Page 7 of Just the Tipsy
I don’t hear her respond, but I hear her whimper. I rush around to the back side of the house and try the door handle, pushing my way inside.
THREE
BIANCA
I hearWaylon burst into the kitchen, but I can’t take my eyes off the wall to look at him directly.
“You okay?” he asks. I hear the gentle taps of his dog’s paws on the tile floors too.
“Can you help me get this spider out of the kitchen because I don’t want to take my eyes off of it and if it runs away I’m going to spend the whole night wondering if it’s in my bed and then I’ll burn this whole house down if I eventhinkit’s there,” I say in one breath.
I need to take in another breath but I’m scared that if I breathe, the spider will move. It doesn’t make any sense but a spider being that huge and inside my house doesn’t make sense either. It’s the size of my palm, easily. And it’s justthere. Aren’t spiders supposed to be outside? Or making webs or something?
“Yeah, that’s a big one,” Waylon says with a chuckle, as if we’re not inches away from some sort of mutant escapee from a lab. At least he’s not judging me whatsoever for practically pissing myself. “Do you have a bowl and some thin cardboard?”
“Bowls are in the cabinet in that corner.” I point without taking my eyes off the spider. “And maybe there’s some thin cardboard in the recycling? It’s in the corner too, in the bin.”
He rustles around behind me and appears with the bowl and cardboard. I let him step in front of me and capture it like it’s no big deal, taking it out back. He walks deep into the yard and lets it out in the grass.
The tension finally leaves my body and I can finally sag against the doorframe with a sigh.
Waylon’s dog is looking up at me expectantly, tail wagging. He’s cute and has an intelligent gleam in his eyes, with blonde-ish fur and ears pointed up like he’s ready to listen.
“Hi,” I say. His tail wags harder and he noses my hand, lifting it so I can pet his head. I scratch him between his ears and check his tag. “Hi, Duke.”
“Okay, spider’s way off in the backyard,” Waylon says when he comes inside.
“Thank you.” I run both hands over my face. God, this day is already a mess.
“It’s no problem.” His brow furrows. “Also not to cause more panic, but this smells a bit like hot rubber?”
He takes two long strides and he’s standing at the pot on my stove. And before I can stop him, he pulls off the lid.
“Wait!” I say, even though he’s already looking inside.
Inside, at the brand new silicone dildos I’m sterilizing. One of which is hot pink with a suction cup on the bottom, and the other of which is shaped like a dragon’s (theoretical) dick, just because I was curious and had two glasses of wine in my system when I was shopping.
He blinks and slowly slides the lid back on, his cheeks flushing.
Once again — can the universe just take me out? A gamma ray blast. An asteroid. Literally anything to save me from the depths of my mortification.
“That’s not soup,” he finally says. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Just…pretend you didn’t see all that,” I say. I click the burner off since they’re probably sterile by now.
“We just leveled out the cringe scales in the universe,” Waylon says after the longest pause of my life. I lift an eyebrow and he adds, “I incited the assless chaps incident because my mouth wouldn’t stop running. And now you have this. So, we’re even. I guess.”
The logic’s a little iffy because we both made things cringey, but it’s better than nothing. I smile. “You mean chaps?”
He grins. “Right, chaps.”
I guess we did balance the cringe scales in the universe because the tension in the air starts to disappear.
Sadie finally wakes up from her deep nap on her bed in the living room and walks in with a yawn. Like she’s right on time.
“I thought you could fight a spider,” I say to her as she sniffs Duke, her tail wagging. “Or at least bark at it.”
“Sadie would fight a moose but not a spider,” Waylon says. “The bigger the opponent, the more interested she is. Though that spider was about half her size.”
