My girlfriend looked like she was about to tell me she was pregnant.
“Mark, I’m pregnant.”
Shit. I owed Jim five bucks.
“But, there’s something else.”
My attention was dragged back from thinking about how many beers that five bucks could have bought me. One, probably.
“Mark, the doctor says it’s a dragon baby.”
“What’s that?”
The heat was making her crazy.
“He says, since you’re the only one I’ve been with, that you must be a dragon. We spent all this time together and you never told me you were a dragon? Are you a… fucking dragon, Mark?”
I had always loved the pause she used before cursing. She never liked to swear. I patted my torso as if I were checking for scales.
“Nope, not a dragon.”
This must have been a joke.

The doctor strolled in, staring at his chart.
“OK, Mark, we got the results back on that blood work. You are a dragon, just as we’d thought.”
“Is this a joke, doc? Dragons don’t exist.”
“What can I say, Mark? You’ve got a tail and everything.”
So that’s why I’d been knocking over coffee cups.