Page 200 of Lost in Love

Anyway, it didn’t kill him. Instead, it broke his back, and I had to listen to it moan outside my window for an hour because it couldn’t move. Well, it could, but it was pathetic. Its front legs worked but the back legs wouldn't. Think of a sit and spin. You know those things you sit on and spin you around? That’s what this cat looked like because it just kept crawling in a circle.

Anyway, the damn thing was loud, and my dad found out and made me go outside and put it out of its misery. So with a shovel in hand, I attempted to kill it. I’ve never felt so horrible in my life. I honestly thought I was going to hell for that. When it was dead, I threw up and vowed to never harm an animal again.

Little hard when your dad’s an avid hunter and drags you with him for his father-son time. In reality, it’s a time when he says, “Hold my gun, I gotta take a piss and if you see a deer, shoot the fucker.”

He one, has a weak bladder and two, doesn’t realize how many bucks I turned my head on.

So there he is, staring down a javelina with his rifle pointed right between its eyes.

“I’m not gonna lie, Dad. If you end up shooting that, I’m gonna have to cover my eyes.”

“You pussy. No wonder Madison wants a divorce.”

He’s real supportive, isn’t he?

The answer to that would be no.

I’m not even paying attention to the pigs, I can’t. It makes me sick to my stomach.

“Noah killed a cat last month,” Brantley tells my dad.

“No shit?” He chuckles, still focused on the pig in his sight. “I knew he was my grandkid.”

A loud boom rattles through the valley we’re in and the pig drops to the ground. I hope he doesn’t think I’m eating pork tonight.

Brantley elbows me. “Your dad is awesome.”

“Ugh!” I say, sounding like Callan when he’s annoyed. I should draw a picture with stick figures and pigs to display my distaste for what we’re doing like Callan does. But I don’t. Instead I’m researching again.

“What are you doing?” Brantley asks, slapping my phone out of my hand when my dad goes to get the pig he murdered.

I grab my phone from the dirt and blow it off refusing to watch the pig get slaughtered. “I’m checking on a vacation to Ukraine.”

He makes a face of disgust, his rifle on his shoulder like he’s some kind of sniper. Which he’s not. Brantley’s never shot anything, that I know of. But then again, he tells me nothing so I really wouldn’t know. “Why?”

“Callan wants to go see Chernobyl.”

“What the hell is Chernobyl.”

“Only the biggest nuclear disaster in the world,” I say proudly, like I know what the fuck I’m talking about.

My dad and Brantley shoot three pigs, toss them in the back of his truck and we head back to dad’s house where he cleans them and I nearly vomit three times.

That’s when they say, “We’re going out,” like I should be excited about this.

“I don’t want to go out.” Though I’m thankful to not be eating those pigs they shot, I don’t want to go out to dinner with them because I know where that will lead. They’ll get me drunk, convince me to go to a strip club and I’ll end the night with another tattoo of Tinkerbell on my ankle. It took me a year to have that one removed and I can still see her wings if I look closely.

“You’re coming with us,” Brantley says, setting a shot of Midleton whiskey down in front of me. “Drink this and you’ll forget about your problems.”

“I don’t want to because if we go out, the next thing I know you’ll drag me to another strip club.”

My dad rolls his eyes as he’s fixing his shirt to make his chest hair visible. At this point, he might as well just unbutton it all the way because he literally has only three buttons fastened and I can see his bellybutton.

I stare at his chest like I’m offended by his choice of attire, because I am. It’s gross. “This isn’tMiami Vice. Why are you dressed like that?”

He blows me off by waving his hand in my face. “I look good. And no, we won’t drag you to a strip club because the last time we went you yelled, ‘You bitches gonna let me titty fuck you later?’ in a blonde’s face.”

“That was one time and I was in college. You can’t blame me.”

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