“It’s a shame you moved away, man. We miss you around here,” Gary tells me while opening the door to what used to be my home. I could have kicked her out—after all, Linda and I weren’t married. It wasn’t like she got the home in a break up. The truth was by the time I was really done with Linda, her crazy had bled over into so many aspects of my life that I just wanted away. I tried to kick her out and she kept refusing. I finally said fuck it and when I realized I was going to have to go to court to get custody of Kong, I had my attorney have the court file a paper, transferring my lease over to Linda and making her responsible for all payments. As fucked up as this has all been, I guess I’m lucky the judge didn’t order me to continue making those for Linda. I’m sure it was a near miss, because I’m almost positive she was sleeping with the judge too. If my lawyer hadn’t been female, I would have thought they were banging nightly too. Hell, I’m still not too sure they weren’t. Shit, with the way Linda liked to spread the love—and her legs—I’m sure old Gary here has sampled her.

“I’m settled back home. I’m good there.” Really good.

A few days ago that would have been a lie. I was getting restless. Since meeting Addie, as crazy as it sounds, I’m glad I’m back home. If I weren’t, I never would have met her.

Or I would have met her while investigating a hit and run involving a lawnmower here in Dallas.

I find myself smiling and how that’s happening when I’m back here, dealing with the remnants of the shit storm that was Hurricane Linda, is beyond me.

But I am.

“Interesting,” I hear my Mom whisper beside me and I look up quickly and she’s staring at me. She’s caught my smile. Fuck, her eyes say that she’s caught on to a lot more than that. I feel sweat break out on my brow. Christ. I know better! Mom’s like a damn blood hound and when she catches scent… Shit. Shit. Shit.

“Well, here you go. I’m supposed to stay in the house with you while you get your stuff, but I know you, man. I can stay out here—”

“No, it’s fine. I’d prefer you stay close that way you can see exactly what I do and I can’t get blamed for anything I didn’t do,” I tell him.

“Let her try to say you did something. She thinks she can cause a firestorm? She hasn’t even had a taste of me. Which is your fault, Black. If you had told me what was going on—”

“Let it go, Mom.”

“I’d have rained fire on her damned head. That’s all I’m saying,” she mumbles and again I smile. She would have, there’s no denying that. My brothers and I had to hold her back as it was, when she did find out. I smile, almost regretting not letting the wrath of Ida Sue rain down on Linda’s head. Lord knows that Mom would have made her life hell.

The smile quickly disappears however, when I see what’s on the couch—the same couch I paid a hell of a lot of money for. It’s solid Italian leather and was in excellent shape when I left it here. Now however, it looks like shit and I swear there’s duct tape acting as a band-aid and joining torn strips of the leather together. I walk to it, letting my fingers move over the tape—inspecting it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to discern that someone has taken a knife to the leather. So much for taking the couch with me. The back has letters spelled out with duct tape. On closer inspection the word has been carved into my sofa, and repaired with the duct tape so I can see the word without guessing. B-A-S-T-A-R-D

Bastard.

Well I’ve been called worse. Still this is going above and beyond. Linda is nothing if not thorough.

“Jesus she really is coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs,” Mom says, and I turn slightly to see her looking at the sofa. “Think of the Hamburger’s that were sacrificed to make that sofa,” she says adding a mournful sigh that makes me shake my head.

She can eat steak like no one’s business, but the woman wants to boycott anything made of out leather.

“It’s Italian leather, Mom.”

I don’t tell her to point out the difference in expense, I merely want her to understand I didn’t buy and set on Hamburger’s long lost cousin.

“Italian cows have feelings too, son. Besides my Hamburger is one quarter Italian stock,” she boasts.

“He is not.”

“I’ll show you his pedigree when we get home,” she says with a wave—as if she’s tired of fooling with me. I don’t respond, there’s really nothing I can say. She probably does have her damn cow’s DNA. It shouldn’t surprise me.

I look across the room at Kong’s empty bed. I don’t want that, I bought him a new one. Kong is my English bulldog that I’ve had since he was a pup. He’s three now and I’ve missed him so much. I didn’t realize how attached I was to the big lug until I couldn’t see him every day. I hope we don’t have any problem bonding with each other again. I know we won’t on my part, but he may think I deserted him. Pets are finicky creatures and he has no idea the hell I’ve gone through to get him back.

“Kong?” I yell through the apartment, more than a little worried. Even if Kong was upset with me, it’s not like him to not be at the door inspecting guests. “Yo! Kong! Where you at boy? Come give Daddy lovin’!”

“Daddy? God’s toes, my grand kid is a dog,” Mom mumbles. “Moving to the city destroyed you, boy.”

“Kong!”

“She said she’d have the dog in the bedroom. He can get destructive when she lets him run loose,” Gary says. “She had to replace all of the area rugs last month before she sent him for training,” he adds and Gary definitely knows way too much about Linda’s business and my damn dog. He’s definitely caught a ride on Linda’s free train.

More power to him.

“She sent my dog to training?” I ask, thinking that’s weird as fuck because Kong has had the best training around. I called in a favor from the canine handler with the P.D. here in Dallas to get that for him.

“Yeah, it made a world of difference in the little guy.”

Later, when I look back, I will know that I should have listened to Gary closer. I should have paid more attention to exactly what he said and what those words implied.

I didn’t.

So I wasn’t prepared—and when I say that I really wasn’t prepared.

When I open the door a small—tiny—extremely tiny—like fit-in-the-palm-of-my-hand tiny—dog, with his entire lower half tinted pink, comes running at me with a high pitched yap. He immediately starts biting on my ankles, but I ignore him. I’m looking desperately around the room for my Kong, my bulldog, my best friend… I barely notice that the damn Chihuahua is now busy humping my damn leg like I’m the first female he’s seen in the last one-hundred years. To be fair my pants are the same color as his skin—the part that’s not pink—because he has no hair. What kind of dog doesn’t have hair on his body? At least short hair. Kong had a beautiful coat—”

“Damn he’s hornier than a one-eyed sailor on leave during dollar night at the whore house,” Mom mumbles.

“One eye?” Gary asks.

“That way it looks like he’s got twice as many women,” Mom explains, as I bend down to pick up the dog.

“I don’t think it works that way,” Gary whispers, clearly not having been around my mother much at all.

“Where in the hell is Kong?” I growl, holding the damn Chihuahua, who is now shivering in my hands.

“But that is Kong,” Gary says and I jerk my head around to look at him.

“It fucking is not!” I yell and the dog bites my hand and I jerk it away looking at it while it growls back at me. “Shit!” For such a little mongrel, it has sharp-ass teeth.

“But it is. I hate the thing, but Linda said you insisted on getting rid of the bulldog and finding a pet that she felt safer around. Which made sense. Your bulldog hated Linda…” Gary answers.

“That’s because he was smart,” Mom says as I use my thumb to turn the tag on the Chihuahua’s collar. Sure enough Kong is engraved on it.

Motherfucker.