AllFreeNovel
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Many people like me at first glance of my happy exterior, but the second I’m no longer a puppy, or I’m barking all night, or they learn that I’m too much effort, they change their mind about wanting me around. I’m a sometimes person. Not the sort people want to embrace the responsibility of.
It makes way too much sense now that I know I have werecanine blood in my system.
“Sunshine,” Ollie interrupts my frenzied ramble, and I forget entirely what I was saying, where I am, what’s going on.
Blinking, I locate the parking lot for my mother’s favorite bakery. The bakery I’ve been tasked with going to in order to pick up her buttercream and lemon curd birthday cake. Right. Yes. I remember. I look at Ollie.
He regards me, most dully. “While I understand your enthusiasm on account of your brain finally making sense, I wouldn’t demote yourself so completely into the persona of a dog.”
“Why not? I love dogs. They’re friendly and lovable, forgiven even after they take everything out of the trash for the tenth time in a matter of days.”
“It seems dehumanizing, doesn’t it?”
I point at him, grinning brilliantly. “I’m not human.”
He pokes me in the forehead. “You’re part human and still a person capable of complex thoughts and feelings, unlike dogs.”
My stomach twists, and my smile vanishes. “Wait. Have I insulted you? I didn’t mean to. I sincerely mean everything as only the highest compliment. Dogs are amazing and pure and wonderful, and you are the most amazing and pure and wonderful of all the chihuahuas in the world. I am honored to be, even partly, identified among your kind.”
“I’m not sure you know how to insult someone, sunshine.”
I chuckle a bit, push my hair back as I open my car door, and step out. “Many would disagree with you.”
“Many would be wrong.”
I say, “That’s a vague statement with no direct connection to what I just said because you can’t undermine or discredit my statement about past opinions.”
Smirking, Ollie circles the vehicle, stops in front of me, and rustles my hair. “Very good. Stupid opinions are irritating, because opinions aren’t based in facts, yet I can say nothing to undo an emotional response, because it would be lying.”
I beam, ever brighter. “I also, apparently, like pets.”
Flushing, he pulls his hand away from my hair and stuffs it in his pocket. “Head pats. Please, for the love of my sanity, call whatever I absently just did a head pat. I did not consciously pet you.”
“Same thing.”
“Connotatively different.”
“Ollie?”
Pain creases his brows as he looks at me with a wry smile just short of dimples. “What?”
“Yes or no. Can you say, ‘I did not pet you’?”
He blinks, and those white slashes of his painted tan-and-white skin heat deeper before he mumbles. “I do not like this question.”
“Same thing,” I sing and close my car door with my hip.
His petting fist clenches and unclenches at his side.
“What’s that?” I ask as we start across the parking lot toward the sidewalk in front of the bakery.
“That?”
“That thing you’re doing with your hand.”
He looks down at his splayed fingers before they curl closed again and he traps them behind his back. “Your comprehensive knowledge of the Pride and Prejudice movie is appalling.”
My mouth drops open. No. He. Didn’t.
