Unravelled Read Online Free Page B

Toby returned and dropped the ball at her feet. Her voice instantly turned syrupy. “I don’t need those silly old men because I have my Toby.” She leaned in for a dog kiss. “My special, special Toby-Woby-Woo!”
    Again, I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Yeah . . . I was going to ask you . . . I’m joining a stitch ’n bitch club. Do you want to come along?”
    “Knitting?” she asked, throwing the slobbery dog ball.
    “Yeah . . . We’re all going to learn together.”
    “I know how to knit,” Mel said. “I haven’t done it for a while, but I’m quite good.”
    “That’s great. It would be wonderful to have an expert in the group to help us.”
    She took a long sip of coffee. “I don’t think so . . . Knitting, to me, is a very solitary act. Once you get into it, it’s really quite Zen.”
    “Oh.”
    “What I’m really interested in learning is spinning.”
    “I took a spinning class once,” I said. “It was exhausting, and my ass was sore for, like, a week after.”
    “Not that kind of spinning,” she laughed. “Spinning fur into yarn.”
    I raised my eyebrows. “Fur?”
    “It’s called chiengora. ” She pronounced the word slowly: she-an-gora. “Turning dog hair into yarn.”
    “Eww!” The word just escaped, but I covered. “I mean . . . gee, I never thought of that before.”
    “Dog hair is very soft and extremely warm,” Mel continued, “Up to eighty percent warmer than wool, in fact. And it would be such a wonderful keepsake to have a scarf or a hat made from my Toby.”
    I loved Mel, but she was really grossing me out. I looked at my watch. “I’d better get going.”
    “Already?”
    “I’ve got an article due for Northwest Life. ”
    “Okay... Give me a call next week. We still haven’t come by to see your new place.”
    I highly doubted Kendra would be keen on Toby bounding around the apartment, drooling and sniffing everything. “Right. Okay. I’ll give you a call. Bye Toby.” In response, Toby stuck his nose in my crotch. It was the most action I’d had in months.

Four
    THE ARTICLE ON a breast cancer survivor who’d opened a spiritual retreat on Whidbey Island was actually complete. I just had to give it a quick proofread before I emailed it off to the editor, but it had provided me an escape. As I trudged through the January drizzle back to my Queen Anne apartment, I couldn’t help but feel a little blue. I was surrounded by women who found men completely irrelevant. Even Angie adhered to a strict policy of men as recreational vehicles only. So, what was wrong with me? Why did I feel such a compulsion to find a partner and raise a family?
    Maybe it was my parents’ fault? If they had fought more, I’d probably have a much more cynical view of marriage and family life. Or perhaps the farmers could be blamed? All the hormones in the chicken I was eating had undoubtedly ramped up my biological clock! And what about the television networks! How was a girl who grew up on a steady diet of Growing Pains and Family Ties supposed to be satisfied with a solitary existence? God, maybe I should get a dog?
    I let myself in to the blissfully quiet apartment. When Kendra was at work, I almost felt at home in our tiny abode. Tossing my empty coffee cup into the garbage can beneath the kitchen sink, I wandered through the feminine living room. As always, it was pristine, the rose throw pillows arranged just as Kendra liked them on the floral sofa; the extravagant lace window treatments tied back to let natural light in to the space. I continued on to my sparely furnished bedroom, and the tiny makeshift office in the far corner. There, on the small pressboard desk, my laptop lay dormant. Opening the lid, I waited patiently for the computer to revive then brought up the article.
    It was pretty good. Johanna Kelly was perhaps not the most vibrant of interviews, but what did you expect from someone so at peace with herself and at one with the universe? I did a quick check for