Take a Chance on Me (50 page)

Thomas felt himself grin in the dark, remembering how the little mutant sat patiently in front of the washer, then the dryer, his tail wagging. He'd given the boxers back to the dog only after he'd tied them in knots. He figured that if anyone happened to see them hanging from Hairy's mouth, they wouldn't immediately see that the dog had an abnormal attachment to a pair of underwear.

Jesus God, the dog was weird.

Thomas rubbed his face with his hands and tried to go back to sleep. But not two blissful minutes had passed before he felt the dainty impact of dog paws on the mattress, then the pinch of little feet going up his shin, to his thigh, to his bare stomach, then to his chest. Thomas kept his fists clenched at his sides, fighting the urge to fling the six-pound pain in the ass across the room.

At that point, the circling began—tight and fast little spins that went on and on until Hairy apparently thought he'd rearranged Thomas's chest hair to perfection.

Hairy plopped down with a sigh, dropping the pair of boxers next to Thomas's head. The dog curled up and managed to bury his pointy snout in the cozy hollow beneath Thomas's chin.

Thomas lay perfectly still. He tried to relax his fists and breathe normally. He felt the dog's warm skin against his own and looked down his nose to watch the dog's shock of white Billy Idol hair rise and fall with each of his own breaths.

This was plenty weird, Thomas realized, but not in a completely bad way. Just odd. Unusual. But not utterly awful. He tried to ignore the fact that he had an ugly dog sleeping on top of him and closed his eyes.

And before he knew it, he was having The Dream again. But this time it was more than a simple rehashing of the most miserable day of his life. This time, it was worse.

As usual, Rollo sat across the desk from them in his white coat with the black embroidery on the pocket—Rollo Phelps, M.D., Chesapeake Urology Center . He was using the same words he always did: injury; motility; rupture; antibodies; infertility.

Rollo spewed out the usual numbers. A normal man has twenty-five to fifty million sperm per milliliter—

and Thomas had one million. About half of a normal man's sperm are damaged or deformed in some way—

for Thomas, it was ninety percent. And about fifty percent of a normal man's sperm have the horsepower to make the long journey toward an egg—but it was only one percent for Thomas.

And then Rollo reviewed all the options available to them—steroid treatments, in-vitro fertilization, some kind of new sperm injection technology.

But at this point in the dream, things veered off into a completely new direction. Thomas turned to watch Nina rise from her chair and give the speech she always gave at this juncture—"You've never been overly interested in getting married and having a family, and now it appears you couldn't have children if you wanted to. I'm taking this as a sign. It's over."

But this time it wasn't Nina giving the speech.

It was Emma.

This time, a dark, curly head didn't turn to give him that look of pity and reproach—it came with a flip of a mahogany braid.

The eyes weren't dark brown—they were powder blue. It wasn't Nina's voice he heard say "I'm not wasting one more minute of my life with you." It was Emma's voice.

The door shut behind her with finality. Then Rollo said, as he always did at this point, "God, Thomas. I'm so sorry."

Thomas turned to face his friend. But Rollo wasn't Rollo anymore, and the black embroidered pocket of the doctor's coat now read Punk-Ass Stock Boy, CVS, and the kid smirked at him, then busted a gut laughing and said, "Girlfriend? In your dreams, sucker!"

At this point, Thomas began to surface from the bizarre dream world to a waking state, pulled along by the most outrageously delicious physical sensation he'd ever experienced. Emma—sweet, soft, sexy, unbearably female Emma—was nibbling on his unshaven face, giving little fleabites to the tiny hairs growing along his jaw, moving to the stubble on his upper lip, heading toward his mouth for what promised to be a hot, passionate kiss…

Thomas woke with a shout, staring into the bug-eyes of the mutant.