"Of course we allow dogs to ride with their owners." The security guard on the bus said. She waved at the golden retriever. She turned away for a moment then turned back with a rawhide treat in her hands. The dog pushed me out of the way to get to the treat. "What a gorgeous dog and huge too! What does it eat?"

"Babies and security guards." I muttered. My apartment was not big enough for a dog her size; and I also didn’t have a damn clue why the thing was following me.

The security guard laughed and scanned my palm for payment. I hobbled to the back of the empty bus, following the dog and taking the seat next to her. She already had the tip of her muzzle out of the narrow window opening.

For everything that happened to me in the last day and a half the goddamn dog was at the top of my mind. I had no clue why it would follow me. If every dog I gave a bit of a morsel to followed me I would have a hundred dogs running around my building. It was probably the size that was bothering me so much, a dog that weighed more than me was going to eat more food than I bought in a week for myself.

"I hope you like beer dog, cause that is about half my diet."

She ignored me as the bus started down the street. I fingered the piece of fabric in my pocket and wondered why it would be there. I had my suspicions of course; a pping rifle shooting, the butler in front of a car leaving the house and an empty house. God damn me for wanting an adventure.

I groaned at the sight of Pam’s beautiful face in front of me.

"You wouldn’t happen to eat androids huh?" I asked the dog and patted her side.

She turned her head to me and gave me a look like she pitied me for being so dumb, then promptly tried to shove her muzzle out the tiny window.

"Who’s the dumb one now?" I said patting her side again. "Hi Pam. How are you on this wonderful morning?"

"It’s afternoon Tom and where is my story on the cat?" Pam said.

I sighed and felt the cloth in my pocket again. "Give me one week Pam and I will have a story about the cat that will double your subscriber base."

"Two to four. That’s quite the jump." Bevisste added.

I burst out laughing and mentally willed her to shut up.

Pam glared at me. "What do you have Tom?"

"Nothing yet, well not really but I don’t want to jinx it by saying it out loud. Just believe me Pam, there’s a reason why you gave this story to me and I will prove it. One week."

She scratched her forehead while she thought. I once again, while I stared at the man’s face, thought what a shame to waste on a woman and what a shame she had to pretend to be a man to continue being a CEO of a fairly decent sized company.

"You have five days." She said and ended the connection.

"That’s four more than I thought she would give me. You’re good luck dog, though I am not giving you a name and saying that does not mean you will stay with me."

She wagged her tail slightly which was more than enough to make my thigh hurt.

"Datel!" I said suddenly though I wished that was not my neighbor’s name.

"No." Bevisste replied.

"Stephanie. Belle. Desirie. Delight. Delicious. Dainty. Susan. Meghan. Melanie. Barbara. Janice. Janet."

"Holy shit." Bevisste said. I smiled knowing I finally guessed it. "Some of those name don’t begin with the letter D. You do have an original bone in your body."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, although I think it might be really small. None of those are her name."

I leaned my head back and dreaded going back to the apartment. The woman who I thought had to be the most gorgeous to ever have lived, Cleo was a product of a surgeon so I do not think she counts, not only saved me from a maniac sonji, but cleaned me up and I could not remember her name. Here the day started out so well too.

It took damn near an hour and a half to finally get to my stop about a half a mile away from my apartment. I begged the security guard to make the bus go further. Give credit to her, she was polite when she informed me that buses are ran by central dispatch and never deviate from their routes. She then gave the dog another treat and beamed at it. I was half tempted to push the dog at her and try running. I probably wouldn’t have gotten it to budge though.

"I’ll bet I could ride on your back." I said looking at the dog. It was tempting but having no idea how the dog would react and recalling the size of the teeth kept me from trying out my idea. The dog just walked beside me sniffing the ground the entire time. In the forty-five minutes it took me to walk to the front door the dog didn’t once look up. However once I began to slow to a stop near the building the dog walked immediately up to the front door of my building. Some say dogs have a sixth sense that lets them pick up on clues people give off that they don’t know they give off.

I’m pretty sure this dog was just magical.

I hobbled up the steps wincing in pain trying to bite back tears, slapped the keycard on the building and pushed the door open. There she was, my dream and since I could not remember her name for the life of me a nightmare waiting to happen. The dog pushed by me and looked around. Miss Gorgeous took one look at the dog and lit up.

"Oh my God you are so cute!" She said. The dog padded up to her with its tongue out. She scratched behind its ears talking gibberish to it then finally looked up at me. "Holy shit Tom! Do you get into fights every day?"

I smiled, I couldn’t keep it off my face hearing her say my name, and shook my head. "Not really, though it probably doesn’t look like it. This is actually from a tree, two trees to be exact."

She shook her head as she looked me up and down and walked up to me, grabbing the arm not on my bike, putting it around her shoulder. "Let me help you. What happened?"

"It’s a long story. Well..." I thought on it. "Well not really that long of a story, shit it’s not much of one at all. I’m not exactly sure why this has happened to me. Very odd when I stop to think about it. Althought it is not surprising, nothing good ever happens to me."

She helped me to the couch and took my bike from me. I watched her walk to the far wall, she was wearing her workout shorts and jacket. Unreal how it looked on her. She caught me staring and smiled.

"Well you can tell me while I see to your ankle. It’s huge."

"What? No?! No it’s okay." Not knowing her name had me in a panic and that she was going to help me get better again made me feel that much worse.

"Why not?" She put her hands on her hips and looked at me, then gave me a slight grin. "It’s the manliness syndrome huh? Well don’t worry, if your friends ask, you stitched yourself up using rusty wire and a wrench. I won’t tell anyone a girl helped you."

I laughed despite myself. "Fuck, what’s your name?" I said covering my eyes. "Bevisste refuses to tell me and for the life of me I can’t remember much of anything from yesterday. Well I remember the embarrassing parts in perfect clarity but your name eludes me."

I slowly lowered my hand to find her looking me in the eyes. I was ready for her to storm off and never speak to me again.

"What do you think it is?" She asked.

"Beautiful." I blurted out before I could stop my tongue from forming the words.

She smiled. "Thanks. It’s Laetitia. Now sit right there and don’t move. I will be right back."

Laetitia left my apartment, I was sure she was never coming back. The dog came up to me and rested her head on my lap. I scratched her head without thinking and looked at the dog. "It could have been worse. She could have called me an idiot." The dog cocked an eyebrow. "You’re still not staying here."

To that she walked two steps away turned in a circle four times and laid down with her head on her paws looking straight at me.

"I’m serious. You’re too big and I’ll have to pay a deposit to let you live here. There’s no way I could hide you from the Super." I frowned at my response. The damned thing was talking me into keeping it without it saying a word. "At least you’re not a cat."

I looked at the wall in front of me at the powered off holoscreen and two frames that cycled through images and short vids of my time in the Marine Corps. Quite a few images of me and my friends standing over piles of dead ppings. It put a smile on my face, good times back then.

"I didn’t know you had a dog." Laetitia said from the doorway.

I craned my neck to see her bringing in an arm load of linen and a box in her other hand.

"I don’t. She followed me here and won’t take no for answer."

"She’s so adorable. A bit on the big side but adorable." She said dropping her stash on the ground in front of the couch and taking a seat next to me.

Suddenly I was a teenager on my very first date. My mouth went dry, my palms clammy, I felt hot and began to sweat on my forehead. She looked at me oddly and put the world’s most delicate hand to my forehead.

"Do you feel sick?"

I smiled a sad smile and shook my head.

"Take your shirt off. That’s dry dirty blood on your shirt. You need to get the rest cleaned up before you get an infection." She laughed. "That would be something. First person in two centuries to die from an infection."

For not the first time I was ecstatic that I choose to ride a bike instead of take a car or bus everywhere. I pulled off my shirt wincing in pain from my ribs as I did so. While I would not be winning any Mr. Universe pageants, I thought I looked good with my shirt off. She tsked at the sight and began rummaging in her box of goodies.

"Why are you doing this, if you don’t mind me asking? I hope I don’t sound like an ingrate by asking that but it does strike me as a bit odd; helping a man you just formerly met yesterday." The words came out in a rush. She either made me tongue tied or I was jabbering like a virgin on her prom night.

She pulled up a tube of something and a bandage. "I like helping people and you are one of the first people since I moved to Oazan not to proposition me within the first two minutes of meeting me. You seem like a nice guy, and that dog likes you so you probably are, so I want to help out. This may sting."

I sucked in a breath at the stinging sensation. While not as bad as my face felt with the green paste it still had a kick to it. She put the tube down and slapped the bandage on. I could feel it working its medical magic the moment it touched my skin.

"Are you a nurse?"

"No. I’m actually a physical trainer and masseuse. I work down at Cluck Cluck. Not a bad place actually quite nicer than the gig I had on Earth."

"No way. Where from?"

"Lansia."

"New Kansas in the Federated States."

She looked at me oddly for a moment and brushed a strand of platinum blonde hair behind her ear. I coughed, needing to clear my throat not to break the moment, though it did just that. Laetitia looked down at her box of goodies and bent down again to rummage through it. After a moment she pushed the box aside and slid to the floor.

"So the dog just followed you home? What’s her name?"

"I haven’t given her one. It’ll just mean she gets to stay here. Though from the look of her she made that decision on her own."

"Yeah she does look comfortable here." Laetitia leaned forward to scratch the dog’s head. Her jacket pulled up considerably and her leg stretched out giving me a view that would stay in my dreams for a long time. "You should give her a name."

I continued to admire Laetitia then looked at the dog. The dog looked up at me with the eyes only dogs can give.

"Luck." I said.

"I like it. Do you like it little Luck? I’ve heard you should give dogs a two syllable name so they don’t confuse their names with commands."

"Lucky."

Laetitia sat up and smiled at me. She grabbed my swollen ankle eliciting a grunt from me. "Don’t be such a baby. I may have to go tell one of your army buddies." She pointed at the frames.

"Marine Corps."

"Oh? Now hold still this shoe needs to come off or I’ll have to cut it off, I may end up having to do that anyway from the look of it." She undid the laces on the running shoe and tried pulling. I grunted again biting my tongue at the intense wave of pain. The shoe went nowhere. She leaned over, grabbed a silver handle from the box and touched the side. A thin silver line appeared in the air above the handle about four inches tall. With great precision she cut the outside of the shoe into pieces, there goes two hundred bits, and pulled the shoe off.

"Damn. That is one ugly sprain. You’re lucky you didn’t break it or we would be taking a trip to the ER. How did you do this?" She began to massage just above the ankle. I raised my hand to tell her to stop then arched an eyebrow at the sensation of pain flowing away from my ankle.

"That’s amazing."

"It’s a gift." She said with a small smile. "My brothers were always getting into trouble when we were growing up. After a while I had begun to fix up their wounds, it saved them from quite a few punishments from our parents."

"Wow." I said more to the pain leaving my body and her hands on my skin than to her remark of her brothers.

Suddenly she stopped massaging my calf. I wanted to tell her to never stop though I somehow managed to keep my mouth shut. A white paste on my ankle and a quick wrap of the linens and suddenly I had a cast on my foot keeping it completely immobile. She was a goddess.

Laetitia patted my knee then ran her hand over Lucky’s snout and got to her feet. I watched in amazement as she pulled her jacket down. I was in puppy dog love and I knew it.

"You can tell me how this happened over dinner."

"Huh? Won’t your boyfriend be a little upset you’re having dinner with a strange man?" Damn me and speaking without thinking.

"Boyfriend?" She asked quizzically.

Cat was out of the bag, might as well start skinning it. "That guy I’ve seen here with you every now and then."

"Oh, Jean-Pierre. No he’s not boyfriend." She laughed at that. Her laugh sounded like carillon bells. "That’s one of my brothers. Aside from him, you are the only other person I know on this planet outside of my coworkers. He keeps telling me I should move from this dump, just wait until I tell him about the nice guy I made friends with." She beamed me a smile.

I held back a groan. The F word. The one and only F word a person does not want to hear from someone whom they have a fantastic crush on.

"That’s great." I managed to say and sound happy. Friend is the last thing on my mind with you Laetitia. I thought.

"I’ll bring dinner back here. You are in no shape to go anywhere even to my place. You just sit here with Lucky and wait. It may take a bit to make it, so feel free to doze off. I’ll wake you up if you’re asleep when I come back."

I smiled at her. "Thank you Laetitia."

She winked and walked out the door leaving her stuff. I took that as a sign she was coming back. Lucky let out a long sigh and stretched out pushing the end table I had a good two feet. I smiled at the dog and shook my head. I still had no idea how I was going to feed the damn thing. I’ll bet it ate twenty pounds of food a day.

"Well that went good Tom." Bevisste said.

"Yes it did Bevisste though she did say she met a friend. Fuck me, that is not what I wanted to hear." I looked down at my ankle and was amazed at the lack of pain. The woman did know how to fix up a man.

"And you were expecting her to strip naked and jump on you right away? I know it has been a while since you have had a date but damn Tom."

"Yeah, yeah." I leaned back on the couch and stared at the wall of my friends. Damn if they could see Laetitia. Actually I was quite glad they couldn’t. I have never met a greater group of people than when I was in the Corps but they were lousy when it came to the people they found attractive. Every one of them would have tried to swoop in even while I was talking to her. The thought of sending a few of them a snapshot of Laetitia kept a smile on my face as sleep took me.

Next Chapter: Dogs are awesome