Otterly Scorched

by Tara Sivec

  “Hanging out at whose house?”

  “The blue, two-story colonial way down at the end, right?” he asks.

  I nod, and Davidson nods with me.

  “Yep, that’s Big-Kickin’-It’s house. As soon as Dad told Dax the address, I recognized it. I think his real name might be Adam, but nobody calls him that. He doesn’t even look like an Adam. Do you need weed? You could have just asked me. It’s not really cool to hang around on a drug dealer’s street all night, waiting for them to come out, and ask them for drugs. They kind of frown on that,” Davidson explains as I turn back around and smack my head against my steering wheel.

  “Of course. Of course the guy I’ve been surveilling all night and tracking all month is your fucking weed dealer.”

  I feel a warm hand start rubbing small, soothing circles in the middle of my back, and since I know my brother wouldn’t do anything so stupid for fear of losing his hand, Dax is the one trying to comfort me right now. And I can’t even say trying. He’s doing it, and I don’t even have the urge to shove him away. I feel warm, and floaty, and I don’t have a care in the world.

  “Ohhh, he’s got the dog you’ve been looking for!” Davidson says, snapping his fingers together while I keep my eyes closed and let Dax’s hand continue taking me to Don’t Give a Fuck Town. “I’ll just go knock on the door and ask him for it. Big-Kickin’-It is pretty chill, as long as you don’t owe him money.”

  Davidson is out of the car before I can stop him, and I whip my head up from the steering wheel and start to get out of the car after him. Dax’s hand wraps around my arm, and he gently pulls me away from my door and closer to him across the center console.

  “Let him handle it. If he gets shot by a drug dealer, he gets shot by a drug dealer.”

  I let out my first laugh since my idiot brother got in my car.

  “Seriously. He’s a grown-ass man. Let him pull his weight a little with Claws and Effect and give you a break. I brought cherry pie,” Dax bribes, nodding his head in the direction of the bag still down by his feet.

  Fuck yeah, pie!

  I look away from Dax long enough to grab my camera and look through the zoom lens to make sure my brother is not actually about to get shot by a drug dealer. When I see him standing on the front porch of the blue house in the distance, under the glow of a porch light with an elderly woman, talking and throwing his head back in laughter, I put the camera back on the dashboard in surprise.

  “Go on a date with me,” Dax says softly, my head jerking away from the house down the street to look back at him.

  I’m getting weaker by the minute here, especially knowing he brought pie. And I know he didn’t buy the pie. He made that damn thing with his hot, bare hands, working and kneading the dough with his big, strong muscles. And he probably taste-tested the filling, just to make sure it was up to his standards. His lips and his tongue probably still taste like cherry.

  I think I might black out.

  Looking away from him again before I climb right on top of his lap in my front seat, I shake my head back and forth. “Sorry, can’t think about that right now,” I tell him, taking a deep, calming breath as I reach for my door handle.

  “Oh yeah? And why is that?” The humor is strong in his voice, and I actually feel a little bad for crushing his dreams right now.

  Ovaries: And ours. Let’s not forget about ours, you dream-killing bitch.

  “Oh, because I have to make a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound German Shepherd, which only knows German commands, stop trying to eat my brother, who he currently has pinned to the ground in the middle of the street.”

  I hear Dax mutter a quiet “Oh shit” as I scramble out of the car, saved once again from having to come up with a reason why I can’t date him.

  I have officially run out of reasons.

  CHAPTER 12

  Why Are You Hugging a Tree?

  Harley

  Dax: I’m just saying, the next time you’re gonna shout German commands like a boss, you need to warn a man.

  Me: You’re being ridiculous.

  Dax: The situation in my pants last night was ridiculous. You were like a hot German dominatrix. My balls got excited and shriveled up in fear at the same time. It was fascinating.

  Me: Why are you like this? There was nothing hot about me screaming at a scary police K9 to get off my brother.

  Dax: You didn’t scream. You commanded. In the middle of the goddamn street, stopping traffic, with your hands on your hips and the wind billowing your hair out behind you, while on-lookers cheered your name when you effortlessly took control of the beast and saved your brother. Like a fucking German warrior queen. That’s hot.

  Me: I was on my hands and knees in the grass, because I tripped over the curb. There was one guy on his porch who said, “Get off my fucking lawn, you weirdo!” And I mixed up the commands for “heel” and “attack,” because they both start with F. I still don’t know why in the hell the officer felt the need to even teach me the word for attack. That was just asking for trouble.

  Dax: You are seriously ruining my fantasy. RUINING IT. Quick, yell at me in German.

  Me: You’re exhausting.

  Dax: I left a present on your desk that will perk you right up. When you get time today, stop by the sanctuary so we can discuss. Well, I left the present on the filing cabinet next to your desk. Your desk was filled with an alarming amount of crabs. With very large, googly eyes in place of their real eyes.

  Me: Oh no. You’ve seen your birthday present. Act surprised when my dad gives it to you.

  Dax: Fuck yeah! I’m getting a party box? He really does like me. Wait, crabs? Should I be worried that your dad is giving me crabs? Charlie Blake’s been a naughty boy it seems.

  Me: First of all, never type or even think that sentence again. Second, he did some research and found out otters eat crabs, and you love otters, who eat crabs. So, there you go. I’m going to work now. Leave me alone and stop bothering me. Sitz! Bleib!

  Dax: Marry me.

  I’m still smiling as I walk into my dad’s garage office, staring down at my phone screen after telling Dax to sit and stay in German. I should have walked into the office fifteen minutes ago, but I’ve been sitting out in my car, continuing the text conversation Dax started with me when I woke up this morning. I try to tell myself I’m only in such a great mood because of the strawberry and blueberry cream cheese crepes I ate for breakfast that Dax gave me before I left him last night to return the German Shepherd to his owner, but that would be a lie.

  I guess I’m done lying to myself now or some shit.

  “What are you so smiley about?” my dad asks from the couch when the door slams shut behind me, the corner of this morning’s paper pulled back from his face as he looks across the room at me.

  I quickly wipe the dumb grin off my face and shove my phone in my back pocket as I walk over to the filing cabinet.

  “Nothing. I’m not smiley.”

  Not done lying to my dad yet, I see though.

  “Got a text from the girly man, did ya?” He chuckles, making my blood suddenly start to boil.

  “Will you stop calling him that? It’s getting annoying. His name is Dax. Use it or stop talking about him.”

  My dad slowly lowers the rest of the newspaper down onto his lap, and Davidson’s face slowly peeks into the doorway from the kitchen, an entire bagel sticking out of his mouth. At least I think it’s a bagel. It’s the same color as a hockey puck.

  “Shit,” I mutter under my breath, turning away from both of their wide, stunned eyes to look down at the stack of mail and the small Tupperware container on top of the filing cabinet.

  The silence in the room stretches on for so long that I can’t take it anymore. With a sigh, I look back over my shoulder to find my dad and brother still in the exact same poses.

  “I’m gonna mess this up,” I whisper when no one says anything.

  “No, you won’t,” my dad reassures me.

  “Oh absolutel
y,” Davidson says at the same time.

  My dad grabs a pillow from the couch and chucks it at Davidson, hitting him square in the face and knocking the hockey puck out of his mouth.

  “Goddammit! It took me an hour and an entire dozen to not catch one on fire!” Davidson complains, snatching his burnt bagel from the ground before disappearing into the kitchen. “Five second rule, bitches!”

  Once he’s gone, I turn away from my dad to pull the Tupperware container closer, the ones with the blue lids that Dax always uses. When I open one corner of the lid to peek inside, I moan at the smell of homemade brownies. Wondering why we need to discuss brownies at The Backyard today, I quickly close the lid when I hear my dad come up next to me.

  “Dax helped me put all my party boxes in the basement yesterday, so they aren’t cluttering up the office anymore,” he says, making sure to stress the use of Dax’s name.

  I glance around the room and realize that aside from the googly-eyed crabs cluttering the top of my desk, there aren’t any other dead animals staring at me in their wooden, dead animal boxes.

  “The other day when he was dropping off that security footage, he ran me up to the emergency room so you wouldn’t have to.”

  “What?” I shout, looking him over from head to toe for injuries.

  My dad shoos me away with his hands when I notice one of his fingers wrapped with medical gauze and tape.

  “It’s fine. It was no big deal. There was a crab I thought was dead that wasn’t really dead, and he didn’t appreciate the tiny T-shirt I was trying to put on him that said Don’t Be Crabby. In conclusion, I got two stitches in my finger when he clamped on and wouldn’t let go, and we now have a pet in the guest bathroom tub that Davidson named Leonardo Da Pinchi.”

  My dad doesn’t even give me time to process this insane information before continuing. “He taught Davidson how to use the toaster.”

  My eyebrows rise questioningly while I stare at my dad, wondering if the burning sensation I’ve been feeling in my nostrils since I walked in is temporary or if I’ll be smelling all the bagels Davidson torched for the rest of my life.

  “Fine, so the toaster is taking a while to catch on.” My dad sighs. “But he’s got boiling water down pat, and that only took three hours for Dax to teach him on Monday, while you were meeting with that zoo all day.”

  Something tight and scratchy starts clawing at my throat, making it hard for me to swallow while my dad continues telling me stuff I wondered about over the last week but didn’t know with absolute certainty. I haven’t had to put out my dad and Davidson’s fires over the last week, because Dax has been doing it. Literally.

  “I’m scared,” I finally admit after a few quiet minutes. “I like him. What if it doesn’t work out? I don’t exactly have a great track record.”

  “Do you think if I’d know your mom and me weren’t gonna work out, that I would have done things any differently? That I wouldn’t have taken that chance?”

  “It would have saved you from having an emotionally stunted daughter and a loser for a son.” I shrug.

  “I am not a loser!” Davidson yells from somewhere in the kitchen. “Dax says I’m just not living up to my full potential!”

  “Oh my God,” I mutter when my dad laughs.

  “See? Look at all the good he’s done in just a week. Imagine what he could do with your brother in a month or even a year?”

  “Dax isn’t here to teach Davidson how to become a fully functioning adult,” I remind him.

  “Of course not, it’s just an added bonus. I also got to cuddle an otter the other day. I’d like to continue doing that for the foreseeable future, so try not to forget his name anytime soon.”

  “Seriously,” Davidson says, sticking his head back in the room from the kitchen. “Don’t screw it up. We like him. He uses his inside voice with us. You’re mean.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “See?” Davidson complains. “Dax would have told me to kindly remove myself from the room. So that’s what I’m gonna do before you say something to me you’ll regret.”

  “Fuck. Off!” I yell at the top of my lungs when he goes back in the kitchen, just because it feels good and it’s better than crying with all these overwhelming emotions I’m feeling.

  “You’ll be fine. Just keep remembering his name, and everything will work out. Left the mail there on the cabinet, if you want to go through it.”

  Grabbing the stack of mail from the top of the filing cabinet, I flip through it quickly as my dad goes back over to the couch to finish reading his paper. When I see two postcards in between the bills and junk mail, I set everything else down, wondering who we know that went on vacation. One’s from Texas, with a picture of the Alamo on it, and one’s from Virginia Beach, with a picture of the hotel boardwalk and ocean on it. Flipping them over, I quickly read the messages on the back of them, my heart starting to beat a little faster with excitement.

  Grabbing a brownie out of the Tupperware container and popping it into my mouth, I groan in satisfaction when the chocolate hits my tongue. Putting the lid back on, I wave a quick goodbye to my dad and head to the door. Thinking better of it, I backtrack halfway there to grab the brownies to take with me before racing outside.

  At least now I’ve got a valid reason to go to The Backyard, instead of just to discuss the delicious brownies Dax dropped off and to tell him I think I’m agreeing to go on a date with him.

  Glancing back down at the two postcards as I get inside my car, I smile to myself, tossing them onto the passenger seat with the brownies.

  I also get to tell Dax we finally have a break in his missing otter case.

  Stopping right outside the door to the otter habitat that leads to Dax’s office, I pause and look down at my legs, wondering why they suddenly feel so weird and not attached to my body. Staring down at my them just makes me dizzy, so I look back up at the door and close my eyes.

  “Oh hell… that was a bad idea,” I mutter, my eyes flying back open as I lean forward to rest my forehead against the cold metal of the door while I stare down at the ground and silently will everything around me to stop spinning.

  I was perfectly fine when I came up the walkway from the parking lot a few minutes ago, until the entire ground I was walking on started tilting and my head started feeling fuzzy.

  “Fuzzy, fuzzy, fuzzy….” I mutter, laughing to myself until I hear shouting coming from the other side of the door.

  “Bullshit! You came here to make sure I’m not fucking anything up!”

  Jerking my head back from the door when I hear an angry, muffled shout on the other side of it, the ground starts tilting again when I move too fast, and I stumble backward a few feet. I have to fling my arms around the trunk of a small tree next to me to stop myself from falling.

  “Harley, is that you? Why are you hugging a tree?”

  I know that voice, and I know that voice to be Nanci. Nanci is wise, and Nanci will stop the earth from tilting.

  “I don’t know why I’m hugging a tree, Nanci.” I sigh, refusing to let go of the tree when she walks up to stand next to me.

  “Dax is in there with his father. They’ve been arguing for the last half hour. It’s a good thing you’re here,” she informs me.

  I hear more shouting inside the building. It’s all coming from Dax, and I don’t like it. He sounds hurt, and really mad, and I need to tell Nanci I have to go calm him down.

  “I need to go in there, because I like cheese.”

  Nanci just looks at me like I’m crazy, and I shrug.

  “I don’t know either, Nanci. I’m unable to control the things coming out of my mouth right now, and your name is fun to say. Wow, I really don’t think my legs are there anymore,” I complain, hugging onto the tree tighter as I look down at my legs that are surprisingly still there.

  Before I can stop Nanci and try to figure out why my brain suddenly turned into mashed potatoes a few minutes ago, she walks away from me and my good buddy the tree
to yank open the office door.

  Two sets of matching hazel eyes whip to me at the sound of the door opening—one looking completely pissed off and about ready to flip his desk, the other with a few more age lines around the corners of his eyes, looking frustrated and sad.

  “My legs are fine!” I yell to both men in greeting, wishing I had the power to stop talking.

  I also can’t stop staring at Dax when he walks out of his office and stalks toward me, pausing just a few inches away. With my cheek smushed against the rough bark of the tree, I stare up into his gorgeous eyes, finally taking a minute to appreciate the happy, floaty feeling I’m experiencing now that Dax is near.

  “Any particular reason why you’re standing outside of my office, hugging one of my trees?” Dax asks, a smile tipping up the corners of his mouth instead of the angry scowl that was there seconds ago when the door flew open.

  “Why do people keep asking me that?” I complain. “Look, I was fine. F-I-N-E fine… until I got here. I was just driving over here, minding my business, and I ate the present you left for me, and now I think someone has removed my legs from my body, and we should go find them.”

  Dax lets out a soft laugh, reaching up to brush a piece of hair out of my eyes.

  “Thank you,” I purr like a kitten when his fingertips brush my forehead. “I couldn’t see around that thing, and didn’t know how to remove it without falling. You’re a gem.”

  Dax laughs softly again, and I give the tree another squeeze.

  “Did you say you ate the postcard I left for you?”

  “I ate a postcard? What the shit? Get it out of me!” I shout in confusion, pulling my cheek away from the tree but still holding on tight.

  “You said you ate the present I left for you. I left you a postcard I got from Chris and Lincoln that came from Virginia. I didn’t leave you anything to eat,” Dax explains, bringing his hands up between us to press his palms to either side of my cheeks.

  Gently holding my face in his hands, he tilts it up and looks back and forth between my eyes for a few quiet seconds before letting out another soft chuckle when he sees something that amuses him.