Yes, I Am

Chapter Twenty Five.

June 5, 2016.

"If you don't, you'll suffer," Caleb sang happily. From his tone, you wouldn't know that he was trying to convince me to go to a nightclub with him. In his defence, he wanted me to loosen up. Although why he thought putting in a room jampacked with people stinking of booze and sex and desperation with bright lights and way-too-loud music would 'loosen' me up.

To infuriate him further, I launched into the chorus of 'All About That Bass', substituting bass with home and treble with clubbing. To his credit, he tried really hard to act like he wasn't amused.

"I kid you not, I'll drag you there by force," he warned with a glare. It was a good glare. He would have looked way scarier if he didn't look like a cute little kitten in his favourite furry mermaid's tears sweater. It didn't help that he was walking an Old English sheepdog that looked like it had just jumped out of a bag of cotton.

"If you do, you'll suffer," I said in the same singsong voice he'd been using on me earlier.

JonWon, the overenthusiastic dog, tried to break free from his leash's hold, tugging Caleb forward suddenly so that he almost tripped. He managed to gain his composure and wrap the leash around his hand again before JonWon escaped. When he saw me laughing at his plight, he curled his upper lip and growled at me, coincidentally much like a dog would do.

"Here, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny," he crooned, ignoring me, while petting his soft fur as JonWon sniffed around the sidewalk like he'd found RDX buried under there.

I tilted my head to one side, as serious an expression as I could muster painted across my face. "If he's Johnny, does that make you Johnnie Walker?" I mused.

"Ha, ha. Look who is funny all of a sudden."

I held out my hand for him to clasp and stand up. "Don't make a face, my tall glass of whiskey," I crooned to him the same way he'd been crooning to the dog earlier.

If he wasn't so amused, he would have killed me. He was about to stand up when the dog started bouncing around again, this time on and around him, and he fell down on his ass with the adorable ball of fur licking his face and waving his tail in the air like he finally found the treasure they'd promised was hidden in the backyard. I was laughing so hard that I was doubled over, clutching my knees. Every time I tried to stop, my eyes fell on little Johnny overpowering the big hulk of man with his tongue and cuteness and I dissolved into a fit of giggles again.

One time in high school, Austin and I were coming back from a different route that we usually took. Behind some bushes at the entrance of a park, we found a cardboard box full of puppies. There were five or six of them, all brown with black spots, whining and yapping their teeth to gain affection from the two teenaged strangers that had discovered them. It didn't matter that Austin had dirt all over his hair from playing in the dusty school grounds all afternoon or that I looked like the epitome of nerd with huge ugly spectacles that nobody wanted to be associated with. They were just little creatures looking for someone to love them. They didn't judge.

"We should get a dog," I said, still cracking up.

"Sure, sure, so you can ignore him like you ignore me," he said.

"I don't ignore you," I said with a mock offended gasp.

"Prove that by going to a club with me this Saturday night," he said. Handing me the leash, he gained his composure and stood up with all the dignity left inside of him, dusting off his jeans from the front and back. There was still a little dust print on his ass and I would have totally wiped it off if we weren't in public and Johnny wasn't trying to break free from my firm captivity. I would also not have stumbled if I was paying a little less attention to his ass and a little more attention to the overexcited dog. Of course, Caleb laughed harder than I had been.