And then there was the accent.
Will is English and has that lilting, melodic voice that makes anything sound wildly intelligent and sexy. He uses words like “nappies” and “loo,” which I know mean diapers and bathroom, but when he says them, they tend to be nothing short of panty melting.
But I had already gotten myself into that situation once and due to the werewolf snoring on my couch, I was still in the midst of processing my tryst with Will, whether or not it had been a mistake made out of need or something more, and whether or not I had ruined everything with Alex Grace.
My body hummed with a nervous energy as Will’s eyes flashed over mine, almost daring me to respond.
I wanted to say something very Carrie Bradshaw, very kitten-with-a-whip.
“ChaCha needs to go to the potty.”
Hey, I’m the Vessel of Souls. I can’t expected to be a sexy linguist, too, right?
I took ChaCha downstairs and once her little legs hit the sidewalk, she beamed like only a dog can and pranced in front of me, wagging her tail and her tongue at everyone we met, peeing on everything static or everyone who moved slowly enough to allow her hindquarters adequate aim.
We walked over to Huntington Park, a luxurious little patch of green not far from our neighborhood where ChaCha could sniff until her little heart was content, and I could find a free park bench on which to lay down.
With lack of sleep, comes lack of shame.
I slipped the loop of her leash around my wrist and closed my eyes, letting the rare shard of sunlight wash over me, relishing the delightful feeling of warmth bathing over my shoulders, my cheeks.
In my uber-relaxed state I could hear the sharp barks of dogs overwhelmed at the abundance of new things to pee on and the steady hum of traffic as it ambled up California Street. I liked to imagine that I was lying on the beach and every whooshing Metro bus was a wave crashing against a coconut-scented white sand beach. In my imagination, I was wearing a tiny turquoise bikini and showing off the six-pack that currently lived somewhere underneath my hibernation flab. In actuality I was laying spread eagle on a park bench with my mouth partly open and my hand dangling in the grass. ChaCha must have seen the opportunity in my dozing because halfway through my fictitious daiquiri, she gave the leash a yank, slipping the loop off my wrist, then took off yipping and yapping across the lolling green hills of the park, her little dog eyes glued to the jaunty butt of a brindle terrier. The little jerk on my wrist sent me sputtering and coughing and sitting up, feeling lost, confused, and blinking into the sunlight.
“Oh, crap!” I saw ChaCha’s pink leash slithering through the grass and I launched myself off the bench, running after her. “ChaCha! ChaCha, stop!”
The little dog didn’t abide and seemed to just get faster, and within seconds she had zigzagged through a tight congregation of boxwood bushes, barking as though she were a Doberman or a wooly mammoth. I was sucking in my stomach, following her, getting angrier by the second.
“ChaCha! You better stop this right now or Mama is going to be—”
It was nothing overt. Call it a feeling, a whisper on the wind, but something rushed by me and made my blood run cold. I stopped short, my hackles up. I felt the hot prickle of someone’s laser gaze on me and gooseflesh bubbled on my arms. “ChaCha?”
I heard the crush of tanbark, the crinkle of leaves.
Low, ragged breath.
The air suddenly smelled salty with a weird mix of earth and sweat. I whirled all around me, seeing dogs running with wide, toothy dog-smiles, tongues wagging, their owners chanting, clapping. The noise of the park and the animals blurred into one solid cacophony and I couldn’t make out another sound.
The footsteps crushing the tanbark; the low breath—had I imagined them?
“ChaCha?” My heart slammed against my rib cage. My saliva went sour, my voice starting to quiver. “Come here, girl.”
I felt it before I heard it, and then I was on the ground. My forehead thunked against the tanbark, my teeth smacked together. All the breath left my body and I opened my mouth and sucked uselessly at the air, trying to get something into my failed lungs. My ribs screamed. My wrists ached. There was a burning swath across the back of my calves where something—or someone—had swept my legs out from under me.