The Last Days of Summer

A lone cicada buzzed in the still, hot air, the sun burning into my skin until I swear I could feel the freckles popping out. I didn't care. I'd spent the morning swimming in the river, and now me and Michael basked on the bank, pleasantly tired. My stomach rumbled but I was too sleepy and content to move to the bench where we'd stowed our bikes and sack lunch.

"Can't believe school starts in a few weeks. You ready, John?" Michael asked in the direction of the blue sky.

Well…damn. Why'd he have to go and spoil the moment like that?

"I guess," I said, noncommittal. We'd be starting at the local high school this fall. New classes, teachers…the locker room. My cousins told me horror stories of the gym's locker room, the towel snaps on bare skin, stolen underwear, being shoved into lockers by the older boys. They might have exaggerated. I hoped so. Middle school gym had been bad enough.

And I'd still have to shower with other guys. My face grew hot, having nothing to do with the heat of the day. I wiped my sweaty palms on my shorts. Sighing, I stared at the brightness of the sun against my closed lids and tried to regain the peace of before. The cicada's tone changed but continued its incessant buzz, nudging me towards sleep. The afternoon spread out before me with absolutely nothing I needed to do. Perfect.

"Ready for some of that watermelon?" Michael asked after a moment.

"Not yet," I murmured, stretching languidly, smelling the dry grass I crushed under my skinny body. "Think I'll take a nap first."

It surprised me when Michael didn't get up, his contented sigh warming my heart but also starting that little pang of loneliness again. I peered at him through my lashes. Small, dark haired, kind of plain looking, until he flashed that grin that made my heart jump and rush and me wanting to join whatever mischief he had concocted in that tricky brain of his.

As if he felt me looking, he turned his head. We stared at each other a long heartbeat, then against all expectation, he reached over and brushed his fingers against mine. Happiness came near choking me. 

We'd been best friends forever. Maybe we could finally be something more.

And then that grin I lived for sprang on Michael's pixy face. "Hey, want to sneak into that new film?

"It's rated 'R'. We'd get caught."

"Nope! I know for a fact they keep the back door propped open a bit for fresh air in the summertime. My brother worked there last year and told me. They'd never know we were there."

I nodded, my heart singing. Things might change when school started, but at this moment I had the rest of summer before me with Michael to share it with.

Pic by One Good Eye Photography

Dianne is the author of m/m erotic romance, both contemporary and fantasy, the psychological thriller, and anything else that comes to mind. Oh, and a floral designer. If she can’t be writing, at least she has the chance to create through the rich colors and textures of flowers and foliage to bring a smile to someone's face. Currently, Dianne lives in the Willamette Valley of Oregon with her incredibly patient husband, who puts up with the endless hours she spends hunched over the keyboard letting her characters play.

  

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The Dog Who Couldn't Wag His Tail

Dog days bring more than summer heat...

I awoke to a cold, dreary, rainy Sunday morning, one of those November days when you want to remain tucked in bed. To stave the chill, I grabbed a steaming cup of coffee and then glanced out my window. He stood in the icy rain, watching me. Whose dog is that? I turned away from the window, wanting nothing to do with another four-legged creature, and proceeded to eat my breakfast.

Hard as I fought it, my eyes kept drifting toward this most unwelcome hungry, wet intruder. The animal’s intense gaze struck me first, and then his lameness. He held his left leg up, clearly unable to walk on it. With a softened heart, I opened the backdoor, but the dog crept deeper into the woods, his tail, broken and hanging between his legs. Pitiful, absolutely pitiful.

By the time we returned from church, I had forgotten about the stray dog. Later I wandered outside where I found him, standing away from the house, watching me from his perch. He held his lame leg off the ground. His ears flattened against his head.

That evening I said to my husband, “Did you see that German-shepherd looking dog in the woods this morning?”

“Don’t even think about it. And anyway I believe he belongs to the neighbors around the corner.”

I sighed, relieved. But the memory of that dog, the yearning in his eyes haunted me.   

  

Days passed. The dog didn’t go away. After I fed my resident canines, he sneaked up to the house and devoured whatever food was left. At first I discouraged this behavior, but when I saw his ribs, I allowed him to scavenge. My heart ached for the miserable life this poor animal led. No way this dog belonged to our neighbors. He clearly belonged to no one.

During the first week, Wolf, as I now called him, hung out in our woods, watched us, and waited for our dogs to finish eating. By the next week, Wolf had his own personal food dish, purchased at Pet Smart with him in mind.

Wolf still refused to come near us. He continued to hang out in the woods while I inched his dish closer and closer to the house. The other dogs played with Wolf. He trusted the dog world, whereas he remained steadfastly fearful of the people world.

As weeks multiplied into months and warm summer days came upon us, Wolf fattened up. But, ticks covered his body. He stood on his lame leg, but his fur was matted and rough.

One night during dinner, Wolf sat on his broken tail at the edge of the woods. I said, “Don’t you think it must be the worst thing in the world for a dog not to be able to wag his tail. It’d be like not being able to laugh.”

“I doubt that dog has had too much to laugh about,” my husband said between bites.   

More months passed. At a safe distance, Wolf watched us pet and play with the other dogs. With his eyes fixed on us, he never moved from his perch. Each night we gave the other dogs Milkbone treats. Not being able to stand seeing the glow of Wolf’s eyes, alone in the dark, I approached him with a treat, but he moved away, tail between his legs, ears flat. I tossed the tasty morsel in his direction. He stopped, sniffed the bone, and gobbled it down.

In the spring my cousins came to visit. Being animal lovers, they talked and played with our dogs. My cousin, Frank, cajoled Wolf to come to him. But Wolf kept his distance and merely watched the strangers. Before Frank left, he said, “That dog will be the most lovable of your dogs one day.”  I laughed, completely rejecting Frank’s prediction. What did he know?  He hadn’t been dealing with Wolf for over a year. I had resigned myself to Wolf’s self-imposed distance. At least now he had food every day.

After the seasons changed again from summer to winter and back to summer, I no longer tossed the Milkbone treat to Wolf. He took the bone from my hand held at arm’s length. By now Wolf ate with the other dogs and didn’t creep into the woods whenever the door to the house opened. But he still watched us warily and never let us approach him.

On a hot, humid day in August while I held the Milkbone treat toward Wolf, his tongue touched my hand. Oh, my God! He licked me. Surely he didn’t mean it. The next day Wolf did it again. Bubbling with excitement, I flew in the house to report what Wolf had done.

The following day while Wolf ate, I approached him, stopped, and stood. My heart thundered, my hand trembled. I reached out and, for the first time in over two years, stroked the top of Wolf’s head. He lowered his body, but he didn’t jerk away. His fur felt course, not smooth like the other dogs. His huge brown eyes studied me with a mixture of resignation and fear, but his broken tail lifted slightly.

That warm summer I began petting Wolf regularly. When he lowered his head, as if he thought I might strike him, I raised his chin. The fear in his eyes transformed to trust and love with each stroke. But best of all, he lifted his broken tail as high as he could, and he began wagging it. For the first time since that cold November day, Wolf wagged his tail and lifted his ears. Tears of joy filled my eyes.

Today, Wolf has no ticks. He’s a well-fed, neutered animal with a shiny black coat. Unfortunately his former life left wounds. His limp comes and goes apparently from an old injury. But that doesn’t stop him from running to greet us every night with his broken tail held as high as he can raise it and wagging with such force that his entire backend wiggles. Indeed, he has become the most affectionate canine in our pack.

The dog days of August for some mean days that are so full of heat and humidity the dogs go crazy, howling from the burning temperatures. In Georgia we say, It’s too hot to work. For me, however, dog days in August mean something totally different.

It was during those "dog days" that Wolf finally lifted his head and wagged his tail.

MuseItUp publishing will release the print version of The Clock Strikes Midnight this month, August 2015.

The Rules of Time Travel by Meradeth Houston

Time travel has consequences...especially for love.

Okay, so it's a rare thing when my monthly post here on Lightening Quick Reads lines up exactly with my release day for my next novel, TRAVELERS. So I'm sharing a little excerpt today, of summertime on the beach, despite the fact that my cute little puppy is curled up next to me :)

***

With three books open and spread out around me, a sheet full of notes, and my phone locked in my bathroom to keep myself focused, I vowed to get my homework done. As I struggled to work through another math problem, my eyes drifted to the photo framed on my desk. The one I couldn’t quite bring myself to remove, even if seeing it made my throat tighten.

Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and dotted my paper with little puckered wet drops. In the picture, Henry, Joan, and I were laughing, our heads tipped back, wrapped in a three-person hug in the brilliant sunshine. Henry’s amazing body—the product of the swim team—stood out in the photo like something off the cover of one of the magazines they hid at the back of our local bookstore, the kind Joan and I used to sneak back and dare each other to peek at.

Friends since birth, the twins and I did everything together. It only seemed natural that Henry and I would end up together, and Joan hung out with us more often than not—at least when she wasn’t busy with some extracurricular activity or her obsession with environmental activism.

When Henry came over to help my study, my parents strangely didn’t have problem with the two of us spending many late nights working together. And kissing. Lots of kissing. I liked to think my parents never caught on to how he helped me study that.

While I would have given up every painting I’d ever completed for the chance to kiss Henry again, that wasn’t what I missed the most. I missed sitting on my bed with him—talking, laughing, and watching movies. We used to catch old horror flicks, the kind that were so awful they were funny. We’d watch them with the sound off and supply the voices and storyline ourselves. I would laugh so hard I’d almost pee at the way Henry made himself sound like a sour old guy. Then we’d curl up, tangle our arms and legs, and let the world beyond my room just disappear. I’d fallen asleep like that countless times, so comfortable and so confident in how we felt about each other. In those moments, nothing else mattered.

I missed that most. Every time I thought about him, my heart ached.

As I studied his unflinching gaze, his eyes captivated me. I saw now what I couldn’t see then—the sadness creeping in. The knowledge that he’d never spend another afternoon with us at the beach. Even as a Traveler, especially as a Traveler, his clock ticked down so fast. Too fast.

I often thought about trying to Travel back to a time before his death to talk and visit with him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’d said my goodbyes, and for now, I needed to keep moving forward.

Even if I sometimes wondered how I could possibly manage life without him.

The test answers rested under my notebook, and I pulled them out. Maybe things would turn around now. If Joan managed to get back to semi-normal, maybe we could help each other. Maybe I could keep myself together.

But for now, I kissed my fingertip and pressed it to Henry’s face in the photo. I whispered a soft “love you” and tried to return to my homework.

Sienna Crenshaw knows the rules: 1) no time traveling beyond your natural lifetime, 2) no screwing with death, and 3) no changing the past. Ever. Sienna doesn’t love being stuck in the present, but she’s not the type to to break the rules. That is, she wasn’t the type until her best friend broke every one of those rules to keep Henry, her twin brother and Sienna’s ex-boyfriend, alive.

Suddenly, Sienna is caught in an unfamiliar reality. The upside? Henry is still alive. The downside? Sienna’s old life, including the people in it, has been erased. Now, Sienna and Henry must untangle the giant knot in time, or her parents and all the rest of the Travelers, will be lost forever. One problem: the only way to be successful is for Henry to die... (Goodreads)

***

Meradeth's never been a big fan of talking about herself, but if you really want to know, here are some random tidbits about her:

>She's a Northern California girl and now braves the cold winters in Montana.

>When she's not writing, she's sequencing dead people's DNA.

>She’s also an anthropology professor and loves getting people interested in studying humans.

>If she could have a super-power, it would totally be flying. Which is a little strange, because she's terrified of heights.

Find Meradeth Houston online at:www.MeradethHouston.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Amazon, Goodreads, and of course her blog!