Pretty Dogs (Dirty Strays, #2)

by Riley Nash

“You’re a bag of rancid prawns. You give everyone the shits.”

She carried my soul for fifteen years, until I could set it free.

Over ten years later, when someone asks “Why did you decide to join a gang? What pushed you over the edge?”, I think back on that hot, lonely afternoon, the bikes, the photo of my mom, and the only two men I’d ever met who didn’t hit me and cuss me out. And I don’t know how to answer, because it’s always too simple and too complicated at the same time.

I should fucking remember what it looks like. But sometimes you don’t look for something until it’s not there anymore.

I think you’re awesome.

You’re cute, too.

four years old, I had

decided I would never have kids because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do if I didn’t want to hit them.

Their stories had a beginning, a before. A version of them that could be saved without losing their entire identity. I’ve never had a before.

I wasn’t ready to find out what lies beyond the edges of myself.

I open my mouth to contradict him, because “trapped” makes me sound weak. But when I think about it, that’s the only right word–an animal in a trap, flopping around and hurting itself as it waits to die.

His warm, strong lips capture mine without a second of hesitation.

love my best friend, with his hair and his smile and the body that fits against mine. But his soul could be inside anyone or anything and I’d still need him until the day I die.

but I want to, just so I can turn him toward a mirror someday and see his face when he realizes what I did.

I’ve never been anything but this, and I don’t know what would happen to me if I changed.”

“Not you, pretty boy. You’re space dust. All the colors in the universe.”

every word out of his mouth and everything he’s ever done tells me I’m what he wants. And the fact that it doesn’t make sense, that it goes against logic? That’s his problem, not mine. My job is just to believe him.”

Lust brings so many complications–my body, my virginity, learning a new language with each other. That’s the scary part, where we don’t have a road map or any assurance we won’t ruin everything.

“We should never have dropped you off at the curb and told you to change your whole life around by yourself. From now on, we’ll figure things out together.”

“I love you.” “Love you too,” he rumbles happily.

“You’re a brat.” Despite everything, I feel a little less like I’m suffocating. I have a home, and the people there love me, even if I don’t deserve it. It’s small, in the face of how fucked up this world is, but it’s real.

When the sun comes through the window just right and the air smells of fresh cookies, this shitty little kitchen turns into my favorite place in the house.

Now I get it. It’s not about me. It’s about the man I love more than anything in the world watching me with bright, excited eyes, asking me to make him feel amazing.

I lean forward between the front seats and all three of us watch in a kind of hushed silence as he stumbles to his feet and races across the street. His mom tries to run toward him, but after a couple of steps she starts crying so hard that she has to just stand there with her arms out until his skinny body collides with hers.

“Mom, he doesn’t even know what paprika is.”

"You thought I might never come home again, but you still brought me here? So I could be happy?"

My mom is going to pull up our driveway in a month and see nothing but one massive, extraordinarily well-tended weed.