“There is nothing weird about true love. Yes. Right there. Oh, yes. Scratch it, you minx.”
Keelie stopped scratching behind his ear and stepped back. “Gary, we need to have a talk.”
“So long as your voice fills mine ears—”
“Listen.”
He went silent, ears quivering.
“You have been my pet donkey for, what, two years?”
“Two glorious years, the best of my life—”
“Seriously, listen. I rescued you from that horrible old man’s mud pit of a yard and brought you here, and I take care of you—”
“Such good care!”
“Shut up, Gary. I think we get along great, and I appreciate how you get rid of coyotes and let me know whenever anyone is near the yard. I did not appreciate it that time you chewed all the wires on the side of the house. But I need you to understand that my love for you is strictly platonic.”
The donkey gasped. “You…you merely wish…to be friends?”
She put a supportive hand on his back. “Yes. A human and a donkey can only ever be friends.”
“But the way you brush me—”
“I brush Marigold and Rico, too. Grooming is just part of livestock care.”
“You run your hands so sensually down my legs…”
“To pick out the rocks so you won’t get sore hooves.”
“And you sometimes let me—”
“Gary, I absolutely do not ‘let’ you hump my boot while I’m riding. I just can’t stop you most of the time.”
The poor little donkey seemed to deflate, his head hanging and his ears dangling limply.
“So that one life-changing time that you touched my—”
Keelie blushed and had to look away. “Also a part of equine husbandry. It gets dirty up inside your—your—you can get an infection if I don’t clean the sheath.” She coughed. “I didn’t enjoy it.”
“So that’s why you wore gloves.”
The moment grew very, very awkward.
“I’m going to need some time to sit with this,” Gary said, turning his back to her.
“I understand.”
It felt so much like a breakup that Keelie almost cried. Nothing like when Noelle had broken up with her, because that was devastating. She liked Noelle so much more than the guys she’d dated in high school, possibly loved her. Keelie had just recently come to terms with being bisexual, and now she had a talking donkey hitting on her?
Unbelievable.
Keelie went inside and prodded her phone, trying desperately to get it to function, but it was really, really old and very, very dead. She’d heard newer phones were water-resistant. She didn’t have a ton of extra cash, but the next morning, she went out to buy a decent model that wouldn’t poop right out the second she fell into a magical waterfall. Gary did not chase her truck along the fence out to the road as usual. When she scanned the pasture, she saw him moping in the far corner. He’d been missing at breakfast, but she left a chunk of pineapple in his feed bucket,hoping his very favorite treat would remind him that he was loved, even if not in the way that he’d hoped.
As she drove, she sang along with every song she heard, enjoying the bizarre pleasure of being able to wail like Christina Aguilera or rap about thrift stores in a gravelly voice along with Macklemore. It was a longer drive than she usually took, as the cell phone store wasn’t in Arcadia Falls but down the highway a couple of exits. She soon had a model several generations newer than her old phone, plus a decent rebate thanks to turning in her waterlogged one. She immediately texted Cash to let her know what had happened, but she knew full well that after a long night of bartending and then Riley-tending, Cash was likely going to sleep until noon.
As she stepped out of the phone store contemplating a nice little treat for lunch, the hairs along the back of her neck rose, and she scanned the immediate area for some kind of Stranger Danger. There was no one nearby, no magical voices, no threats, no lascivious donkeys. But then her eye was drawn to a familiar figure in the burger place next door.
