Crosswind

Chapter Six: Two of a Kind
“Sounds like me and the good ol’ boy are two of a kind.”

She won’t stop licking my neck and it feels so good.

I don’t know who I brought back home with me last night, but she is damn good at what she does. I snuggle into the covers deeper and giggle at the sound of the slurping noise as it moves from my neck to my jawline. Really, she’s amazing

She won’t stop licking my jaw and I’m afraid that I’m going to get a hickey, but right now I’m not too concerned about that. “Mmm,” I mumble softly against her cold, wet nose…

Wait a minute…nose? Wet? Gross!

I cock one eye open and see the squashed nose and overly pink tongue of my dog, Bella working overtime on my face. I lovingly push her out of the way as I allow myself to take in the light that’s filtering in through the windows in my room.

“What do you want at…eight o’clock in the morning, girl?” I ask Bella who is now lying down beside me, tail wagging and a bemused expression on her wrinkled face. She squirms a bit before she attacks me again and starts to lick my face. “Did Trace forget to feed you again?” She responds by letting out a joyful yelp before she tumbles out of bed and rushes towards the door, waiting for me to follow her.

This is what it must feel like to have kids. Only they probably don’t lick you awake. And Bella doesn’t have an annoying, high pitched voice that begs to play trucks or Barbies. I manage to pull myself out of bed and I get dressed quickly. I’m not doing anything crazy today, which is a good thing. The fact that I’m in the middle of a huge promotional whirlwind with Justified is not helping me at all. Especially with this semi-broken foot.

Thankfully it’s healing well and all I have to do is wrap it now and wear a brace. And I guess I should see it as a curse, but it couldn’t have come at a better time. Having this broken foot means cancelled appearances, disappointed fans, and money lost. But the way I see it, it means I can take a couple of weeks off for the Christmas holidays and not have to worry about anything insanely stressful.

Thank God.

I walk downstairs as best I can before I hear the sound of kibble pounding against Bella’s giant dog bowl. So apparently someone decided to feed my dog. Can only mean one thing – Trace is back from another night of crazy partying with Elisha.

Rounding the corner, I see that my thoughts are confirmed. Trace is dumping Bella’s food into the bowl and Elisha is sitting at the table, head down due to exhaustion from last night’s escapades.

“Rough night?” I ask as I make my way for the cabinets that contain my cereal. Trace and Elisha both look up at the same time and I think Elisha just threw me a dirty look. Not my fault if I got a good amount of sleep while she was out doping around with my best friend.

“Dude, you missed a killer party last night. Bummer you missed it,” Trace crows and I give him a skeptical look. This party is probably going to knock him and his girlfriend out for the rest of the day in about twenty minutes. I’m glad I missed it. I might be a night owl, but I like seeing daylight sometimes.

“Yeah, bummer,” I repeat as I pour out my Captin’ Crunch. I can sense that Trace is getting upset at my lack of interest in his drunken debauchery but I don’t really care. I’m tired, I’ll probably have to take another valium later on today, and I’m sure Johnny is going to be calling so we can go over all the shit I’m missing this week and the next.

“Hmm, well I think Bella needs to go on a…”

“Don’t say it Trace! Don’t say the ‘W’ word.” If Trace goes there, there’ll be no stopping Bella. She’ll bowl me over and won’t leave me alone until I get her leash and take her out on a W-A-L-K.

“Walk.”

The results are exactly like I predicted. Bella immediately stops eating her food and she looks over at me, ears perked and tail wagging viciously. Before I can let a string of curse words fly in Trace’s general direction, Bella has bounded over and is now jumping all over me and hardly letting me get a word in as it is.

“Bella! No! Down!” I say yelling the various commands that are supposed to get her to behave like a well-trained dog. So much for obedience school. Trace is laughing his ass off and I throw him a dirty look as Bella continues to jump like a crazy ass.

“Alright! Alright!” I relent as I walk around the corner, Bella still nipping at my heels, “We’ll go for a fucking walk!” she yelps even louder and starts to spin in circles as I reveal her long leash. “I hope you’re happy you ass,” I say to Trace, “I have to take this walking disaster out with a gimp foot.”

“Sounds like a personal problem to me!” Trace exalts before he wraps his arm around an inebriated Elisha and guides her from the kitchen.

Sighing loudly, more to myself than to anybody else, I latch the leash onto Bella’s collar and soon she’s yanking me out of the house and onto the street.

The early December morning is clear and somewhat chilly as Bella prances down the street. This is the kind of weather I miss whenever I’m in extremely cold climates. I don’t think I could live in New York during the winter time. It’s freezing there in October when it’s still a sweet seventy-five degrees here in California.

Bella pulls me towards her favorite place on earth, the park that’s a few blocks down the street from my house. I try to take her there myself at least once a week if I’m in town, but sometimes Trace has to do it if I’m not there, or I have Mama drive over to take care of my baby girl.

Soon the myriad of sniffs begins and I’m stopping every three seconds so Bella can smell what animal was snooping around the night before. It’s a trying process but it gives me time to look around and appreciate the place I live and all the good things that’s going on in my life. 

We finally reach our destination after another fifteen minutes of crazy sniffing. Bella lets out a gleeful bark as she jumps around and tries to break free from her leash at the sight of the park. I hold fast because the last time I let the crazy dog off her leash, I got a ticket from some random bicycle cop who proclaimed that dogs were not allowed to be off their leash at any time.

Stupid.

Bella finally realizes she isn’t getting off the leash and so she placidly falls beside me as we take an early morning stroll through the park. Thankfully there are only a few early morning joggers or other dog walkers and I know that I’m not going to be bothered. After all, most teenagers are still in bed or on their way to school, depending on what day it is. Is it Friday or Saturday?

“Omelet! Omelet would you get your ass back here?” a voice echoes through the park, “Omelet, no!”

And out of nowhere, an enormous mastiff comes bounding in our direction straight towards Bella. His huge tongue is flopping out of his mouth and slobber is spewing everywhere. He looks like one of those insane dogs that come out of the blue and just attack you. His paws are as big as my face and if it weren’t for his tail wagging a mile a second I’d expect him to fight my poor girl to the death.

But Bella lets out a joyful bark and jumps up and down and pulls herself out of my grasp. She leaps in the direction of the monster and they begin the process of sniffing asses and licking faces. The dog is twice the size of Bella and it looks as though he’s still a puppy. Good God that thing is going to be huge.

“I am so sorry!” a voice exclaims off to my right. I turn around to see a woman around my age jog up to me. Her brown hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail and she’s wearing exercise clothes and looking very out of breath. She holds up a broken lead line and I realize that this dog that’s currently running around the park with Bella is a lot stronger than he looks. “Sometimes he doesn’t know his own strength.”

This girl doesn’t even look like she would own a dog like that. She’s of average height, but that dog is going to be taller than her if he decides to stand on his hind legs. And I know how some people say they look like their dogs, but she doesn’t even begin to resemble the features of a mastiff. She’s gorgeous.

“That’s your dog?” I question and she nods breathlessly.

“Yeah, he’s still a little boy and he’s kind of stupid, but I love him just the same,” she says with a bright laugh, “I’m Leah.”

“Justin,” I respond. She hasn’t shown any indication as to knowing who I am and I’m grateful for that. I wouldn’t want her to flip out on me with an ‘Oh-my-God-Justin-Timberlake’s-dog-is-playing-with-mine!’ episode but she doesn’t strike me as the star struck person at all. She looks real laid back.

“Pleasure. Sorry about Omelet. He gets real excited when he sees another dog. I try again and again to train him, but every single obedience school I’ve gone to with him has kicked him out. And they’ve all requested that he not come back. I don’t know what his deal is,” she explains with a small shrug. I think she could care less if her dog was well trained.

“It’s okay. I’m surprised Bella is getting along this well with him. She usually doesn’t really care for new dogs,” I explain as we watch the two run around and play. I don’t care if a police officer comes round and gives me a ticket, I’m enjoying the conversation at hand.

“Is that her name? It suits her,” Leah says softly. I look over at Omelet as he shakes viciously and a waterfall of saliva manages to get all over my nicely groomed dog. I laugh loudly and watch Leah break into an ear splitting grin.

“Yeah, I think Omelet is a good name for him.”

I whistle for Bella and she turns her head towards me and comes bounding in our direction immediately. Omelet looks slightly affronted that I’d take away his playmate so soon but he comes dashing over nonetheless. In fact, he’s running so fast that I don’t think he’s going to stop.

Omelet continues to race towards Leah and he forgets to put on the brakes. He collides into Leah and she goes flying over the dog, landing squarely on her back on the still wet grass. I hear the wind get knocked out of her and she looks slightly dazed as Omelet prances back towards us and sits down right above his owner’s head.

“Holy shit, are you okay?” I ask as I turn around to help Leah up.

“Stupid fucking dog. I’m going to turn you into glue,” she mutters at the animal. She doesn’t sound mean tempered, and by the glint in her eyes, she’s totally joking. The dog responds by leaning forward and licking her squarely in the face. “Ew!” she responds before she sits up and lovingly pats him on the head.

I reach out a hand for her to take and she obliges. Pulling her to her feet, I look down at the ground and my eyes meet her knee. The left one is skinned pretty badly and there’s a trickle of blood running down her leg. She follows my gaze and lets out a small curse.

“I live right down the block. If you come with me we can patch that up. And Omelet and Bella can play around a bit out back before you leave,” I offer. She looks up at me with a questioning gaze.

“Is this where you take me back to your place, kill me and my dog and then proceed to cut us up and turn us into soap?” she jokes. I laugh as we both start to limp back to my place.

“Well I do have a glue factory out back if your threat to Omelet still stands…” she throws back her head and laughs loudly at my joke and I find myself getting pulled in by how relaxed she is.

On our short walk back to my place we start to talk about her. Leah was born and raised in Miami, Florida and she lived there until she was about six years old before moving out to California. I haven’t really said anything and I hope she doesn’t think I’m a complete jerk. I just don’t say a lot of shit when I first meet people.

“But yeah…this little guy,” she explains pointing to Omelet as we walk down the gravel driveway to my house, “lives with my Uncle up here since he can’t stay holed up in my apartment down the street all day. But I come up here to visit him all the time,” Leah adds as she looks down at her knee. It’s really bleeding now and I hope it isn’t so deep that it requires me to play Knight in Shining Armor.

“We should get that fixed up as soon as possible,” I state quietly before I open the gate at the side of the house and let the dogs run out into the backyard. Their chorus of barks echo throughout the yard and I really hope it keeps Trace up, just to piss him off.

She nods and we continue to hobble into my house. “What did you do to your foot?” she questions and I laugh quietly as I lead her into the kitchen.

“Dancing. I landed on it wrong and it broke,” I explain and she nods thoughtfully. I motion for her to sit on the counter next to the sink while I go around the corner and pull out a first aid kit that we’ve never used before.

Leah’s already pulled the leg of her pants up and over her knee, the abrasion completely visible for all to see. It looks pretty gnarly and I can’t really believe I have this stranger who doesn’t seem like a stranger to me, in my house and I’m about to play Nurse Nightingale. This should be interesting.

“Do you have training for this?” Leah asks sarcastically before she laughs to show that she isn’t trying to be a smart ass. I laugh along with her as I put some rubbing alcohol on a cloth. Hopefully she has a high tolerance for…

“Ow! Mother fucker!” Leah gripes loudly as I apply the cloth to her bleeding knee, “That hurts like a bitch!”

“Sorry,” I apologize, “But I have to get this clean or it’s going to get infected. And I don’t know how to amputate legs,” I quip. The furrow in her brow softens and then disappears as she tries her best to not unleash every swear word in the human language on my ears. I don’t care, swearing is an every day occurrence with me and I really don’t care who says it around me.

“Thanks, and sorry for snapping at you. It just caught me by surprise,” Leah says sheepishly after I’m finished bandaging her knee. I grab her hand and help her down from the counter, trying my best to not pay attention to how soft her hands are.

“Naw, I’m a big baby when it comes to pain, too.”

“Glad to know I’m not the only one,” she responds with a kind grin. I take extra care to notice how her eyes light up every time she flashes her wonderful smile.

“Why did you name him Omelet?” I ask her totally out of the blue. She looks almost taken aback as I lead her into the living room where I sit down on the couch and she follows my lead. We have a perfect view of the backyard and I just catch a blur of two dogs rushing around on the grass.

“When I first brought him home, my cousin was cooking an omelet and, when he was finished with it, he put the plate on the ground so Omelet could lick off the rest of the stuff left on the plate. But the little booger just sat down on the plate and started to roll around on it. So I called him Omelet and the name stuck. Why did you name her Bella?” she counters.

“Well I’ve always wanted to learn Italian and bella means ‘beautiful,’ in Itlaian so that’s what I decided to name her…”

“So is bella the only word you know?” she jokes.

“I know ciao, too,” I counter and she holds up her hands in mock defeat.

“Touché. That was French,” she adds and soon we’re both laughing as if we’ve been friends for years instead of mere acquaintances. Apparently our laughing carried through the house because Trace is stumbling into the living room, obviously in a bad mood seeing as he’s been woken up from his sleep.

“What the fuck is going on out here? Are you having the comedy hour or what?”

“Leah, my roommate and best friend, Trace. Trace, this is Leah,” I begin and I notice Trace’s eyes widen as he inspects Leah sitting on the couch and watching him with keen interest.

“Sup?” he says groggily, “Justin, seriously…you pick up girls everywhere.” I give Trace my best ‘shut the fuck up because you’re embarrassing me,’ look and he seems to take the hint. “It was nice meeting you, Leah. Don’t let him attempt to get into your pants until at least the third date,” he mumbles before he turns around and walks back to his room. Now I’m super embarrassed.

“So was this a ploy to pick me up? Are you in cahoots with my dog so you could meet me?” Leah questions as she leans back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest.

“Totally. Because it says in my job description that I can talk to animals.”

“Well next time, can you make sure that he doesn’t drag me halfway across the park? I would really appreciate that.”

“Sure thing…” I’m about to give her another witty remark but there’s a small thump coming from outside and it seems that Omelet has run into the glass door in an attempt to get to Leah.

“Stupid dog,” Leah mutters under her breath. I watch as Bella comes up beside the enormous mastiff and sits beside him. She lets her head rest on his ribs and she looks at me with sad eyes.

“Well,” I begin to say as I look over towards Leah, “seeing as I can talk to animals and all, Bella is informing me that she really likes Omelet and would like to see him again for another play date. She also says that the next time he comes over, we don’t have to stay here and watch them have all the fun…” I’m about to continue but Omelet interrupts me with a huge ‘woof.’ Leah looks at me with bewilderment, as if she’s actually starting to believe I can talk to dogs before I continue. “And Omelet agrees. He thinks that we should go out and make our own fun.”

“Oh really?” Leah asks as she gets to her feet and walks over towards me. My heart starts to race and I realize that I’m actually asking this girl, whom I’ve only known for about an hour out on a date. Is this how it works in the real world? I have no idea because my idea of the real world is getting free designer clothes and dancing with models night after night. Her idea of normalcy is probably going on a date without having cameras shoved in her face and stuffing her face with ice cream because she doesn’t have to worry about a nutritionist telling her what she needs to eat.

“Yeah,” I explain coyly. When did I get this ballsy around the opposite sex? Normally I would sit there quietly and let her do all the talking and not be nearly as cocky or sure of myself as I’m being right now. But she makes me comfortable and I guess that’s a good thing. Especially since she isn’t making this awkward and she’s good spirited about all of this.

“How does this Friday sound?” she questions. I quickly wrack through my schedule in my head. As far as I know I’m clear but something always pops up at the last minute. I’ll have to talk to Trace about it.

“Sounds good to me. I just have to make extra sure that there isn’t anything going on then, but I think I’m clear.”

“Great,” she explains before she pulls out her phone and I quickly spew out my number. I can’t believe I’m doing this. She gives me hers and soon I’m walking her through my backyard so she can grab Omelet.

Bella looks up at me sadly as the two walk down the street, a slight limp inhibiting Leah’s walk. My dog whines and nudges my leg before I look down at her and pat her head.

“Don’t worry, they’ll be back soon.”