I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship by Wade Rouse

accomplished the job. She taught my old dog not to be jealous when I turned tricks.
    Her timing was impeccable, because it was then, a month after she returned to Florida, that my favorite suitor, Philip, fell to bended knee and asked for my hand in marriage.
    â€œMaybe” might not have been the best word choice.
    â€œIt’s just . . . I have to check with Linus first.”
    â€œStephanie, please don’t worry. If he even tries to bite me, I’ll bite him back.”
    My fears were finally allayed when I saw that it was true love betwixt my menfolk. As the only woman in both their lives, I didn’t experience the pangs of jealousy I had with Lea. Instead, I thrilled when the dude duo frolicked in the park, drank piña coladas, and liked getting caught in the rain. Only, when it came to Phil and me making love at midnight, Linus began to plan his great escape.
    One morning, as the sun filtered through my blinds, thin stripes of it marked across our bodies, Linus let out a Woodstock of a yawn, and we realized he was no longer in his crate. As planned, he’d escaped, sneaky sneaky style, and like a needy child who never wants to be boxed out of the action, he was sandwiched between us—a family of three. It was then that Phil leaned in to kiss me, and Linus leaned in to eat Phil’s face for breakfast.
    â€œHoly shit, are you okay?” It was one of my smarter questions.
    Thankfully, Phil was okay. As okay as you can be when a dog nips at your face. It’s why I came to Linus’s defense when Phil tried to bite him back.
    â€œPhil, he did it ’cause you got up in his face!”
    â€œNo, Stephanie, he did it ’cause he wants to have sex with you!”
    He had a point. But at least the damage was minimal. Linus had simply given Philip a Joaquin Phoenix lip.
    â€œI dunno,” I said as we assessed the mutilation, “it looks kinda hot. You need to think of this as a slight improvement.”
    The truth is, I really didn’t know what to do. I felt heartsick and anxious and wanted to comfort myself with cheeseburgers. We sat in silence for a while, until Phil finally spoke up.
    â€œThat dog is going to chill the hell out once we move to Texas.”
    Move to Texas —you could almost see the words still hanging in the air when Linus began to weep.
    â€œThat’s right, who’s your daddy now, bitch?” Only Phil didn’t actually say this. Had he, it would’ve been a horribly inaccurate rhetorical question. Not only was it physically impossible for Linus to be a bitch, but Phil also was no daddy.
    Not yet.
    We moved to Austin, Texas, for the same reasons a dog licks his balls. Because we liked wet heat. That, and we truly could move anywhere. With my writing scripts and memoir, and Phil in finance, neither of us was tied to a specific location. Austin being the blue part of a red state, Live Music Capital of the World, and a young college town where we’d be welcomed anywhere in flip-flops, we said, “Hell, yes.” Only once we actually moved to the Bible Belt, we modified that to, “H-E-double-hockey-sticks, yes.” Seeing that “hell” is such a goddamn offensive word and all. We fit right in.
    The transition was noticeably harder for Linus, who seemed to be working through the five stages of grief. The denial was obvious from the onset. He refused to be caught dead in a Longhorns sweater and made a point of shrouding himself in head-to-tail black. The anger was harder to detect, but that might’ve been due to his new muzzle. He apparently skipped the bargaining and headed straight for the depression. R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” played on repeat.
    I thought a trip to the local dog park might raise his spirits. Somehow it only served to underscore the disparities between a city dog and a pack of “mongrel hicks”—his words, not mine. I threw a ball, tried to encourage him to play nice,