AMA Boyfriend - S01 E425

Story 4 weeks ago

AMA Boyfriend - S01 E425

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 425

Chapter 425

'Outside, but ready for rain' ended up being them planning to take me to Lake Union Park - I never did figure out why it was called that as opposed to Union Lake Park, since that seemed like it should be more grammatically correct, but that was my only complaint about the entire morning. The park was really nice, even if it wasn't huge, and was right on the water.

Becca and Wanda kept reminding me that this wasn't our date, which was kind of funny considering how utterly date-like it felt. We walked through the gardens and along the waterfront, we hung out around the Model Boat Pond which was neat and stirred up the nerd in me (making me remind myself that I lived in Las Vegas, I did not need a model boat), and we toured through the current exhibits at the MOHAI, the Museum that dominated the park. It was a gorgeous building that was right on the water as well, which meant that it was able to maintain a series of old boats and small ships to view.

It did rain, but only once, and that was when we were able to make a beeline into the museum. By the time we came back out, the darker clouds had passed and the sky was spotted blue and grey with isolated cloud cover instead of a solid sheet.

I think at least one of my hands was being held for ninety per cent of the time - and the other ten I was either being kissed by one of them (which often still included holding one of their hands, not always the one I was kissing), I had my arms wrapped around one of them, or I was in the washroom at the museum.

Once we'd worn out all the things to see at the park, we took a slow walk into downtown to a spot they'd picked out ahead of time for lunch, and I managed to convince them to let me pay to save my masculine ego since they had paid for dinner the night before, and were planning to pay for the 'actual date' later that night. In some ways, it was nice to be treated - and I know my wallet appreciated it compared to if I was treating them to everything while I was there - but I had enough traditional 'take care of my woman' in me that I still got a little embarrassed. Hell, I was in a city I didn't know, surrounded by people I wasn't likely to ever have a connection to, and I felt a little weird about the amount of PDA that the three of us were engaging in.

Not that we were the only ones.

If Las Vegas was the home of the weird and the wild, Seattle felt like the last resting place of the Hippy and the birthplace of the Hipster, and those hipsters - especially the queer ones - had just as 'in your face' tendencies as the Vegas weirdos. It was just all a lot more uptight than Vegas. The amount of tense, nervous flirting we witnessed as people tried to navigate a very wide spectrum of gender and sexuality without offending anyone was astounding. In Vegas, strangers flirting was way more abrupt, and people didn't care if they offended you - I sometimes thought of it as the perfect mix of East and West coast mentalities. That or it had something to do with that abruptness leaking from the Strip to the entirety of the city.

After lunch, we walked down to where we'd parked and took a quick tour of some of the other famous locations in the city. Multiple views of the Space Needle, Pike Place Market (where Wanda and I jumped out to take a picture with the big sign in the background), the waterfront, Pioneer Square and Chinatown. There were more places they wanted to show me, but we were running out of time before they had to get to Wandas, so we headed back to Becca's.

"Is it bad that I kind of want you to come with us?" Wanda sighed as we all got out of the car.

"No, but it's not a good idea," I said, stepping close and wrapping my arms around her in a bear hug.

"We don't want to antagonise Brodi and have him start making this all harder on you," Becca said as she was unlooping a key to her place off her keychain. "That or weirdly arouse him."

"Ewgh," Wanda scoffed in a disgusted mix of 'Ew' and 'Ugh.' "True."

I pressed my lips to the top of her head and kissed her softly as I kept hugging her. "You've got this," I told her.

"I know," she sighed quietly. "And I've got you and Becca."

"You do," I said.

"Damn right she does," Becca agreed, coming over and wrapping her arms around the both of us. We had a quick three-way hug for another long moment before we broke apart, and Becca handed me the key. "Here, so you can get in and out as needed. There are a couple of good coffee shops a block in either direction if you want to explore."

"Actually, could you do me a favour, Tiger?" Wanda asked, looking a little pained to need to do it. "Could you take Ralph for a walk? Even just ten minutes would be great."

"I could use a good walk myself," I told her, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. "He's not going to freak out if I leash him up when you're not there, will he?"

"No, he- Well, he shouldn't," Wanda said. "If he does, then just try to get him out here to pee and then get him back inside. Thanks, Tiger."

"No problem, Blondie," I said, then grinned a little. "Is it growing on you?"

"I'm not a fan," Becca said.

"I dunno," Wanda sighed. "Maybe not?"

"I'll try and think of something else," I said, then leaned in and gave her a quick kiss, followed by one for Becca as well.

As they were driving away and I was heading into the building, the casualness of that kiss made me feel... odd. There had been a lot of things in my life that had been reserved for Cassidy, that I'd only ever done with Cassidy. I now shared big things, way bigger than a little peck, with a lot more people. And we'd been kissing all morning.

But those casual little kisses meant something for some reason. No lust, no hunger for each other, just... wishing. Wishing we didn't have to be apart, wishing the best for each other, wishing for more, even if we didn't have time. They were comfortable and casual, meaningful in an entirely meaningless expression of love.

"Fuck me, I'm in love," I chuckled to myself, shaking my head as I got to Becca's door and unlocked it.

Ralph was confused when I walked in the door but Wanda didn't. I could see it in his face and the expectant way he was standing. He wasn't unhappy to see me, and accepted a good rub down petting, but his eyes always drifted over towards the door.

"Alright, buddy," I said after I went and found a water bottle in Becca's kitchen and filled it. I picked up his leash and raised an eyebrow at him. "Are we happy about the idea of a walk?"

Ralph was, indeed, happy about a walk. I was quickly learning what the term 'golden retriever energy' actually meant. At random, I decided to head left out of Becca's building, and I found out another three things quickly - first, that Ralph would sniff at smells as long as I let him. Second, no matter how far we got on our walk, every fifteen seconds or so he would glance back the way we had come as if he was hoping to see Wanda coming to catch up with us. Third, taking a walk with a dog drew attention that I hadn't been expecting.

Some of the attention was nice - folks would stop and ask if Ralph was friendly and if they could pet him. Young, old, it didn't matter. Pretty much everyone wanted to pet Ralph, the majestically good looking fucker. I found myself needing to explain that he was my girlfriend's dog on multiple occasions so I wasn't sure what his specific age was, or where she'd gotten him, or who had trained him. I was also keenly aware that I was saying 'girlfriend' when Wanda and I hadn't made that official leap yet, but it was way easier to say that than 'He belongs to a woman I'm in a romantic polycule relationship with.'

It also headed off what I felt might have been an interested look from a female jogger as she was scratching Ralph behind both ears but kept her eyes and smile pointed up at me.

All of that was fine with me. The problem was that Ralph also seemed to be a magnet for bad attention from the kind of folks who I didn't want to have to deal with.

Karens and their Mini-Karen spawn.

Three separate times, little kids ran up and practically tackled poor Ralph with a hug. After the first one, I was more ready for it and tried to stop them, but tiny heat-seeker children are pretty good at dodging around an adult to get to a dog.

Thankfully, Ralph didn't super care too much. I cared, though, because I couldn't imagine the horror if somehow he reacted poorly to some kid and bit them or something while under my care, and animal control got called on us or something on top of everything else Wanda was going through.

And then there were the Karen mothers who were not happy that I was telling their kids to back off. I got the full gamut of 'They're just a kiiiIIiiIIiiiid,' 'Don't try to tell me how to parent myyyyYyyyYyyy ChiiIIiiIIiiild,' all the way up to the always infamous 'I will call the police if you think about putting a hand on my child!'

Thankfully, I was used to Karens, and I wasn't restricted by my need to be as professional as possible because I was at work, so I had a whole separate set of tools to get away from them as quickly as possible.

I only ended up actually telling off one of them, and her screeching followed me down the block.

I'd gone out past the coffee shops that Becca had mentioned by several blocks, and Ralph and I had turned around and were heading back that way when I made one final discovery. Something that I was sure every dog owner would have remembered, and that I hadn't thought about at all.

Ralph stopped to poop.

I didn't have a bag for it.

He looked up at me, making direct eye contact while taking a shit, and it was like he was saying, 'Sorry, bro. I tried to hold it.'

"Fuuuuuck," I groaned.

We'd been passing through a residential area. He was taking a shit on the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the road, but it was definitely still someone's front yard. The street was not empty - it was a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, and people were out and about. People were seeing me next to a dog who was doing a pretty good job of making the unmistakable pose of 'Pooping Dog.'

Not that it would have been OK for me to leave dog shit on someone's lawn if I was all alone out there, but at least then I wouldn't be so embarrassed.

Ralph finished his business, stretched and gave himself a shake, then looked up at me expectantly.

"Fuck me," I sighed. I had my backpack, emptied of almost everything other than my laptop, since I had wondered if I could find a coffee shop with outdoor seating for me and Ralph, or just a bench somewhere. Unless I used my backpack, it was either leave the turd where it lay, or pick it up with my hand and put it in my pocket.

OK, there were other options. I could go knock on someone's front door and ask for a plastic bag... except, how many places still had plastic bags? And this was Seattle. How many places in Seattle would be giving their customers plastic bags, and how many people would keep them handy afterwards?

Maybe I could find someone with a 'beware of dog' sign, that way I could at least be assured I was approaching someone who might actually have an answer, rather than randomly knocking on doors.

"You OK?"

I almost jumped out of my skin at the voice, and as I turned, Ralph pulled me further as he did his 'Hello there, friendly neighbour!' routine. I quickly realised that he was less interested in the woman who had addressed me and more in her dog, a sleek-looking white dog with a sort of husky look to it.

"Sorry," she chuckled, seeing my reaction. "You were just sort of standing there staring at- Oh, hah. Did you forget your poo bags?"

"Something like that," I sighed, smirking abashedly and scratching at the back of my neck. "You wouldn't happen to have one I could nab from you, would you?"

"Porridge here always surprises me with an extra pop-n-squat, the little bitch," the woman grinned, lifting her leash and showing off a compact little blue plastic carrying case shaped like a bone. She pried through an opening and pulled out a green little plastic bag. The dogs, meanwhile, were both sniffing at each other and slowly circling as their tails were wagging.

"Thanks," I said with relief, then blinked and frowned. "Did you say her name was Porridge?"

"Yeah, I didn't pick it," the woman laughed. "My kid sister begged our parents for her, made all the little-kid promises that she'd take care of her pet and all that. Well, it didn't even take a year, and Porridge was living with me more than with them."

"Well, good for you for taking her on," I said as I awkwardly unfurled the bag and got my hand inside, getting ready to scoop the poop. There was a new problem, and this one was all mental - I was about the grab dog poop in front of an absolute hottie.

She was a brunette with pale, freckled skin and had high cheekbones and the kind of build under her baggy crop top and high-waisted shorts that would have been in competition with Meghan Fox for that iconic Transformers scene with the car. Her hair was up in a high ponytail, revealing that she had tattoos on her neck and down onto her clavicle, and one of her arms was a solid sleeve.

"What's his name?" she asked as I fiddled with the bag.

"Pardon?"

"Your dog," she grinned. I had a feeling she knew I'd been drifting into staring. She was hot, and she was aware of it.

"Oh, um, this is Ralph," I said. "But, uh, he's not mine. He's my girlfriend's dog, I'm just taking him out for a walk while she's got stuff going on this afternoon."

"That's so nice," she said, her grin getting a little warmer as she squatted down and gave the golden retriever a solid scratching behind the ear. "Hello, Ralph. You're so handsome and well behaved, I bet your momma taught you right."

I managed not to bungle the scoop-flip-and-tie of the dog poop, but as I was standing back up at the same time as the woman, the dogs had other things in mind. They'd been circling between and around us, and Ralph went one way while Porridge went the other, both of them grinning like idiots and crossing behind the woman, and still circling and meeting behind me.

The leverage on the leashes pulled us together firmly - firm enough that I distinctly felt her tit press against my chest through our shirts and I was ninety per cent sure she wasn't wearing a bra.

"Oh, shit," she said, half-laughing.

"Whoa, Ralph!" I called, chuckling as well. Then I grinned sheepishly at her. "Sorry about that."

"Little gremlins," she snorted and smirked, shaking her head at the two dogs who were now looking up at us, completely unfazed by the fact that all four of us were bundled together in a knot.

"Um, I'm Robbie, by the way," I said, awkwardly offering her my hand.

"Alannis," she said, accepting the shake with a grin and a wry smile.

We started to get ourselves untangled, trying to get the dogs unwound from each other without making it worse. Alannis had a boisterous laugh, didn't seem to mind the ridiculousness of our situation even as an older couple walked by skirting us on the sidewalk giving us judgey glances, and I was pretty sure that her nipple was getting stiff on that boob that was pressing and rubbing against me.

Then she moaned, and immediately blushed hard because that had been a sexual moan.

I'd been directing Porridge since I could see the white dog behind Alannis's back, and had set my hand on the woman's back for a moment as I tried to get her dog around Ralph in the right direction.

My bare hand pressed against her bare skin between her crop top and the waist of her shorts.

Fucking Midas Hands, I immediately thought with a bit of panic.

"Sorry," I said, pulling my hand away immediately, trying to find an out for her. "That didn't hurt, did it? Did I shock you or something?"

"Just, uh, surprised me," she stammered, blushing almost harder than I was.

I managed not to put my hand on her back again as we got ourselves untangled, and I scooped up the bag of dog poo I'd dropped as we'd been getting ourselves together.

"Well, that was interesting," I laughed lightly once we were a couple of steps away from each other.

"Cartoonish," Alannis snorted softly, smirking a little as she shook her head down at Porridge. "Little troublemaking gremlins."

"Well, we're headed this way," I said, nodding back in the direction of Becca's building. Trying not to glance down at the obvious nipple bump in her shirt.

"We're headed this way," Alannis said, gesturing in the opposite direction. "Nice to meet you, Robbie." Then she crouched slightly, reaching out and giving Ralph a scritch on the snout. "And you, you handsome devil." She stood back up and hesitated for a moment, something clearly on the tip of her tongue as she eyed me critically for a moment. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a permanent marker, pulled the cap off and boldly grabbed my hand. "Call me some time, if you're interested," she said as she wrote a phone number on my wrist. "We could go for a walk to the dog park or something, let these two have a playdate. Or... we could have a playdate - I think you're pretty cute." She made eye contact with me at that last bit, blushing again but being ballsy and forward all the same. But she also quickly capped the marker and started backing away, biting her lower lip teasingly.

"I- Thanks?" I stammered slightly, then gestured to Ralph. "I've got a girlfriend."

"I didn't say we had to play alone," Alannis grinned. "I'm ENM." Then she turned and walked away a little quicker.

I worked my jaw a couple of times, wanting to call after her that I technically had more than one girlfriend. That I wasn't from Seattle. That I thought she was cute, too.

I looked down at Ralph, and he looked up at me, and I wasn't sure if he was looking at me accusingly or if he was internally laughing.

Eventually, I shook my head and sighed. "Why the hell am I suddenly getting hit on all the time?" I asked Ralph. "Cass didn't say she bought a perk to just make me give off pheromones or something. Is it just the fucking Midas Hands?" That could have been it - thinking back to the last few days, Jay the Party Planner had been extra-flirty at the end of our meeting, and we'd shaken hands at the start and when we made our deal. And Ada and I had shaken hands the first time we met, not to mention her tendency to hold my arm (though I wasn't sure that counted for Midas Hands).

Had I touched Dayana before we kissed, before I noticed her flirting with me more? Cattie and Cass both said she'd been crushing on me for a long time, and Dayana hadn't said anything that contradicted that, but thinking that maybe what had happened yesterday between us was because of one fucking perk sent chills up my spine.

"Fuck the AMA," I sighed to Ralph, then frowned. Fuck the AMA, except...

I swear he raised one eyebrow questioningly.

"Why am I talking to you?" I grunted, shaking my head and starting us back towards Becca's place.