Credit to whom due. Thanks to Bebop3 for the pre-post beta. Thanks to my editing team and the folks over at SI.
There are strong bi-sexual female elements in this story. If that is not something you enjoy, this is not for you.
***
I was sitting at my desk writing a story for my own entertainment. It was about three-thirty in the afternoon and I began hearing a dog bark across the street. That's what dogs do, so I didn't think much about it. Suddenly I heard a scream out on the sidewalk in front of my house. I occasionally hear small children screaming outside, but they're playing and that's what small children do when they play. This scream was different. It was about pain and fear, and it made me shoot out of my chair and hurry the ten feet or so to the front door. I looked out and there was a young girl fighting with a dog on the sidewalk. The dog was the pit-bull that lived across the street. She lived in a fence, but apparently, she had escaped and had attacked the girl. The girl had on shorts, running shoes and a tank top. She had an iPod and it looked like she had been jogging. That must have triggered some instinct in the dog and it had attacked. It had her by the forearm and I could see that she was bleeding.
I keep a small baseball bat beside the front door to repel unwelcome visitors and I snatched it up. I hurried outside and gave the dog a whack in the ribs. The damned thing let go of the girl's arm and bit me on the calf. It hurt like hell and I gave it another whack. This time I hit it in the head as hard as I could and it collapsed. The owner from across the street was hurrying over.
"What the hell did you do to my dog?" he shouted.
"The question you should be asking is what the hell your dog did to me and this girl," I told him. "You're going to be lucky if you don't get sued. Get this thing off my sidewalk and yourself, too."
I turned my back to him and helped the girl inside. "We need to get you cleaned up, honey," I told her. "Both of us need to see a doctor. Dog bites are nasty. We'll get an infection if we don't. Dogs have bad things on their teeth."
She was obviously in a little shock. She was crying and trembling and she sort of clung to me. "Thank you," she said. "It was so strong! I thought it was going to kill me! I'm so glad you helped me."
I got first aid stuff and cleaned up her arm and my leg. I took a couple of pictures in case we needed them and wrapped up our wounds. We went out and got in my car. She was still crying. I suspect her arm hurt as bad as my calf did. I petted her a little and she calmed down. "I'm so sorry," I told her. "We'll get fixed up at the emergency room. I don't even know your name, honey."
"I'm Courtney Leavett," she said, her voice sounding jittery from the flood of adrenaline. "Thanks for saving me from that dog. I thought it was going to tear my arm off. It jumped right at my face and I just put my arm up by instinct. I run by there every day and I've never seen it before." She shivered. "It came out of nowhere."
Seeing how affected she was, I rested my hand on her shoulder. "I'm Osmund Clancy," I told her. "You can call me Oz."
"I know who you are," she said. "I've seen you keeping time at track meets. I pole vault. Plus, you're kind of a legend on the girls' track team. I've seen your name all over the women's track record board. You're the only black woman who lives in our town. That makes you kind of special."
"You mean like riding the short bus?"
That made her laugh, and the tears were over. She was a cute little thing, not much over five feet. My five-nine dwarfed her, but she had a nice little package going on. She had long, glossy brown hair and dark skin with big brown eyes. I don't think the skin was naturally dark, but she had a nice tan. We pulled up at the emergency room and helped each other in. My leg hurt like hell and she told me her arm did, too. It was a small emergency room so we didn't have to wait long. Courtney was eighteen, so we didn't have any trouble getting her treated. She called her mom and told her what had happened. She told her that she was fine and I was taking care of her. She wanted to take off work and come down but Courtney told her she was fine and would see her when she got home from work.
They put us in beds that were separated by a curtain and I heard her tell the nurse that she wanted to be able to see me. The nurse asked her if she was sure and she was. When they took the curtain back she smiled over at me. "Hi," she said. "I think we're neighbors."
I laughed. "Tell me about Courtney while we wait to be tortured," I said.
She told me she was a senior, she went to the career center half the day for nursing and she wanted to be a Physician's Assistant. She was good at the pole vault, but not good enough to make state last year. She had a boyfriend, but didn't know if she was going to keep him. She was the president of her class and planned to go to the local junior college when she graduated in two months. She asked me what I did and I told her I was a writer. She asked me what kind of writing I did. I explained to her that I had published three fiction books. It turned out that she had read two of them, but since I write under a pen-name she didn't know it was me. I told her I also wrote erotic fiction, mostly for my own amusement, but several of my stories were online.
She was very intrigued about that. I gave her the website where I keep them and she told me she was going to read them.
"They're very explicit," I warned her. "You may be shocked."
"I like being shocked," she said. We didn't talk any more about that because the doctor came in and looked us over. We both got several anesthetic shots and they probed around, trying to clean the puncture wounds. We both got stitches and they cut us loose with prescriptions for pain medication, antibiotics and steroids. I kidded her about performance enhancing drugs and she laughed. She could get around a lot better than me since her damage was on her arm and she let me lean on her on the way to the car. Luckily, it was my left leg so I could drive. It was six-thirty by the time we got out and I asked her if she wanted to grab a burger. She did, but she didn't have any money with her. I told her it was on me since she got bit on my sidewalk. That made her laugh and she agreed. We talked girl stuff while we ate.
"Are you married, or do you have a boyfriend, Oz?" she asked.
I laughed. "No, I don't think I'm ready for marriage, even if I had found someone I wanted to marry," I told her. "I'm pretty happy being single."
"I guess if you're happy, there's no need to be married." She gave me a tentative smile. "Don't you ever get lonely?"
"No, not really," I said. "I date, have a lot of friends. I travel a lot, and I meet people. I don't really have a boyfriend. I do have a couple of fuck buddies when I'm feeling horny, so I don't sweat that. One of my fuck buddies is a man and one's a woman."
She looked a little shocked at that, but she didn't say anything.
When we finished our burgers I took her home. Her mom came out to the car and she was very grateful when she heard the story. She was an older version of Courtney. Her hair was dyed blonde and she had that same tight little body as her daughter. Her name was Chloe and she owned a hair salon. She offered to do my hair for free. I asked her if she was any good at dreads and she laughed. "No, I don't get much of a chance to work on black hair, but I'd like to try." Courtney came and leaned in the window. She hugged me and kissed my cheek.
"Would you care if I came over sometime?" she asked. "I'd love to just hang out with you. I'm kinda worried about that dog, though. Do you think it will attack me?"
"I certainly hope not," I said. "I've lived in my house for a while and I've never seen it lose before. I'm not even sure it's going to be feeling like attacking anyone. If you text me, I'll open the garage door, you can pull in and I'll close the door. I have one of those Alexa garage door openers, and I can just tell the door to open."
"Savage," she said. "Do you know anything about pole vault?"