Annie, Get Your Gun || Para 02
“Her fur color reminds me of Arizona and the wild Texas plains,” he said absently, running his fingers through Oakley’s fur once more. Ray gave a slight smile, “Like the old western setting Annie Oakley is from,” he explained after a second, wondering why that sounded a whole lot better in his head. He also didn’t care if people thought it was dumb, but he didn’t want to go looking for reasons to be made fun of either. “Disappointment? Nah, I think she’ll live right up to all my expectations. She’s already destroyed one of the ugliest shirts my mom gave me, so I think she’s on my side.” Ray joked, standing up straighter from where he’d been crouching by the dog.
Ray was idly wondering if she had this pact not to find any joy in life. It was an actual thought that went through his head, especially with the way she looked at the dog. Dogs were naturally supposed to decrease stress levels and lower blood pressure – from all those online threads Ray had read after rescuing the mutt – so he assumed Lisbeth’s must be through the roof. He suddenly felt awkward, like the air had changed. He must’ve been thinking too much about it all, since Lisbeth seemed to answer him after all.
He nodded slightly when she pointed out that she had met him on Friday, cracking a smile, “Thanks for reminding me. I’d almost forgotten,” he teased lightly, rocking back and forth on his heels for a second. Ray didn’t like feeling he was ruining someone’s existence just by talking to them, and it almost made him turn around and bail on the conversation so he did’t annoy Lisbeth by breathing the wrong way. He bit his bottom lip, “Something wrong with your guitar?” he asked after a second.
Ray checked the time on his watch, looking down at Oakley before back in the direction he’d come from, “Instead of fake cafeteria food, you could always come with me and my woman down to the Shack. It’s like a walk up food place. I promised the owner I’d bring Oakley by. They like giving her dog stuff and the occasional treat.” He wasn’t sure if it was an unusual request for an acquaintance, but it wasn’t like she had to say yes anyway.
Lisbeth stayed quiet, not that quiet was anything but normal for her, as Ray took the opportunity to explain a little more fully the reasoning behind the dog’s name. When he put it that way it seemed a lot more logical, unless of course Annie Oakley had been especially ugly. Lisbeth didn’t think the dog was ugly, but if it was supposed to be borne out of a likeness, well, poor woman. She kept this to herself, though. “It makes more sense when you put it that way,” Lisbeth agreed, surveying the rich color of the dog’s fur. She wished Ray had named her something a little easier for Lisbeth to say, not that he should have been considering her when he got the dog, but she was pretty sure if Ray was like 99.9% of the other people she had met he’d send a few little jabs about her inability to pronounce “Oakley” like a normal human being. Nobody ever meant to offend her, which was fine, but it annoyed her to some degree that they’d wonder why she was quiet after that.
“You could have just thrown it way and blamed it on the dog,” Lisbeth pointed out, “but I guess it might be helpful to know she has the same taste in clothes as you.”
It was the best she could do in terms of a joke under the given circumstances. She knew it took a lot for her to warm up to a person and grow comfortable around them, and that generally turned a certain type of person against her in turn. It was surprising to her that Ray was willing to put in the time, that or he was just too polite for his own good. She’d been more sociable at the bar over the weekend, but she’d slept in that day and geared up for potential conversation with strangers. On weekdays she ducked her head into class and then back out to minimalize potential for interaction, but here she was anyway. It didn’t feel like a chore, although probably it appeared as if she viewed it that way to her company.
“Oh, yeah, any time,” Lisbeth answered, fiddling awkwardly with the lengths of the straps of her backpack. She stared at her feet trying to think of something to follow it up with, but his question about her guitar beat her to it. “Not anymore,” she explained. She realized pretty quickly that if she left it at that she would have shut him down again, which she could have sworn she wasn’t doing intentionally, though that was hard to tell. “It got dropped on the way out of the bar the other night, I guess you just didn’t see,” she explained further. “Part of the neck ended up breaking, but they fixed it.” She was quiet for a moment, though it was clear she wasn’t done speaking. She was reorganizing her information. It was easier to be quiet for a few passing moments than to deal with feeling like she had spoken poorly in her non-native English. “Usually, it isn’t the one I play for people. It’s acoustic and it belonged to someone important to me before it was mine.”
Lisbeth didn’t respond to his offer quite as quickly as she had meant to. The phrase “my woman” played back in her head before she heard her voice agree to go with him. Before she really knew better she was walking alongside to wherever the Shack was. “I think I’ve heard of this place, but I’ve never actually been there,” Lisbeth offered up, giving him a chance to talk more about it. Her mind was still stuck on his woman. That was weird to her. Why was he inviting her if he was going there to meet up with his girlfriend? She looked down at Oakley leading the way in what seemed to be a determined trot. “Looks like the dog makes her way around town.”
