“Do it? You want me to drop you in the leaves?”
And as he kept yelling for me to have a heart, I dropped him like a sack of potatoes. He’d live. My dad had done it to me enough times as a kid in piles smaller than this one. A couple of bruises weren’t going to kill him.
And sure enough, he acted like he’d gotten shot.
I wasn’t sure how it happened, but somehow I ended up on the ground, too. Before I knew it, Louie went flying squirrel on us and dove on top of his older brother. At some point, I noticed my shoes had been thrown across the yard. It wasn’t until they were both draped on top of me, trapping me on the ground and pressing an elbow down on my crotch while a forearm squished my boob, that I started smacking the palm of my hand down on the grass. “I give up. Jesus—”
“Abuelita said you’re not supposed to be saying that,” Lou corrected me from his spot the furthest away from my face.
“I know what Abuelita says,” I groaned as the elbow over my pubic bone pressed down on it again, making me cringe and try to buck Josh off. “But you know what else Abuelita says? Don’t be a snitch.”
“She doesn’t say that,” Josh argued, crushing my mams.
“Yeah, she does. Ask her next time.” They wouldn’t ask, and I’d bet my mom didn’t know what a snitch was anyway. I hoped.
Mac was howling in the background from the yard, fully aware he was missing out on playtime and losing his mind.
Josh hopped up to his feet, giving my poor chi-chis a break, and then held out a hand to help me up—which filled me with a stupid amount of pride. It wasn’t until I was standing that I looked around the yard and saw the mess we made. Fuck. “Shi—oot.”
“Ugh,” was his response.
“Let me grab the rakes so I can help you get this all together.” I sighed again, tiptoeing over to pick up my shoes and put them back on.
“I got it,” Louie said, already running toward the gate that led to the backyard.
I wasn’t thinking, otherwise I would have remembered that Mac was going to barrel right through him once the door was opened. Just as I yelled, “Wait, Lou,” the big, shaggy, white beast did just what I had expected. He knocked Lou to the side as he sprinted across the front yard, zig-zagging in excitement like he’d been imprisoned for the last decade.
And like the paranoid, worrywart I was, I immediately envisioned him running onto the street and getting hit by an imaginary car.
“Try to grab him,” I instructed the two youngest Casillas in our family, as I shoved my feet into my shoes.
Yeah, it didn’t work. Mac was too fast and too strong and too nuts.
When he darted across the street, I yelled his name like a crazy person. I felt my heart drop to my feet until he made it to the other side.
“Wait for me here while I go get him, okay?” I called out to the boys. They nodded, my eyes immediately going to Louie who was wringing his little hands. “I’ll be right back.”
Not bothering to close the gate in case I could get Mac back by simply calling his name—a girl could dream—I looked up and down the street, trying to spot the biggest Casillas in the house. He was such a good dog… until he got loose. He always had been. I could remember like it was yesterday, Rodrigo bringing him by my apartment, so excited. “You’re dead,” I had told him even as I’d picked up the Irish Wolfhound puppy and cradled him to me, one of the few and rare times before he’d gotten too big. Now…
Well, now he was my oversized monster.
“Mac!” I hollered.
Nothing.
“Mac!” I yelled again, holding my hand up to shade my eyes as I glanced down the other side of the street.
Sasquatch’s cousin was a lot of things, but he wasn’t an idiot. He usually didn’t go anywhere further than ten feet away from the boys or me, but every once in a while, especially since we were in a brand-new neighborhood with brand-new smells… he liked to go exploring.
“Mac! I’m not playing with you! Come on!” I yelled again, just as something moved in my peripheral vision.
Sure enough, to my right, the very tip of a white tail peeked out from behind the top of a trash can that had been pulled onto the curb. Relieved out of my mind, I jogged across the street heading to the house squished between Miss Pearl’s and Dallas’s. It was nearly identical in size and style to the homes on either side of it, blocked off by a chain-link fence similar to the one in my backyard. From the highest point of the roof, an American flag hung loosely thanks to the absence of wind.
“Mac,” I groaned loudly enough for him to hear me as I approached the wagging tail on the other side of the trash can. “Mackavelli, come on, man,” I called him again.
His tail just waved in the air more aggressively.
Of course he would ignore me.
He’d been spoiled rotten since he was a puppy, and I hadn’t treated him any worse. Hell, he slept in my bed on the nights he didn’t hog Josh’s. I knew for a fact Mandy had never let him on the couch back when he’d lived with them, but I hadn’t upheld that in two years.
“Mac Daddy, now, come on,” I called out just as I walked around the trash cans to find the tall, long-limbed, grayish-white Wolfhound with his nose to the ground, his butt in the air, and that nearly three-foot long whip-like tail still wagging.
He raised his head and seemed to give me that face that said he was completely innocent of whatever I was assuming he’d been doing. “Come on,” I muttered, slipping my fingers underneath his leather collar, his wiry long hair brushing against the backs of my fingers.
I’d barely begun to tug him back in the direction of the house when a voice called out, “I hope he’s not taking a shit.”
I turned around quickly, caught off guard by how much I hadn’t been paying attention to not notice someone approaching. Sure enough, at the edge of the driveway between this house and Dallas’s was the same man who I’d helped weeks ago. The one who had gotten jumped. The brother. Jack, Jackson, Jackass, whatever his name was; it hadn’t been included on the team’s website.
The yellow discoloring over half his face confirmed it was him even if his features weren’t too familiar to me. He was just as tall as I remembered, and finally seeing him without blood covering his face, I could see he was better looking than the man who was my real neighbor, his brother.
I shook my head, a little uncertainly. Did he have an attitude or was I imagining it? “No. He’s smelling the trash can.” Why did I feel like I’d gotten caught doing something bad?
The man frowned, his gaze darting to Mac, who at the sound of a stranger’s voice had straightened his head and cocked his ears back, his lean body turned in the stranger’s direction. All his attention was focused on the person who was on the verge of standing too close to me. Or maybe he didn’t like the sound of his voice. Knowing Mac, it could be either or.