Guard Dog

He had bed hair. She noticed that first.

The second thing she noticed was that he reminded her of a puppy. A golden retriever puppy, to be exact. Well. Or maybe a yellow lab. She couldn’t tell which.

She really had to stop comparing boys to dogs.

And yet… it was really bothering her. Which was why she kept staring at him from across the school cafeteria. Really. That was it.

The bed hair was a sandy sort of color, tousled, but not curly. The nest of locks was perched on a face that could arguably be compared to a Grecian sculpture, if not for the inescapably goofy smile that was fixed upon said face.

It was the smile that really killed him, thought Mari. He would have been perfect if not for his smile. His smile made him look like an overgrown puppy. A simple, go-with-the-flow, I-don't-have-a-backbone puppy.

Of course, she had completely skipped his eyes, which, now that she had caught them, made the smile seem incredibly less silly. They were a pretty, deep blue color. It was odd, since she never paid much attention to people’s eyes before, but his didn’t sparkle or shine… they flowed. They looked like the tide of the ocean; waves of different emotions came tumbling in and out, daring you to dive in and discover their depths…

Dammit. That’s what happened when one decided to become a literature major. Their minds turned to mush beneath the annotating and analyzing.

“I wouldn’t eat that if I were you,” the lips that framed the goofy smile said.

Snapping her head, Mari looked up at the bed-headed-Grecian-god. She felt herself redden with the guilt that moments before, she had been cruelly picking apart him aesthetically. “Excuse me?”

He motioned to her salad. “Salmonella break out,” he explained, scooping out her tomatoes. “They say we don’t have anything to worry about, but…” he shrugged his shoulders. “Better safe than sorry, right?”

“I suppose you’re right,” she agreed. “But I wouldn’t have eaten them anyway. I hate tomatoes.” Sensing that she might come across as ungrateful, Mari let loose a fledgling smile. “Thanks, though.”

Another inane smile blossomed across his face. “No problem. Just, you know, guarding your health.” He stuck out his hand unceremoniously. “Luke Gray.”

She shook his hand. “Marissa James. Or. Mari.”

“Mari.” He repeated. “It fits.”

She stood up, looking at the clock. Her next class was in five minutes. “I’ll see you later?”

“Yeah,” he grinned. “Want my…?”

She shook her head, feeling bold. “I know where to find you.”

He looked surprised. “You do?”

“I’ll just look for any unsuspecting person with tomatoes in their salad,” she said lightly, smiling at him as her goodbye.

“Guarding your health indeed.” This guy wasn’t just a golden retriever/lab mix; he was a bonafide guard dog.

To the average person, he might have been annoying and his chivalry sexist. But not her. It's a good thing she was a dog person.

0 0 0

Notes: Where did this come from? Who knows. Am I going to do anything else with it? Who knows. Probably not. But no promises.

6/27/08