RAVEN
Me, Anne and Curtis are on doggy playtime duty with the small-sized dogs outside in the playpen. The weather has polarized from a chilly spring to immediate hot summer weather. Past the fence is a field of drying grass filled with crickets chirping. I kneel down to give a Boston Terrier named George a good belly rub. He splays out on his back with a long tongue trailing nearly to the dirt below, panting wildly. The good news is small dogs are easy to tire out because they're a big soul stuck inside a tiny body. The bad news is, they're either feisty, too nervous to be handled, or too fast for any of us to catch. Don't even get me started on the time I almost got in deep shit for losing a Pomeranian, only to find out she was hiding in the break room, shaking like a leaf.
"Raven," Anne waves for my attention. "Can you hold onto Tucker for a second?"
Tucker is a poofy brown Pomeranian. He looks like a toasted marshmallow. I stand up to dust off my dirty knees.
"Alright."
George springs back up and headbutts Bowie, a Beagle puppy, which Curtis was playing tug-of-war with. I grab Tucker out of Anne's arms and cradle him. He melts into my grip, I feel his little heartbeat going wild.
"Thanks," Anne grabs an empty bucket. "I'll be right back, I gotta refill this."
"Okay," both me and Curtis say.
I take a quick mental count to make sure all of the little dogs are still in the playpen. All eleven are still present, thankfully. My eyes catch Curtis sneakily checking something on his phone, so I come up to him and nudge him with my elbow.
"Hide your phone, or Kate will come and snatch it up."
He ignores me, eyes sparkling like he's won the lottery. He mouths out the words, 'Oh my God'.
"What?"
"I got it!" He jumps up and down. "I got the comic I've been dying to get!"
"Which one?"
He shows me on his phone screen, surprise-surprise, another comic from the Joker series. The style is different, so it must be from another artist. There's more black ink used to cast a "terrifying" shadow on half of his body.
"You homo," I purse my lips at him in a teasing manner.
He puts the phone away. "Yes, we're filthy homos, aren't we?"
"Mmm..." I roll my eyes while rocking Tucker in my arms. He's fallen asleep.
"Oh, sorry, you're the half-homo."
"Excusez-toi."
Suddenly, we hear whimpering at one of the corners of the fence. George is trying to dig a hole, and has strategically moved away the gravel. Anne drops the water and rushes by us.
"George, no!"
She scoops him up into her arms, as he squirms and grunts. She puts him down, away from the attempted hole, then pushes dirt with her shoes to cover up the hole and places the gravel over it. Then she stands up straight with her hands on her hips and furrowed eyebrows.
"What were you doing?"
I eye at Curtis, who's trying to look busy. I point to him with my chin.
"He was busy staring at his husband."
"Husband?" There's shock in her voice. "Who?"
"He's joking," Curtis says while waving a hand around. "Should we take the dogs back in?"
"Sounds good," I say while gently petting Tucker. "This one's fallen asleep."
"Aww," Anne comes up to me. "He really likes you."
YOU ARE READING
Canvas
Romance"Do you ever notice how much the world sees in black and white?" Atlas, a retiring model, takes one last shot in his dwindling career to pose as a model for an art class. He soon realizes one of his elementary school friends, Raven, is in that class...
