Lesbian With Dog Seeks Same Read online

  Lesbian With Dog Seeks Same

  Lesbian Light Reads 3

  by

  Elizabeth Andre

  Published by Tulabella Ruby Press

  Copyright 2015 Elizabeth Andre/All Rights Reserved

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

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  Other titles by Elizabeth Andre:

  The Time Slip Girl

  Learning to Kiss Girls

  Taijiku

  Love’s Perfect Vintage

  Bodies in Motion

  Right Time For Love

  Landing Love

  Lesbian Light Reads Volumes 1-6 Boxed Set

  The Beauty Queen Called Twice

  Skating on Air

  Someone Like Her

  Roll With Me

  Stop and Go

  Nice Jewish Girls

  Lesbian Light Reads Volumes 7-12 Boxed Set

  Love Most Likely

  Tested: Sex, love, and friendship in the shadow of HIV

  Joy For Julie

  Give Me Thorns: A Lesbian BDSM Romance

  Editor: Cassandra Pierce

  Cover design: 3 Rusted Spoons

  Dedicated to all the shelter dogs in the world

  Acknowledgements:

  Thanks to Channing, Wendy, Simon, Bernd, Brenda, Kit, Karen, Aimee, Melissa, Liga, Michelle, Cheri, Riley, Becca, Jae, Dave, Susan, Eileen, Romy, Julie, Anne, Chris, Angela, Michelle, Lori and Lara for sharing their expertise about dogs.

  Lesbian With Dog Seeks Same

  Lesbian Light Reads 3

  First Sunday or I am not a morning person

  I never believed that being a morning person was a virtue, despite what my sister and Benjamin Franklin said about early rising making someone healthy, wealthy and wise. My health, wealth and wisdom were just fine sleeping in on Sunday mornings, thank you very much. After a sleepless night—damn insomnia, too much coffee—I thought I’d give mornings a try. Minnie, my lovely dog, was confused at first. She didn’t jump at the sight of the leash as she usually did. A Sunday morning stroll was an unfamiliar concept to her. Minnie had been my best buddy since I got her a year ago, and most Sunday mornings I let her out to do her business in the backyard and then let her back in. After that, I would crawl back into bed. We’d been to the dog park a few times before but always on a Sunday afternoon. I grabbed a bottle of water, a couple of plastic grocery bags, and off we went.

  Fortunately, it was a lovely morning, so that lifted my mood a bit. The air smelled of grass and morning dew. I could just feel an almost imperceptible soft, warm breeze against my skin. The world felt quiet. Along the way, Minnie sniffed at the usual fire hydrants, light poles, tree trunks and a corner of a wrought iron fence in front of a large house where two dogs lived with their humans. I bid good morning to a few other people out walking dogs or pushing children in strollers or both. When Minnie and I got to the dog park, I was surprised to find no one else there. It gets so crowded on Sunday afternoons. I assumed Sunday mornings, particularly one as beautiful as this one, would be the same. Maybe everyone else got to sleep in? I decided to take advantage of having the dog park to ourselves momentarily and let Minnie off leash. She sniffed at a twig sticking out of the ground before peeing on it and then scouted out her new domain.

  I normally wouldn’t let Minnie off leash in a dog park. For one thing, city dog parks, like the one in my neighborhood, were usually packed with so many animals of varying sizes and dispositions and there were occasionally some dogs who were unpredictable. For another thing, Minnie was a Staffordshire bull terrier with bristly black hair, which some people and dogs found intimidating. I’d been very diligent in her training, so she was well behaved, gentle as a kitten, but I didn’t like to take chances in crowded dog parks. Today, though, at least at the moment, the park was all hers. She stomped around like she had just been made queen.

  After about five minutes, I heard the latch on the dog park gate click. I looked up and called to Minnie, who came trotting over more slowly than I would have liked. After all, she was queen of the dog park, and a new person and dog had just arrived. They were bound to be far more interesting than obeying me. I walked to Minnie and snapped the leash to her collar, although she didn’t seem to notice.

  The new arrival had a beautiful golden coat. The hair looked so soft. The dog had sad eyes and a slow, loping gait. He looked like the kind of animal that would really love to sit on your lap but was just a little too big for everyone’s comfort. Only after I had admired the dog did I get a look at its owner, although she was much more nondescript. She wore a baseball cap, and its visor kept her eyes in shadow. Her hair—long and light brown or dark blonde—looked soft and fine. It appeared she had thrown on the first T-shirt and pair of jeans she’d seen in her hamper. I guess you can’t expect much on a lazy Sunday. The jeans were nice, though. They hinted at the curvy figure they covered. She wore sandals on her feet. She sipped from a travel mug, and the scent of strong black coffee with a hint of vanilla briefly wafted my way.

  “You’re new here,” she said to Minnie, who panted and wagged her tail madly. My dog liked this woman immediately, always a good sign.

  “It’s her first Sunday morning at the dog park,” I said. “We usually only get here on Sunday afternoons.”

  “Welcome. This is Arrow,” she said.

  Her dog barked as if to confirm his name. Minnie barked in response. I slackened the leash to let her get closer to Arrow. They performed the time-honored dog greeting of sniffing each other’s butts.

  “My beautiful girl’s name is Minnie,” I said.

  The dogs seemed to like each other, or at least they didn’t loathe each other.

  “She really is a beauty.” The woman stooped down and offered Minnie her hand to sniff. Minnie then allowed the woman to pet her. “She’s a good girl.”

  I followed the woman’s lead and acquainted myself with Arrow. He struck me as an easygoing sort. I put my hand under his nose, and he let me scratch him under his chin, which he really seemed to like. He put his paw up on my hand like he didn’t want me to stop.

  “You like that, don’t you, Arrow? You’re a good boy. What’s his story?”

  She told me that she got him through a friend of hers, a teacher.

  “Actually, it was a friend of Abby’s, my teacher friend, who had Arrow. He was a puppy then. He was one of a litter of seven born to Abby’s friend’s golden retriever. His first placement didn’t work out. I had said I’d like to have him, too, so then I got him, and I’ve had him ever since. It’s been four years now,” she said.

  I watched her as she talked. She was starting to make more of an impression as we stood next to each other, chatting and watching our dogs. At one point, she looked at me, and I finally got to see her eyes. They were light brown, but there also seemed to be something else in them, green maybe. She smiled when she talked about Arrow. I noticed her lips, which were full, just beautifully shaped, and her pale, nearly translucent skin. She was an inch or two shorter than me. Then she asked how Minnie came to me.

  “Oh. I got her at Home Depot,” I said.

  “Really? They sell dogs now? Are they next to the lumber section?” She took another sip of her coffee and started throwing a tennis ball for Arrow to chase and bring back to her. It seemed fairly safe. I let Minnie off the leash so she could join in the fun.

  “No, nothing like that.” I chuckled. “About a year ago, I went to Home Depot with my sister. They were having a pet adoption day there. While my sister was inside getting light bulbs or something, I hung around outside with the dogs available for adoption. Minnie wasn’t the first one I saw that day, but when I did see her I was intrigued. I had always thought when I got a dog, I’d get something small, and I’d start with a puppy. I do live in an apartment, after all, but I saw Minnie. She’s bigger than I expected. She was five years old at the time, but I just knew she was the one. We clicked, so I adopted her.”

  “Any issues?” she asked.

  “Not really. She can be a little clingy, but it’s not so bad. She had had some training before I got her. I did more training with her.”

  By this time, more people and dogs were in the park, and I got Minnie back on the leash. The woman, who clearly was a morning regular, pointed out other dogs and their people. Typical of most pet people, she knew the names of the other dogs but not their owners. She referred to them by their dog’s names. A woman with a sleek and bouncy little Bichon frise was Mrs. Juno and the man with two inquisitive beagles was Mr. Tom and Huck. She, who a few others in the park addressed as Ms. Arrow, shared anecdotes about some of the dogs and helped introduce Minnie around. At one point, when I was talking to Miss Domino, owner of a restless border collie, I thought I caught Ms. Arrow watching me. Whenever I
’d look over at her, she’d look away.

  I made a decision shortly after coming out several years ago to go through life assuming that all the women I met were gay or bisexual (not merely “bicurious”) until they proved otherwise. One of the positives about that decision was that it saved me lots of fretting about whether any cute girl I met was into women or not. I just focused on whether they liked me. That’s what really mattered, after all, and it made me a lot less anxious and far more confident. I had assumed that Ms. Arrow was into women and possibly into me. With the way she was checking me out, I had all the proof I needed. A few minutes later, I decided to take my leave. I had stuff to do around the house. Minnie was reluctant to leave. She’d been having such a good time and so was I, but I was able to coax her toward the gate with talk of a rawhide bone for her at home.

  “Going already?” Ms. Arrow asked. I finally got to look directly into her eyes. They definitely had some green in them. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, but her skin looked fresh. When she smiled, a few lovely lines gathered around the corner of her eyes, but I still had to go.

  “Yeah. I’ve got a few chores, then I’m meeting a friend for lunch,” I said, squinting into the sun. I shielded my eyes. I thought I might have seen disappointment flash across her face, but it happened so quickly that I couldn’t be sure. And, as I said, the sun was in my eyes.

  “I think I’ll hang around a bit more,” she said. “One of Arrow’s friends should be here in a few minutes. He’ll be testy if he doesn’t get the chance to see him. See you next week.”

  “Okay. Nice meeting you and Arrow. Bye, Arrow!” I petted him, and he barked. I turned and quickly left, partly because I really did have stuff to do before meeting my buddy for lunch and partly because I felt really excited about meeting that woman. It was the sort of giddy excitement that I was inclined to distrust, too good to be true. It sometimes got me into some weird situations, and I needed to come down. Nothing could bring me down from the giddy excitement of meeting a girl like cleaning the bathroom. As I did so, I kept thinking about things I could say to Ms. Arrow if Minnie and I ran into her again.

  *****

  The rest of my Sunday was relatively uneventful. My bathroom got cleaned. Lunch with a woman I’d met at the local lesbian dining group was fun, but I viewed her as more friend than dating material. I stayed away from coffee for the rest of the day and got some sleep that night. When I showed up the next day at the local university hospital where I worked in media relations, my favorite colleague Tyler said I looked “impossibly perky.”

  “Did you get laid this weekend?” Tyler asked. “Come on. You can tell me.”

  We had fallen into this pattern where Tyler, who was the assistant to the vice president of human resources, stopped by my office first thing on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to catch up and, in theory, talk about human resource and media issues. I stopped by his office first thing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was all about breaking down silos and creating cross-functional teams. Or at least that’s what we told our respective bosses. We did talk a little about work, but, generally, on Mondays, we talked about our weekends. We were both single, so there was always something interesting to report, although his tales of meeting men on various dating apps always seemed more interesting than my stories of mostly hanging out with Minnie.

  “No. Why would you ask me that? I think I just had a good night’s sleep.”

  “Sleep? You don’t get that kind of glow from sleep. Something happened. I can tell.”

  I leaned back in my chair and sipped my coffee. I was just going to have one today and only in the morning. “Well, I took Minnie to the dog park yesterday, the first time we’ve been there on a Sunday morning.”

  Tyler stared at me for a couple of moments and raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Fine. Don’t tell me what really happened because I know standing around watching your dog sniff another dog’s butt is not what has given you that glow. Anyway. On Friday I told you that Eric, Luis and Noah were coming over for pizza Friday night, yes?”

  And then he spun a convoluted tale, which he asserted was mostly true, about his weekend of debauchery, although he kept it PG-rated. I had told him over and over again that he didn’t need to clean up his stories. Yes, we were at work, but my office had a door. And I was a big girl, but he insisted on censoring himself, saying that he was “protecting my virtue.” I got the sense that he was secretly embarrassed by all the carrying on he did. Like most gay men I knew, he got around but really wanted some romance. He would have totally fallen for the first man he met who said he wanted to cuddle.

  In today’s tale of his weekend, some stray wig hairs and a dishy guy called Ansel played an outsized role.

  “Really, Jordan. I worry about you,” he said after finishing his story. “Regular boinking is healthy. That’s science. When was the last time you got laid? When was the last time you hung out with someone besides Minnie?”

  “I am healthy, okay? I had lunch with a friend yesterday, and I had a good boinking a month ago. Her name was— Wait. Damn. What was her name?”

  Tyler did a theatrical gasp. “Bad lesbian! Bad. No more Home Depot for you.” He grabbed my hand and gave it a light, playful slap. “You should know not only her name but the names of the first three cats she ever owned, her coming out story, and the topic sentence and conclusion of the thesis she wrote for her queer studies major. I’m gonna see about getting your lesbian card revoked.”

  I laughed. “Don’t you dare! I had it laminated already and everything.” I really couldn’t remember that woman’s name. We had hooked up at one of those traveling all-women party nights at a local nightclub. The lights were low. Her hair was long and smelled of lavender flowers. She said she liked my short hair and warm skin. We made out in a dark corner, and then she came over to my place. We made a lot of noise. Then she left. She may have been a married, straight woman for all I knew. She had been fun for one night, but I knew I didn’t want her to be a permanent fixture in my life. She just didn’t seem like relationship material.

  “Well, I met this woman and her dog yesterday, but I don’t know her name either.”

  I wanted to know and remember Ms. Arrow’s name. Thing is, I wasn’t even sure I’d see her again. I wasn’t sure there’d be a repeat performance of Sunday morning at the dog park. I doubted I would ever be a true morning person. Even if I did go early again, she might not be there.

  “I knew it,” said Tyler.

  “No, it’s not like that. We just talked. Our dogs sniffed each other’s butts, as you surmised. I don’t know how I’ll ever find her again or even if I want to.”

  Tyler just rolled his eyes and started talking about Ansel again.

  Second Sunday or maybe I am a morning person

  I surprised myself by waking up just before 7 a.m. on Sunday. I woke up at that time during the week but only if my alarm clock went off loudly several times. I hadn’t set an alarm or anything for today. I just woke up. Weird. Minnie was up as soon as I was, wagging her tail. She seemed eager to return for another Sunday morning romp at the dog park. I had taken her there a few times in the evenings during the week, but we hadn’t seen Arrow or Ms. Arrow. She seemed like a regular, but maybe it was only in the mornings.

  I yawned. I was as eager to get to the dog park as Minnie was, but I wasn’t sure why. The dog park was fun, mostly because it gave Minnie so much joy, but I did believe that 7 a.m. on a Sunday could officially be classified as ungodly.

  As we left, a light, warm summer rain began to fall. Once upon a time, I would have reached for a hat or an umbrella to keep water from touching my hair. This morning the warm water felt good on my bare head. I stopped getting my hair relaxed six years ago, and I hadn’t looked back. I went from getting my chin-length hair chemically treated every six to eight weeks to getting it trimmed short periodically. It made my life far easier. Plus, I could enjoy a light rain like the one that greeted us when we left home without fear over what it would do to my hair. The water felt good.

  On approaching the dog park, I saw Ms. Arrow right away. She was standing off to the side while Arrow greeted another dog. We got to the park a little later than we had last Sunday morning, so I was surprised to see that Ms. Arrow, Arrow and the other dog and its owner were the only ones there. Maybe the rain was keeping everyone else away.