Forever Promised by Amy Lane

Author:Amy Lane [Lane, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub

AND so it was that now, even as Crick watched from his little kick-back sand seat next to a sleeping Parry, he could see Jon and Deacon throwing the stick for the giant Labra-donkey that lived under their porch. Mumford had ridden down in the pickup with Deacon and Crick, his head hanging out the open window in the back, his tail thumping against Crick’s head for pretty much the entire three-hour trip. Once they arrived at the beach, he took off for parts unknown practically before the truck stopped. Deacon ignored him.

“Aren’t you going after him?” Crick asked, struggling with the chair and the blanket and umbrella. Deacon had the ice chest and the beach bag and the useless fucking lead for the dumbass dog.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“Because he can run faster than me.”

“What if he bites someone?”

“He hardly chews his food.”

Crick had to concede—Mumford had an amazingly soft mouth. His ancestors had obviously been bred as bird dogs, because the dumb animal had been mouthing the same stuffed toy for almost three years. It was stinky and drool saturated, but there wasn’t a bald spot on it.

“What if he knocks someone over?”

“Hard to do that when you’re in the water,” Deacon said, and sure enough, the dog was a quarter of a mile away, paddling like he owned the freakin’ ocean.

“What if a whale eats him?” Crick asked, because the plaintive rhythm of the questions was fun, that’s why.

“I would actually pay someone to take a picture of that.”

“Okay, what if a shark eats him?”

“Then we give thanks to his stupid spirit for warning us before we threw the kids in.”

“The kids aren’t going to swim!” Crick protested. Not in Monterey, where the water was fucking cold, especially in October!

“No, but they have life jackets on for a reason. It’d be nice to know that if they get swept away, they’re not just bobbing there like a really big lure.”

Crick glared at Deacon for a moment, outraged, and then he saw that full mouth fighting so hard against a grin that he was tempted to drop all his shit and slug him.

“You bastard.”

“You were asking for it.”

“I’m gonna beat you once I dump this crap, you know that.”

“You’d have to catch me first.”

“I will seriously pummel you until you bleed.”

“What’d he do now?” Jon asked, laughing as he carried his own armload of crap through the parking lot with them. Drew and Benny had apparently hit all the lights—they’d been there for a good half hour, and Benny had called Crick and said they staked out a place by the dunes so they could back up into the shade of the overlook. The sun was hot enough to make walking through the parking lot uncomfortable, and for a minute, Crick had the time-honored response to going to the beach: looking at a picture in an air-conditioned room would be a lot more fun.

But a picture wouldn’t smell like yarrow and salt water, and a picture wouldn’t have the roar-swish sound beyond the dunes.

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