Relationships

7 stories in this category.

We're In This Together

Let’s talk, you and I. Let’s talk about best friends. What makes a best friend? As I write this, it's a little after 9 pm. It’s raining outside, and the winds blowing an overgrown palm tree into the side of our red tin roof. I'm sitting up on the bed with my elbow resting on Mud’s butt as he’s snoring asleep. Dirt’s on the floor to my left. I can feel him when I let my arm hang off the… You still there? Sorry. Dirt jumped on the bed and sat on my chest, knocking the computer from my lap. He like

A Little Rendezvous

Effervescent. Eff-er-vesent. Effervescent. Rendezvous. Ren-dez-vous. Rendezvous. I can’t pronounce them. I can’t spell them. I can’t stand them. Just look at them. All bougie with their mix of similar sounding phonetic consonants, full words, and my personal favorite, the tacky gem of them all, “hidden letters.” Get real. Let’s take Effervescent. First, just look at it. It’s got a couple “f’s” which sound similar to “v” and then the entire word “scent” at the end. Yet the definition ain’t got on

Artichoke Pickle

I’m 36, single, with no kids, and I'll be the last Small if I don’t have a son. I stumbled across this fun fact a few years ago on ancestry.com while working on my first manuscript and needed to build out our family tree. Research, I guess. It feels so egotistical to talk about. Even writing that made me cringe a little. Like I’m so important that everyone’s watching. “I do wish you would hurry up and get to work, son.” My mother will occasionally say. But besides her wanting more grandkids, nob

Terrible At Relationships

I’m terrible at relationships, and I’m blaming it on Mud. He didn’t cause my issues. He just forced me to face them. The cause is, well, I’m not 100% sure, which, come to think of it, is probably the first place to start. When I think of a cause, I keep seeing flashbacks to a Sunday in early September when my father and I went to check on a piece of property we used for hunting. I was 13, maybe 14 years old. When we arrived, the land owner and friend of my father, was in the barn working on a pi

Crazy, Massive, Life Document

I dated a girl like Dirt once. Athletic, driven, and good-lookin’. She was a doctor. She was smart. She got a perfect score on her SAT and I took it three times and only got points for writing my name. She was also a vegan, but mostly for health reasons, not PETA reasons. Which as a hunter was a good thing for me. Our relationship, although short-lived, didn’t exactly end for the reasons you may think. One night we went to dinner at a Thai restaurant. We got a booth but sat on the same side. Her

Dirt Nips

It was a Tuesday. Taco Night. A date came to the house to meet Dirt for the first time. “I think he really likes me!” Amy confidentlety claimed, kneeling down to scratch Dirt’s belly seconds after she walked in. “He’s so sweet. I don’t know what you were talking about, Oscar.” She looks at me, then looks back down at Dirt and says in a puppy voice…“your daddy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, does he? You and my dog, Pete, would be such good buddies!” Dirt turned his head and looked up at me

Every Seven Years

IN JUNE OF 2018, just as Dirt surpassed six months of age, my girlfriend and I were invited to attend a wedding in the Bahamas – for a week. Dirt would need to stay with someone while we were gone.  A regular boarding facility wasn’t an option. Traditional kennels wouldn’t take him because of a working dog's intense exercise requirements. Two weeks before the trip, tickets purchased and rooms reserved, I still hadn’t found a place for him to stay. It was crunch time, and I needed help. “What kin