It Started With A Kiss by Lindy Dale

Chapter 1
     
    Ear buds wedged in her ears and music tuned
to an indecent volume to keep out the city noises, Georgie Bird
jogged purposefully along the path that wound its way along
Riverside Drive, nodding hello to a few regulars running in the
opposite direction as she went and side stepping a group of elderly
ladies who were out for their daily constitutional. Georgie hated
jogging. It made her sweaty, hot and more pink-cheeked than an
Eskimo in a sauna but she persevered with the practice because it
kept her fit and thin. A good five kilometer run meant she could
have her cake and eat it, too.
    With a trail of sweat trickling down the side
of her temple, Georgie picked up the pace as her playlist ticked
over to a new song. A more up-tempo tune, it made her happy and
took her mind off the fact that she was exercising in such a
torturous manner. It didn’t, however, provide her with the
peripheral vision required to avoid a large mound of dog poop that
had been strategically plopped in her path. Georgie felt the
squelch before she realized what had happened and even then, she
was so engrossed in the song it took until the stench wafted to her
nose before it registered. Stopping, she looked back at the path,
noting the brownish-greenish pile that was splattered across the
path from where she’d stepped in it. She looked at down her
sandshoes.
    Shit. Literally.
    The sides of her left shoe were covered in
the stuff and, boy, did it reek.
    “ Great,” she muttered,
wondering why on earth people couldn’t dispose of their dog doings
in the proper manner. Honestly, some people just didn’t give a
crap.
    Half-smiling at her own pun, Georgie made her
way to the grass along the side of the track and sat down,
carefully removing her shoe so as not to get the offending material
on her fingers. A disgusted shudder rippling through her body,
Georgie picked up a stick and began to dig bits of brown from the
crevices of her sole. Bile rose in her stomach as she dragged her
shoe back and forth on the grass a few times, managing to get most
of it off but it still stank to high heaven. So much so, in fact,
that it was making her dry reach and she didn’t think she could
finish her run while heaving at the same time. If only she had some
water to rinse the remains away.
    Then she had the perfect idea. She was
sitting on the side of the Swan River, for heaven’s sake. How could
she not have thought of it before?
    Standing up, shoe in hand, Georgie hopped
across the grass towards the riverbank and knelt down on the side
of the river wall. The water was a way down, with the tide being
out, but if she stretched far enough she knew she could give her
shoe a quick dip, get it clean and put it back on. It’d dry off
soon enough.
    Satisfied with the plan, Georgie leant over;
reaching her arm into the water and maintaining balance with her
other arm, which was holding her iPod. Her shoe barely grazed the
surface of the water but she swished and swirled, reaching as far
as she safely could without falling.
    At least, that was what she thought.
    Her body appeared to have other ideas on
safety and balance and before she knew it, Georgie was chest deep
in the murky sand of the riverbank. Her attempt to stop herself
from toppling in had only succeeded in making the fall worse and
she’d ended up on her bottom in the water with her arms stretched
high above her head, one hand holding her stinky shoe, and the
other her iPod.
    A frustrated groan escaped Georgie’s lips,
followed by a couple of expletives. Now what was she going to
do?
    Sand seeping through her leggings and into
her knickers, Georgie looked hopefully towards the other joggers on
the path. It was a sunny day. Plenty of people were out. If she
smiled nicely, one of them might take pity on her and offer a hand
to pull her out of the drink. The river wall was covered in
barnacles and weed and, while she knew she could climb it, she
didn’t want to be cut to ribbons in the process. She