my head. I felt like a guy who’d had nothing but bread and water all his life and then, one sunny afternoon on the last day of school, looked over the fence and saw his neighbor cooking up a storm on the grill. It’d be the first time in his life he ever felt starved.

  That was me now. I’d been up most of the night thinking about every perfect curve of her face from her little nose to the dimples in her cheeks and the way that blonde hair shone in the sun.

  I never could have imagined it would feel like torture to be away from her after being so close. The unexpected hunger was a dull ache, which I suspected wouldn’t be touched by the toast my dad put in front of me.

  He sat on the opposite side of the table, his own slices covered in strawberry jam. “Your head was kind of in the clouds since I came home yesterday. Hazel Rivera, huh?”

  I paused with a slice of toast almost at my open mouth, my eyes trying to find something to look at, anything, aside from my dad’s face. Settling on the salt and pepper shakers at the edge of the table near the wall, I took a big exaggerated bite and maintained radio silence, chewing with lips tightly clamped shut.

  A polite, if smug, smile raised the corners of my dad’s mouth. “Champagne taste, but a beer budget.”

  “Hey, let’s talk about something else. We sure are having a lot of weather today, hmm?”

  “Oh yeah, and it’s only just begun. You wanna talk about something else? I got some good news.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I didn’t wanna tell you, but when I visited Bill a few months back, he had another friend there too. Turns out, this guy has a side business making custom and replica headlights for vehicles.”

  “That sounds pretty… uh… niche.”

  “Yeah, sounded like it was more a hobby that makes some money than an actual business, but whatever, that’s not important. The important thing is, he was having a problem with a car of his and nobody could figure it out. When you were travelling at about forty miles an hour and turning to the left… the steering went all fucked up and all of a sudden you were turning too sharply for the corner. He had guys, top guys, look into it, nearly shit on the seats when they tested it at speed, and couldn’t figure it out. He replaced the shock absorbers, even the steering rack. Spent thousands on it. I had a look at it, turns out that there was a little play in the bushes on the front left side. I don’t know how everybody missed it, but all it took was a twenty-dollar part to fix it. The good news is, he was thankful enough to make me something.”

  My dad paused for dramatic effect, and I took the bait. “What?”

  “These!”

  He reached under the table and pulled out a cardboard box, leaving strawberry fingerprints on the sides as he pushed it across the table to me. I added honey fingerprints
to the mix as I pulled it closer.

  I looked up at my dad and he nodded. “Go on.”

  Inside the box was a set of brand-new headlights that looked like they’d fit an old Chevy. Maybe a 1957 pickup, for example.

  “They’re halogen too, so they’ll be a shitload brighter than the originals would have been anyway. Those old headlights were like having some dude strapped to the hood holding a lighter in the air,” Dad said.

  “Wow… thanks. I wish we weren’t so far away from putting them in.”

  “Yeah, but Bill’s friend wasn’t a custom carburetor guy, so we’ll take what we can get. We’ll make it eventually. I’ve got about an hour before your girl Hazel’s dad needs me to get to work, so let’s make a little progress.”

  “She’s not my girl, she likes Chopper more than me.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  I laughed, he had me there. After the shit we’d been through, and whatever other shit might be going on, our father-son relationship was at least pretty solid these days. He got his drinking under control, I grew out of being an asshole teenager, add a generous helping of forgiveness, and things smoothed over for us.

  Unfortunately, even with Dad’s help, it was one of those days where not a lot of progress was going to be seen. We spent an hour grinding, sanding, washing and oiling various parts and at all times felt like we were about a million miles from turning a key and hearing an engine even struggle to turn over. The custom headlights sat in their box on a shelf, teasing me on a very personal level the entire time too.

  It was hot work for a hot day, and I thought Chopper had the right idea. He was laid out in a kiddie paddling pool with his head lolling over the side, and his tongue lolling even further over the side.

  The entire time, the only movement he made was to roll over his back to lay on his other side. I thought he might stay there all day.

  When I heard the sloshing of water, I looked over in his direction and saw him bound out and do a full-body shake that would have drenched anybody in a ten-foot radius. I followed his gaze to see what was so important, and saw Hazel leaning over our fence holding a plate.

  My heart stopped. Dad looked from me to Chopper to Hazel and then back to me. “Oh, look at the time, I gotta get cleaned up and out of here. Hi Hazel!” he called.

  “Hi Mr. Hatcher! Hi Jeff.” She said my name a little quieter, and my heart’s first beat of its come-back tour was a bit of a painful lurch.

  I grabbed a rag and tried to get some of the grease, rust and dirt off my hands before giving up. I wasn’t sure if I put more on than I took off.

  “See you tonight,” I said to my dad and walked over to Hazel.

  Rather than jumping the fence today, Chopper was resting his front paws on it to prop himself up in order to investigate the plate.

  “No, Chopper, this is people-food,” Hazel said as I approached.

  “Chopper! Down!”

  Chopper listened, but sat at the foot of the fence looking up expectantly.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Or… um… again at all, really.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Um. Yeah… this is stupid… I guess this must seem really weird, or fake or something. I mean, we’ve lived next door all these years and now… two days in a row and all…”

  Hazel spoke fast, her face slowly going through deeper shades of pink.

  I raised an eyebrow. “What must seem fake?”

  That increased the rate her face reddened at. “Uh…” she looked lost for a moment. “Oh yeah, these.” She held up the plate. “They’re brownies.”

  “Fake brownies?”

  “No! They’re real… I mean I made them, I don’t know if, like, a baker would call them real. They’re probably not good. I had one and it was OK.”

  “OK…” I repeated after her.

  Hazel looked up at me the way a drowning girl would look up at a lifeguard, hoping I’d throw her a life preserver.

  “And, why are you carrying real brownies around today?”

  “They’re for you,” she said, still talking abnormally fast. “I could barely sleep last night, thinking about what a bitch you must think I am. I… I basically accused you of mistreating your dog and I realize that was a-a very offensive thing to do. I’m n-not like that, I’m really not, so I thought ‘hey… brownies!’… I’m really sorry…”

  I almost burst out laughing when she said, ‘hey… brownies!’ She looked like an unwilling actress on a commercial for brownies who had a shotgun trained on her just outside of the camera frame. I decided to put her out of her misery. Anybody who cared that much couldn’t be a bad person.

  “Well, if you want a second opinion on the brownies, I’d be happy to help.”

  Hazel nodded enthusiastically and held the plate in my direction. I took a brownie and Chopper whined at the brutal injustice of it all.

  While chewing, I tried to maintain a poker-face, but under the scrutiny of Hazel and Chopper, I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Mmmm… ok, all is forgiven.”

  Relief visibly washed over Hazel’s face, and sweet holy fuck what a beautiful face it was. Maybe she wasn’t the unfathomable angel I had assumed from a distance. Maybe she was even better.

  Hazel’s eyes flicked down to my bicep as I brought the brownie to my mouth for another bite, and I saw the tip of her tongue touch her lips for a second before she swallowed and looked me in the face again. Hazel, Hazel Rivera, was checking me out.

  “So what are you going to be doing with yourself over the summer, now that you’re free?” I asked.

  “Well, my friend Ella and I are hatching a scheme that would convince my parents to let me have a gap year. Other than that, just going to hang out with friends, maybe do a road trip before everybody scatters to the four corners of the world.”

  “How’s that going for you? The scheme.”

  “It’s… still unhatched, shall we say.”

  Before I’d been kicked out of school, I’d had my pick of the girls, it had always been pretty easy for me. Since then, I’d gradually stopped going to the local parties, so I wasn’t sure if I was merely rusty or what, but I had almost as much problems getting the next words out of my mouth as Hazel had explaining the brownies.

  “So… that’s the long-term plan, what about short term, like tonight?”

  “Huh?”

  I swallowed. “Well, if you didn’t have plans and wanted to make sure you’d properly apologized, I’m free tonight.”

  Hazel’s eyebrows rose along with one side of her mouth. “Oh really? I thought all was forgiven?”

  “Well… maybe I misspoke. I’m still pretty offended.”

  “Oh no…”

  “So, what do you say? Tonight? I could pick you up around seven?”

  “I can’t.”

  My heart lurched again.

  “But… I’m free this afternoon. Say four?” she asked, sheepishly.

  “Yep, I can work with that,” I said.

  A smile so pure and bright lit up her face that my only defense was to smile back. We stood there for a few seconds smiling like fucking idiots.

  “Uh… well, here.” She held out the plate. “These are yours. I gotta go, but I’ll see you at four. You know where I live, right?”

  I pointed in the direction of her house.

  “That’s it,” she said, taking a few steps backwards. “See you then.” She turned away as she spoke.

  “See you then,” I said, just barely loud enough for her to hear, before taking my own backwards steps away from the fence and turning around.

  “Hey Jeff?” she called.

  I turned.

  “It’s a date, right?” Her face was threatening to turn pink again.

  “It’s a date.”

  Hazel smiled and gave me a rueful ‘gotcha’ point of her finger. If I could have her smile at me like that every day, I’d be a happy man.

  It’s a Date

  Hazel - Before

  Don’t say it, don�
��t you dare say something so damn stupid.

  “It’s a date, right?”

  Jeff opened his mouth, then paused with a panty-melting smirk before responding. “It’s a date.”

  I should have felt embarrassed at the question, but I couldn’t help but feel myself light up. If I was destined to feel such extremes all in one day, I was glad to get this end of the spectrum too.

  From the moment I saw how happy Chopper was, how he behaved around Jeff, I’d been crushed by guilt. I’d never felt myself jam my own foot so far down my throat before in my entire life.

  Overnight I must have sat bolt upright in bed and slapped my forehead with a cringe five or six times. I had to set things straight.

  While eating breakfast, I looked up simple recipes for cakes and cookies before settling on brownies because they looked easy enough that I wouldn’t offend Jeff further. I bet no plate of baked goods ever felt so heavy as that plate when I carried it down our driveway and went next door.

  Chopper spotted me first before Jeff walked over. I’d rehearsed everything I wanted to say, but somehow all the words seemed to rush out at once and get tangled around my tongue, and I wasn’t even sure if I was even speaking English anymore.

  It didn’t help things that Jeff was looking good. The simple singlet and shorts showed off his thick, muscular arms and legs, distracting me from everything I was trying to say.

  The smears of grease and dirt made me think about how hard he’d been working with his hands, and while my mouth was saying whatever it wanted, I couldn’t help but think of what it would be like to have those hands on me. If he held me close, I’d get dirty too. Maybe in more than one sense of the word.

  Of course, I thought I’d be lucky if he simply forgave me, so when he said all was forgiven, I was prepared to take that as a win. Then he asked me out on a date. Then I asked for confirmation it was a date.

  Let’s never speak of that part again.

  “Deal,” I said to myself.