Dax: When I was ten, I had a pet frog named Earl. I took him everywhere with me, even to the bathroom. Good old Earl would just sit on the bathroom sink, watching me take a dump without any judgment, like a good friend does. Sadly, one day when I flushed, Earl decided to mark base jumping off his bucket list. To this day, I swear I heard a little “Weeeeeee!” as he dove into the swirling bowl of death, sucked down into the bowels of the city, never to be heard or croaked from again. R.I.P., Earl.
By the time I finish reading his text, I’m laughing so hard I’m wheezing, and I have to click the side button on my phone to turn off my screen, tossing my phone up on the dashboard with my camera before he sends me another text that actually kills me.
Nope, it’s not the otters. It’s just Dax. I clearly can’t get enough of him.
Not only has he kept me up to date on all his otters and their daily activities while I’ve kept him up to date on the Chris and Lincoln search, but with each text he sends me, he also sends me a fact about himself. It’s always random, and it’s never in chronological order, but I’ve learned so much about him in the last week I feel like I’ve known him all my life.
I know his mom left when he was five, because she got tired of Dax’s dad cheating on her and having to find out about it at the country club every week.
I know the first bone he broke was his arm when he was in high school, when one of his friends dared him to jump off the roof and into the pool during a raging party he threw. He landed in the grass, popping a giant unicorn float and fracturing his radius instead.
I know that if you even say the words “chocolate raspberry” to him, he will dry heave and possibly throw up in his mouth a little, because of some traumatic memory from his childhood where his fucking chef made some overly rich dessert that she forced him to finish every last bite of. Which he then immediately vomited all over an expensive, white linen tablecloth that came from Egypt or some shit.
I know he’s persistent and continues to ask me out on a date every day, even though I continue to tell him no. I know he makes me laugh, and I know the Tupperware containers with blue lids I’ve been finding on my front porch every day are from him, filled with enough homemade food and desserts to feed me and my dad and Davidson. And I know with each new thing I learn about Dax, he’s making it harder and harder to forget about him.
I also don’t exactly know what’s happened with my dad and brother, but there hasn’t been one accident or fire they’ve demanded I put out in the last week, and something tells me it has everything to do with the man I keep refusing to date.
This is not good. This is sooo not good.
Ovaries: This is the best day ever! The best! Shit. We need to shave. And are we seriously wearing period panties when it is nowhere near that time of the month? You are hideous.
My phone dings with another text, and the glow of my screen lights up the car again, but I ignore it. I got a tip earlier that the police K9 I still haven’t been able to find might be showing up at the house I’ve been surveilling. I have work to do and no time for a monumental crisis that involves developing feelings for a guy I thought I would hate until I died.
When the headlights of a car come around the corner way down at the end of the street, I lean forward in my seat, resting my hands on the steering wheel while I watch the car slow down as it gets closer to my target house. My phone dings again, and I ignore it again, one of my hands letting go of the steering wheel to slowly move toward my door handle. The car continues to move at a leisurely rate of speed as it comes up to the blue, two-story colonial, and my heart starts beating faster in my chest. This is my favorite part of the job. When a tip is good, I get to kick somebody’s ass and return an animal to its rightful owner. Especially when the ass I will be kicking is a drug dealer who stole a cop’s dog during a police chase that went bad last month.
I’m holding my breath, and my hand wraps around my door handle with nothing but absolute silence and pitch darkness inside my car, aside from the dashboard lights. Right when the vehicle I’m watching almost stops completely in front of the house at the end of the street, the inside of my car suddenly lights up, and my passenger door flies open.
My hand darts out to grab the small stun gun in my center console, my thumb immediately holding down the stun button as I point it toward my open passenger door. The little black weapon crackles to life in my hands as sparks of electricity shoot out of the metal probes at the end.
“First, you try to hit me with a bat, and now you want to stun me,” Dax complains, bending down so I can see his face as he stands next to the open car door. “We really need to discuss how you greet me, or this relationship is never going to work.”
“What the hell are you doing? I’m trying to catch a drug dealer!” I whisper-yell, ignoring his relationship comment.
Tossing the stun gun back into my cup holder, I look away from Dax and back to the house at the end of the street, where the car didn’t even stop and is now on its way toward us.
I try not to make it obvious that I’m staring, but when it finally gets to us, I see it’s a woman in her seventies trying to find an address. I sigh in frustration and look back at where Dax is still standing out on the curb, bent down with his head in my car. A few strands of hair have fallen down into his eyes, and I can’t stop staring at the neatly trimmed hair around his lips, wondering if it would scratch or tickle me when we kiss.
When? When? What about if?
Ovaries: LOL, okay. Sure.
“Are you getting in or what?” I ask in less of a bitchy tone, trying to be a little nicer now that I know he didn’t just interrupt something I’ve been waiting for all night.
And because I’m so far down the street from the drug dealer’s house my car alarm would have to go off before anyone in there noticed I was here. And because of that delicious lasagna he left on my porch last night. And because I’ve missed him. Dammit!
“Say thank you,” he orders.
“Say thank you for—Oh my God, you brought an otter!” I squeal when Dax suddenly makes an otter appear from behind his back, leaning into the car and handing it to me.
“Or did I bring you a frog?” he jokes as he climbs into my front seat, pulling the door closed behind him while he sets a red, insulated bag on the floor in between his feet.
Jennifer Otterston, still wearing her green, crocheted frog hat from the photo Dax sent, squeaks and sniffs my denim-covered legs when I set her down on my lap. She makes five circles around my thighs before curling up and lying down, just like a puppy. I run my hand down her back, when a small plastic container is shoved in my line of vision.
“Creamy lemon pepper chicken pasta. Eat,” Dax orders as I take the container from him that’s still warm, and he hands me a napkin and a plastic fork from the bag between his legs.
“You brought me an otter and dinner?” I ask, shoving a huge bite of pasta in my mouth and letting out the loudest, most satisfied groan in my life. “Fuck, this is delicious. Take off your pants.”
I really didn’t mean to mutter that last part, and I pretend it didn’t happen as I continue to shovel more and more creamy pasta and chicken in my mouth.
“What was that?” Dax smiles.
“Nothing,” I speak around a mouthful of food.