Chapter Fifty-Two – The Dragon’s Favorite Strays
Chapter Fifty-Two
DAKOTA
No one goes to sleep early that night. Stella has decided to have her babies, hence the smell of blood. The dog pushes out puppy after puppy, much to Aggie and Rabbit’s delight. By the time she’s done, there are nine of them, like little wriggling sausages curled up against her belly. They vary in color from pale to dark, and Aggie is already busy naming them based on the personalities she thinks they’ll have.
“We’ll call the gray one Prince,” she declares, pulling off her wig and setting it on the styrofoam mannequin head she keeps next to her bed…which also used to be my bed. I haven’t had the heart to kick them out of my cozy set-up. It was easier just to set up another room further back into the bookstore. She yawns and gives Stella a fond scratch behind the ears. “For Prince Charming, isn’t that right, baby girl?”
Rabbit doesn’t care for that name. “You can’t call it Prince!” She says with a laugh. “What if it’s a girl?”
“Well, then it throws off the entire naming scheme, doesn’t it?”
“What naming scheme?”
“Prince Charming, Snow White, and then the seven dwarves.” She gestures at the row of wriggling puppies. “Unless you can think of another set of nine. I was going to use the names from Friends if there were only six, but she had to go and give us three more.”
“The friends from who?” Rabbit asks.
“You’re too young,” Dottie says, sounding cranky. She’s curled up in her bedding a short distance away, less charmed by the puppies. “And I’m too old. Can we please go to sleep now? I’m exhausted and y’all are making far too much noise.”
Aggie leans in and rubs Stella’s head. “Someone’s not an animal lover like us.”
“I am, but I am also very tired,” Dottie says, and yawns again. “I promise to love them more in the morning.”
She does look exhausted, and Aggie, too. Rabbit might be able to stay up all night, but not the rest of us. “Why don’t we give the new mom some time alone? Let her bond with her babies. We can check on them in the morning.”
I tap on Rabbit’s arm and she gets up, heading to bed. Aggie’s a little harder to convince, but I remind her she can see Stella’s nest in the plastic kiddie pool from her bed. If the dog needs anything, Aggie is right there. Because I’m a helicopter parent, I make sure Aggie’s comfortable and has enough pillows before heading out of her room. I take our candle (really a teacup filled with tallow and a shoelace for a wick) over to Rabbit’s room to check on her. My daughter is in her bed, three cats curled up next to her and another tucked under her arm like a stuffed animal.
“Night, Mom,” she says, not stirring. “Night, Murr. See ya’ll in the morning.”
She can’t see Murr from her vantage point, but of course she knew he was two steps behind me. In the last few weeks that have passed, it’s become increasingly obvious that Murr is interested in me in a ‘more than friends’ sort of way. He never grabs me and kisses me in front of the others, but the way he looks at me makes it clear that we’re…something.
I’m not entirely sure what. All we do is kiss and sleep together. Initially, that worked great for me because I don’t need a baby with our future so uncertain, and there’s no birth control available. Kissing suits me just fine.
Mostly.
Except that it never goes beyond kissing, and sometimes I wonder if I’m not giving out the right signals. Or should I even be sending signals? Maybe he thinks hot, buttery kisses are the norm between a man and a woman and I should expect nothing more? How does one even broach that subject? Couldn’t help but notice that while we were tonguing, you didn’t really squeeze my tits or go for anything below the belt. Is that a cultural thing or a me thing?
I’ve been leaving it all alone since we’ve been making preparations for ‘Just In Case’. In the last month, I’ve been trying to think of everything possible for just in case Curtis comes back. Or just in case the nearby fort sends people to look for solar panels. Or just in case more strangers show up.
Or just in case Murr gets tired of taking care of all of us and leaves one day.
I have to be ready for every situation, because it’s not just me that’s depending on him for, god, far too many things. Aggie and Dottie are vulnerable. Rabbit is vulnerable. We’ve got the cats and now Stella and her jillion puppies to think about. We’ve fallen off on scavenging for food since he makes it so readily available, and I’ve exchanged that for scavenging for supplies to turn our bookstore into a mini fortress. We’ve got weapons inside and barbed wire on the perimeter. We’ve got booby traps set up in a few strategic places. We’ve got dummies in wigs stationed in a few cars just in case it might fool someone.
I want to be ready for anything, because I want to survive. If that means surviving with a broken heart, I want to be able to handle it. So it’s easier, sometimes, not to ask. I head for my new ‘room’ in the bookstore, in the back section where the children’s books are. I blow out the candle and set it down on a nearby table, and when Murr puts his arms around me and kisses my neck, I tell myself not to ask for more.
Maybe it’s a good thing that kisses are all I’ll ever get.
