Looking up, I watched as they took off at a slow trot and whistled for Bogey to jump up behind me. While they were riding, I was going to go through the list of options for what to get her for Christmas. Well, so long as the death breath being panted over my shoulder didn’t kill me first.Three days later…
“Parker’s an asshole.”
Looking up from the screen of his laptop, Archer raised his eyebrows. “Not got the results back yet?”
Shaking my head, I sat down in the chair on the opposite side of his desk. Looking around his office, I realized what was missing. “Where’s the Gila monster?”
“The what?”
“Gila monster. It’s a venomous lizard, how don’t you know this?”
Still looking confused, he looked around his office. “I know what it is, but I don’t get what you’re talking about because I don’t have one.”
“Sure you do,” I nodded over at the dog bed in the corner of his office. “He’s got four legs, droopy ears, drools everywhere, and goes by the name of Bogey.”
“He’s not venomous, asshole,” he snapped, throwing his pen at my head and hitting me in the beard.
“Respect the beard, pube face. And when was the last time you had his breath tested?”
Ignoring me, he went back to whatever was on his screen. Welp, I knew a cure for that. “Ok, I’ll tell Bonnie you said hi when I see her at my house in… oh,” I looked at my watch, “twenty minutes. Catch you later.”
I only got as far as the door when he gave in.
“She’s going to your house?”
“Yup,” I threw over my shoulder, taking the corner in the direction of the exit to the office building we worked out of.
With everything going on with Lottie, I was lucky that it was so close to home and also that I could work from home. I rarely went to the drilling sites nowadays, I was more of the planning, permission, contracts and paperwork guy which I loved doing.
Just as I cleared the door, he came running up beside me and fell into step with me. I didn’t have favorite siblings, but if I did, it would probably be Archer. Personality wise he was like Noah, but he was more closed off and a great listener. When he let his humor out, though, he was fucking hilarious. I just found it easy to be around him – and to wind him up.
Which I was going to do now.
“Where you headed?”
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he kept his eyes forward as he mumbled, “Figured I’d head and see if there was anything I could do to help out at yours.”
“She said if you were there she wasn’t coming.”
Grabbing my shoulder, he turned me around to face him. “Is that what she said? Jesus Christ, I wasn’t paying attention and when it happened it I wasn’t expecting it, so I…” he stopped and squinted at me. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”
Refusing to answer the question, I started walking again. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
“Wait,” he called, jogging to catch up with me. “What does that mean?”
I wasn’t sure, but I was hoping they’d made some popcorn. I wanted to see what was going to happen.Turned out, the joke was on me. Nothing seemed different when I walked through the front door. The girls were all sitting on the couches in the living room, but there were bags of shit everywhere.
Glancing at the top of one as I passed it, I frowned at the blue cushion poking out of the top. Blue? Where was she going to put blue?
The thing was, I didn’t have it in me to even care if she did. She could change whatever she wanted, so long as I still had some green in my bedroom. And the den. And some out in the living room. Ok, so she could add some blue in with the green.
“You redecorating, Lottie?”
“No?” she rasped, looking at me like I was crazy.
Walking over to where she was sitting at the end of the couch, I sat down on the armrest and leaned into her.
“What’s with the blue cushion then?”
That’s when I heard it. Small scratching noises followed by what sounded like high pitched squeaks. Archer – who’d been discretely looking at Bonnie the whole time – heard it at the same time and looked around the room for the source.
“You guys got rats?”
Standing up, I looked around the room just as a tiny speck of brown dappled with white shot past my foot, followed by another one.
I dare any man to say he didn’t do what I did, which was to get back on the armrest and lift my legs in the air.
Archer went a step further when he yelled and stepped up on the armrest closest to him – which just so happened to be Bonnie’s and put his dick at the same height as her face. Oh, you bet your ass she looked.