Girls Like That
Content Warning: Sexual Content
I was beginning to get a buzz going by the time the dog shit happened. We had spent the afternoon out at the lake drinking beer and pretending to fish. Bubba caught a sickly looking bass, but me and Three-fingers Chad just sat on a granite outcrop, pounding back Lone Star’s and having a good time. And I don’t mean to say that Bubba was more serious than us, but goddamn that man loved to fish. Hell, me and Three-fingers really only came out because it made Bubba so happy.
So we were all drinking and fishing. It was a beautiful day, hot as hell but dry as a bone. Bubba and I were laughing, trying out Chad’s new nickname. A month earlier, four of us had gone to his house to see if he wanted to walk down to Bullfrog’s and shoot some pool. It was warm that day, too, and Chad had all his windows open. When we hit the porch we could hear him and some girl fucking like their lives depended on it. We grinned at each other, and started off the porch when we heard this girl holler, “Three! Three fingers, Chad!” That was just too much and we all fell out all over the porch. He came out of the house like a damn bull from a rodeo chute and ran us all off. But it was too late. “Three-fingers Chad” stuck.
Then we see this jeep coming down the road at us. The doors were off and the top was too and there were two absolutely fucking gorgeous girls inside. We watched as they pulled up and stopped. “Hey,” the brunette with green eyes said. She was dark and curvy and I regretted not having my shirt on since my beer gut was getting a little big. Bubba and Three-fingers wasted no time walking over, puffing their chests and smiling.
I got up a bit slower, because I had recently fucked my leg up when I had stepped off the curb funny at the parking lot at work while emptying a trash can. Stupid thing to do, and hard to imagine. All I’d done was step off the curb, and wham! I’m hit with shooting pain from my knee all the way up to my hip. There were only two girls and I’d never make it to the Jeep before becoming the fifth wheel. Besides, Three-fingers and Bubba both looked like they’d just come from lifting weights and I looked like the good looking guy’s friend from all those movies.
“Ladies,” Bubba said, “what can we do for you?” The brunette sort of sighed like she was irritated but the blonde in the driver’s seat smiled. Three-fingers had his hand on the side view mirror so his massive arm, inked from finger to collar bone, showed. I came stumbling up after, in no rush as there were only two girls and girls like that don’t fuck guys like me.
The brunette produced a photograph and held it out. “Y’all seen this dog?” It was pretty obvious that they were rich girls, probably from Dallas or Houston, who had “summer homes” out here. Normally the locals like us would have nothing to do with rich assholes like that but normally rich assholes don’t look like these girls did.
Three-fingers took the picture from her. It was a black lab, maybe a year old. “No,” he said, handing the picture back, “but if y’all want a beer we could maybe look for him.”
The brunette rolled her eyes. “His name is Roscoe. He ran off last night. If you see him, could you bring him to us?” She pointed across the water. “We’re in the green
house up on the point.”
“So, no beer?”
At this she told the blonde to drive and away they went, leaving us coughing in a cloud of dust. We started back to our poles, laughing, talking about their tits and how they might fuck.
We had been sitting there, drinking our beers, for about ten minutes when I heard Bubba yell, “Sonofabitch!” I looked over and there was a lump of black, hairy mess floating about ten or twelve feet from where he was. I stood up. “Is that a dog?”
“Sure as shit looks like it.”
“Is it a black lab?”
“Well how the fuck would I know, Johnny?”
I had a gig in my truck and within a few minutes we had the drowned dog up on the shore, half out of the water. Bubba took the collar and looked at the tag. “Roscoe.”
Three-fingers smiled. “They’re gonna be awfully happy that we found him.”
“It’ll take forty minutes to drive around the lake,” I said.
“So?”
“Well I gotta be at work tonight. Forty minutes there, half hour back home, half hour to get ready and sober up; not enough time.”
“Shit.”
“Well what do we do with our new friend?”
We all stood there, staring at the dog. I shrugged. “Just leave him.”
Truth is, I didn’t have work that night. I just didn’t want to be left outside looking in again. Girls like that don’t want me. They might be polite; hell that might even be friendly if there were no other options. But when there were options? Girls like that would politely excuse themselves. “Oh, I have to go,” or “It’s been such a long night,” and they’d make their way to the company of other men. I’m not stupid as to what goes on.
“Fuck,” Three-fingers grunted.
“Well to hell with it,” Bubba said. “Let’s just go now then. We can see who’s down at Bullfrog’s.”
We all nodded, loaded up our gear, and drove away. I knew they’d be having fun in a couple of hours, talking to some new girls while I would be home, wondering what I lacked. Wondering why girls like that never got excited to see me. Why I was never special to anybody.
Cover photo by Bernadetta Watts
