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Chapter 8
Iwas on my way to answer the call for a skunk that was trapped in some lady’s garage when I heard her text. A shiver of excitement running down my spine, I pulled over. All morning I had been forming the right words to text her, without success. For her to text me first was a gift from the heavens.
My heart started pounding when I grabbed my phone and opened her text.
Hey...can we talk? I think I owe you an apology
God. You don’t owe me anything,I thought.
No you don’t, I wrote.I’m the one who has to apologize. Yesterday was a shitshow, and I set the stage, wrote the play, and was the main actor.
She texted back a smiley.
When would be a good time to talk?
“How about right now?” I said as I hit the dial button and held the phone up next to my ear. I couldn’t wait to hear her voice, the same alluring voice that had whispered my name the moment she came against my tongue.
Don’t get hard...don’t get hard.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
A brief silence.
“I...” she started, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m sorry for last night. I thought about the whole thing a lot, and I think I just wasn’t myself.”
“No. Really. You did nothing wrong. It’s not your fault that you’re every middle-aged man’s dream,” I joked before realizing that it sounded flirtatious.
She laughed. “Well...thanks, I guess.”
It was so good to hear her laugh again. The sound warmed my insides, which were cold after getting soaked in the damn rain all day.
“Hey, emm...I wanted to let you know that I won’t be in the clinic next week.”
Wait! What? Why?
“Oh. I hope it’s not because of—”
“No. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. So that you know it’s not because of, well, I don’t know what to call it.” She giggled, embarrassed. “The accident?”
The accident.An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.
“I think that’s a fair word to use.”
“Well, I just wanted to let you know that I won’t be in and that it has nothing to do with our...accident.”
“I see. Thanks for letting me know. I would’ve worried.”
“It really doesn’t. I have to do a rotation in that terrible kill shelter on Fifth. It’s for my program. I could throw up just thinking about it, but all the good field gigs were taken. Pray I don’t free the animals and burn that place down.”
“A kill shelter?” I was shocked. Those places were straight from hell. I knew that by now. The living, purring proof of it was literally sleeping on a pile of my clothes in my closet.
“Can you still cancel that rotation?” I asked.
“Not really. It’s a requirement for this semester, and I don’t feel like repeating the whole class again.”
Shit.
