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He has his thumbs hooked through his belt loops and he’s standing up so straight it’s basically just backwards slouching, but from what Mindy can see in her rear view mirror he’s hot for a cop.
He raps a knuckle on her window and she presses two buttons, one to roll it down and another to mute the last booming notes of Love On Top.
He has to bend down until he’s half of his already half-sized stature to see inside her sports car, which he seems unimpressed by.
“What’s the problem officer?” Mindy smiles as sweetly as she can. He seems unimpressed by that, too.
He glances from her lap to her dashboard like he’s looking for contraband and asks, “Do you know how fast you were going?”
“Forty?”
The corner of his mouth pulls up a little bit. His face is trying to smile but he clearly doesn’t have the muscle memory.
“Okay, maybe fifty?” Mindy’s optimism is waning.
This guy isn’t going to cut her a break.
“Sixty five,” he corrects, enunciating each syllable. “In a forty zone.” He clicks his tongue to punctuate.
“Listen, Mister—” pausing to look at the pin under his badge “—Castellano…”
“It’s officer.”
“I have tickets to Beyoncé tonight.” Mindy waits for a reaction. “Beyoncé Knowles,” she clarifies.
He just stares, blankly, like she’s trying to rope him into a conversation about dubstep or great kale recipes.
“License and registration.”
The last time she missed a local Beyoncé concert it was only because she had viral pneumonia and security refused to let her in in a hospital gown, so Mindy is not going down without a fight.
She sets her hands on the frame of the window and gives her most dramatic pout. “Listen, if I’m late I’m never going to get in. My friends are waiting for me. Please, there has to be a way we can work this out…”
Officer Handsome Jerk takes a deep breath through his nose and lowers his head just enough to lean under the top of her door frame. “What are you suggesting?”
He’s staring at her a little bit intensely when his eyes drop to her lips for one second, which throws her off. Seriously, man, you’re an officer of the law — contain your smolder.
She recovers fast, bats her fake lashes. “You could give a girl a break.”
“I could?”
“And maybe I could…do something for you sometime.” She smiles. Winning him over with her wiles and ridiculous sex appeal, she’s pretty sure.
And no, she won’t do anything really, but she’ll write a fake number on his palm in sharpie, wink at him a couple more times and still get to her concert on time. Everybody wins.
His eyes are sparkling when he tilts forward so his mouth is a few inches from her jaw, and ok, maybe she’ll write her real number.
He whispers, “License and registration.”
His breath smells like minty chewing gum, but there’s no gum.
“Damn it, I’m already late! My friends — we have section four seats! Don’t you have a heart?”
“Just call me tin man.”
She’s the last victim of Danny’s excruciatingly long day, and well maybe he could be nicer but she shouldn’t have been breaking the law in the first place.
She is a halfling of a person, 5’3 maybe, with dark hair in thick loose curls and wearing the sparkliest, pinkest dress Danny has ever seen. Looking like she rolled around in the crafts section of Hobby Lobby for half an hour.
There’s some song playing at an ungodly volume, and he thinks about ticketing her for noise pollution, too.
“Do you know how fast you were going?”
She has big brown eyes and a pouty smile that he can already tell has gotten her out of too many messes before.
“Forty?”
The hopeful way she says it, does she think he’s just going to shake his head and give her a stern warning?
Sorry, babe, not this time.
She makes a little comment, maybe there’s something she could do for him — like he’s supposed to think she’ll suck his dick if he rips up her ticket — and she’s not exactly classy but she’s definitely too classy for that.
“License and registration.” He has nearly identified the flavor of her perfume, tangy with something sweet underneath, when he realizes he’s leaning halfway through her window.
Her license says Mindy Lahiri, twenty-nine, from the city, and she swears she has the proof of insurance somewhere.
He watches her pull a hundred and one things out of her glove box like she’s a magician with a bottomless hat, the way her hands move, and the way she bites and licks the layer of color off her top lip. When he sends her off with a hefty fine and a frown marring her pretty face, there is an inexplicable grin spread across his own.
Danny should technically already be having a nice cold drink when he gets the call, and that doesn’t improve his mood much.
Neither does the mass of shrieking men and women he has to shove his way through, or the bass line that’s so loud he has to lip-read the security officers standing not two feet in front of him.
“She’s back here,” one of them says, that or “Cheap back hair.”
He leads Danny backstage, and through a door and a hallway.
“There’s your psycho,” the guard says, gesturing to the woman facing the corner with her hands zip-tied behind her back. “She snuck backstage with the make-a-wish kid’s family. Yelling she wanted a lock of Miss Knowles’ hair, that she wanted to marry her, all pretty standard stuff. But when I was checking her for concealed weapons, this happened.” He gestures to his quickly blackening left eye with a grimace.
Danny’s brows shoot up. “She did that?”
“Hence the cuffs.”
Mystery woman turns around then, and it’s Mindy — Mindy, what was it, Lahiri.
The security officer is explaining all of her offenses in more detail but Danny isn’t listening.
“I’ve got it from here, thanks,” he says.
“I don’t care what you do with her, just get her out of here, and make sure she stays out. But be careful, she’s a loose cannon. I nearly had to use my Taser.”
“That’s big talk for a guy who can only see out of one eye!” Mindy yells after him. She squints in Danny’s direction for a second and her face falls. “Oh my god, it’s you.”
He takes two steps toward her. “You should be nice to me,” he says.
She throws her shoulders back and shakes her hair out of her face. He imagines she would cross her arms if they weren’t tied behind her back.
Her eyes, big and dark and alight with emotion, are narrowed at him in a serious glower. The sparkly dress she’s wearing is still loud and obnoxious but it clings to each bend of her body like it was custom made for her, which it probably was.
“Mindy Lahiri, right? Looks you’re in a real bind,” he deadpans.
“Are you kidding me with that?”
He shrugs. “You wanna tell me what happened here?”
“I want to talk to my lawyer!” But he gives her a stern look and her shoulders slump a little. “It’s all a blur, I don’t remember. Someone in my aisle was passing around a joint, and I didn’t do any, but contact high is a real thing!”
“You punched a security guard?”
She looks sheepish for a second and Danny thinks it’s an expression she probably doesn’t wear often enough. “Well he was getting a little too handsy!”
“It’s called frisking!”
“Frisky, more like.”
“Alright.” Danny shakes his head, amazed. “That’s enough. Let’s go.” He puts his hand low on her back and pushes her toward the door. “Come on.”
They catch a few dirty looks from security on the way outside, and Danny takes his time assuring them all that he has ‘this trouble maker totally under control,’ not just because she rolls her eyes harder every time.
“I have to call my friends and tell them I’m okay. I get my one phone call right? This is still America?”
Now he rolls his eyes. “You’re not under arrest, the guard’s not pressing charges.”
“Well it sure feels like it.” She wiggles her bound wrists.
“Yeah, well, that’s for my safety. Where’s your phone? I’ll dial.”
“It’s in my...” She points her chin down at the scoopy neckline of her dress, which he had been steadfastly avoiding. “You know.” He shakes his head and she looks at him like he’s being purposefully obtuse, which he is not, at least right now. “My left bra cup,” she says plainly.
Danny holds his palms up at her. “Whoa. Okay —”
“Well it is!”
“Jesus.”
“Look, there aren’t a lot of places to keep it, it’s not like this dress has pockets! Plus it makes my boobs look bigger, which—”
“Okay, shut up. Please? Just.”
“Then be a professional and put your hand down my shirt.”
She’s got a smug little grin on her face as he cuts her loose with his swiss army knife, and he wonders how she managed to get the upper hand in this situation when a second ago she was the one with her hands literally tied.
She’s definitely making chicken noises as she climbs into the back of his cruiser but he pretends not to hear.
Danny drives her to her car, parked in a garage more than a mile away, which for her, in those shoes, would have been at least a twenty minute walk. It prompts him to ask why the hell she drove in the first place, and he doesn’t know how it works in whatever country she’s from but here people take a little thing called the Subway. To which she swiftly offers him her middle finger.
He opens the back door for her and she climbs out, wobbly.
“I can’t believe I went to a Beyoncé concert and I’m still going to be able to work tomorrow,” she mumbles, grabbing onto the hand that he didn’t offer as she nearly trips up a curb. He’s never heard someone so upset about not being completely inebriated. “Last time I had to find someone to cover my shifts for three days.”
He side-eyes her dress as he shuts the door behind her, and somehow it’s even tighter from the back. Her ass is criminal and he’s the law, that’s the quip on the tip of his tongue. Instead he says: “Your shifts at what, The Bada Bing?”
Her jaw drops. “Exsqueeze me? I’m a doctor!”
“A doctor,” Danny repeats, not hiding his disbelief.
“An OBGYN, you asshole!”
“Wow.”
Mindy Lahiri, the 5’3 sparkle-dress-wearing security-guard-punching doctor.
As she disappears behind the wheel of her ridiculous little sports car Danny almost hopes it won’t be the last time he sees her.
Without her previously anticipated means of transportation, aka some hot body from a banging after party, Mindy is forced to ditch her ride and call a cab if she has any intention of getting wasted — which she does.
“Where am I going? The nearest club where an early-twenty-something, hot, professional woman can get...” she waves a hand around, trying for some decorum. “Hammered, and or laid.”
The cab driver gives her an exasperated look. “Lady, I’m not a concierge.”
She sighs. “Just take me someplace where they’re going to ask to see my ID, okay Jeeves?”
She should have specified more, she learns, as she approaches a little brick building with a neon sign where only four of the letters are lit up, all consonants.
There is definitely urine on the sidewalk, and she thinks about turning around but her cab is already rounding the corner so she pulls a leaf off of a baby Ginkgo Tree and uses it to turn the door-handle. The door actually dings when she pushes it open, like she’s walking into a 7-11.
There’s a Bon Jovi song playing that she only recognizes because her favorite radio station did an Oldies day once and it was the worst day of her life. The inside is even skeevier than the outside, and it isn’t a club, it’s a dive bar.
She wants to leave but she really wants a drink, so she takes a seat on a spinny barstool and flags down the man holding two bottles.
She asks for appletinis and he comes up with a pale green concoction in a tumbler that doesn’t even taste that bad.
As far as a crowd goes there’s only one guy her age, with a fedora and a patchy mustache that is probably supposed to be ironic but just looks gross and lame, and he can’t stop talking about the terrible things he loves — namely bars like this one. Mindy is starting to think she should have just went home where she could be on the couch with red wine and a box of animal crackers.
Excusing herself from her hipster and jumping off the stool, she lands on high heels that feel a little like jello... but before she can take a dive two giant, slightly damp, unsolicited hands catch her hips from behind.
“Wow, you can’t hold your liquor at all,” a low voice says.
“I’m not sure if that is an insult, but how dare you.” She spins around and groans out loud. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Somehow he isn’t even surprised that out of the thousands of bars in the city, she would choose his.
It just feels like a fitting end to this day.
His reflexes are quick and when she trips over herself, he’s there.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she grumbles.
“Nice to see you too.”
She swats his hands off her hips. “Are you stalking me?”
“What, I’m the crazy one in this situation? You punched a security guard! Maybe you’re stalking me.”
“I was here first, officer, and beautiful tiny women don’t stalk weird old creeps.”
He grabs the stool next to hers and gestures for her to sit back down. He’s off duty and she’s intriguing in a way he can’t put his finger on, and what’s the harm in talking to her for a minute, just seeing what her deal is?
“It’s Danny, and I’m in my thirties. Is that yours?” He points at the green-tinted concoction on the bar.
She grabs the glass with one hand and covers it with her other palm. “What why? No. Is this your super obvious attempt to roofie me? You should know I have a rape whistle... app.”
Danny rolls his eyes and flags down the barkeeper anyway. “Get us another one of whatever the hell that is, and a dry whisky.”
Mindy eyes him suspiciously. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing is happening. I’m buying you a drink.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “This is my bar, I come here every week, I think I’m allowed to buy my crazy stalker one drink.”
Her jaw drops and he can already hear the beginning of a screechy how dare you, but she doesn’t look like she’s going to pepper spray him anymore and it’s a small win.
“Thanks Joey,” Danny says as the young guy with a dishtowel slung over his shoulder slides two glasses their way.
“You know him?” Mindy asks. “Can you get him to change the station? He’s been playing this crap for an hour when I know for a fact that 103.3 is doing a Justin Timberlake marathon tonight.”
Danny points up at the tin-can speakers where Springsteen is filtering through at just audible levels. “This is classic rock! This is real music!”
“Blow my brains out.”
“What do I expect, coming from the world’s biggest Beyoncé fan?”
Her jaw drops open a little bit, just so the pink tip of her tongue is visible behind her teeth, and all of a sudden he wonders if she tastes sweet and sticky like that girly drink she’s been nursing.
“Okay, I get it, you like gross beer and listening to this music, you’re so manly.” She pulls out this voice, deep and high at the same time — and what the hell is that accent? It sounds nothing like him.
“Look at me, I’m a big tough cop! I give people outrageous speeding tickets because I’m insecure about my Vince Vaughn hairline,” she’s ranting.
His hairline is fine. Maybe the widow’s peak is a little severe, but if he combs it forward right you can’t even tell, so it’s fine.
“Springsteen isn’t even any good,” she says flippantly, and Danny slams a fist down on the bar.
“Bruce Springsteen is a pillar of American music!” Suddenly he’s too close to her face again, that keeps happening. “Nobody has any respect for the greats anymore. Just because it’s not playing on pop radio, on — on your apple pods…”
“Oh goood for you,” she shouts, Christian Bale style. “You hate popular things, how original!”
He should split, if it was anybody else he wouldn’t sit here and take crap about The Boss, but he’s like a moth to a flame with her and only leaning in closer, laying an arm across the bar so he can invade her space.
He means to say anything else — there are so many other things to say — but he’s right up by her ear and he can smell that perfume again and what comes out is, “Do you want to get out of here?”
They’re not even out of the parking lot yet and she already has one hand down his pants, and he knew he should have made her sit in the back. He’s white-knuckling so hard he can feel bits of the steering wheel skin coming off under his nails.
She keeps telling him to just pull over at one of those fancy hotels with silk sheets and hot tubs on the roof, like he should dole out a day’s wages for a bed when they’re only thirty minutes from his place, and he’s vehemently against the idea until she bends over the console and wraps her whole mouth around his dick. It’s unexpected and it feels so good he veers into the wrong lane for a second.
“Pull over! You’re going to kill us!”
“Relax, I’m a cop!”
He pulls them over anyway, into the parking lot of a motel where the lights on the sign are flickering — not exactly the Four Seasons experience she was vying for.
The way she sucks, gentle going down and hard enough to make him dizzy coming back up, it’s almost too tempting to come right in her pretty, pink mouth even before they get out of his car. But she’s still wearing that dress, and he doesn’t even know what sounds she makes yet, and that’s worth waiting for.
“Come on. Let’s go.” He shuts the engine off and takes some of her hair between his fingers. He tugs a little to get her off him, but she just makes a noise through her nose and she’s not going anywhere.
“Jesus,” he whispers, indulging in the feeling for a minute. Eager isn’t the word, she’s fucking greedy. “Yeah, just like.. Oh god, yeah... Fuck — Mindy. Okay, you gotta let up.”
She’s wiping her mouth while he tucks his hardon into his pants, panting.
They both walk too fast across the parking lot.
“God I can’t believe we’re doing this…” she giggles breathlessly and wraps both her arms around one of his. “I never do this, Danny. I mean, I never even do that unless I’ve been on like... five dates with a guy!”
He just smirks and holds the door open for her.
The lady at the desk gives them a hard look from behind her cat-eye glasses once she spots the lump in Danny’s jeans, and ‘hmm-hmm’s loud and disapproving. It takes him back to getting caught, by a nun at The Academy of Our Lady of Peace, with a girlie magazine and a wet spot covering the crotch of his brown plaid uniform.
“We’re not that kind of motel,” this lady says.
After she practically accuses Mindy of being a prostitute, to which Mindy responds by saying ‘excuse me?’ about a thousand times, Danny dickers them a room for what he’s sure is three times the amount he should have paid.
He’s still bitter about it when they’re at their door and Mindy can’t get the key to work.
“Would you stop complaining?”
“Sorry, sweetheart, but some of us work for our money.” He should be nice to her before she leaves him standing in this shitty motel with his dick in his hand, thinking about how sweet that ass looked as she walked away.
“I’m a doctor, Danny! A medical doctor with a degree!”
“Yeah, how much did Daddy pay for that?”
She crosses her arms like she might be done with him, and suddenly he would pay for a suite at the four seasons if it meant she didn’t leave.
“You know what? I don’t need this.”
She starts to take off but he catches her by the waist and hauls her up against him.
“Hey, hey, no, stop.” He nuzzles her cheekbone. “I’m sorry, I'm just a little worked up okay? Please stay.”
He gets them inside the room and kisses her sweetly, like that might make it up to her, with a palm on one side of her face and one on her rump.
She has barely kicked off her jacket and heels and opened her mouth so they can tongue before she pulls away to throw a skeptical look toward the full size bed in the middle of the room. The bed with just one pillow, and stains on the comforter that Danny is pretty sure aren’t chardonnay or mayo.
“Danny, I’m not getting naked on that.”
He is busy at her neck, sniffing out just the right spot before sucking hard enough that her whole body vibrates. “Yeah, noted.”
His palm roams low and high on her back, searching for a zipper or at this point maybe just a seam he can tear. Neither is apparent, and when he grunts impatiently Mindy laughs right in his ear. “There’s no zipper. It’s stretchy,” she tells him.
Her laugh is a sweet sound that makes his stomach flip, and for a minute all he wants to do in life is make her happy.
Jesus. Where the hell did that come from.
It’s been a while since his last one night stand, that’s all, and he’s confusing one type of intimacy for another. After years of marriage, sex lights up a corner of his brain that has been dark for a while now. He’s Pavlov’s dog and Mindy is a shapely golden belle.
“I just thought of something,” she announces.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Condom.”
There is no really great way to say, to a woman your boner is currently poking in the belly, ‘I used to carry condoms, back when I had a wife, because she hated birth control and kids — but then she fucked some other guy six months ago so now I just beat off in the shower twice a week and don’t call my dates back.’
“Shit, fuck,” he says instead, and he rolls his head back. “Uh, I don’t have... I wasn’t really expecting this to happen. Maybe the lobby.”
She nods.
“We should look. I can go look. I saw a seven-eleven like two buildings down,” he offers.
She sucks both her lips into her mouth. “I mean I’m on the pill but it’s still — for all I know you could have crabs!”
“Hey! Why am I the one with crabs?”
“Well I sure as hell don’t have crabs! How dare you!”
“Stop it — don’t hit me. I’m going to look for a machine.”
She latches on to his forearm. “Wait. I — you know what, I’m just remembering. I might have one in my clutch. Just, like, as a joke, from a bachelorette party I went to, or maybe my friend stuck it in there, my friends are crazy, we just have fun…”
Her mouth is still running but he stops listening as soon as she undoes his belt buckle, then slides the rubber on him, pumping twice in a way that incites an urgency.
He seeks out the hem of her dress. “Let me take this off?”
She nods and he wrestles it over her head.
There’s a dresser against the wall with minimal staining and while he shoves her panties down her legs he walks her over to it, very nearly tripping them both in the process.
“Turn around and put your hands on the dresser,” he instructs, pressing a wet kiss over the thin silk of the bra that is doing little to hide her pert nipples.
“I thought you were off duty, officer.”
He grunts into her cleavage. He means to wait for her to spin around, he means to eat her out while she bends over this flimsy motel dresser, but patience is a virtue that feels far away and instead he pulls her hot pink bra off. He palms her breasts greedily, squeezing them for the sounds she makes before latching his mouth over a nipple.
When he sucks, specifically when he doesn’t stop sucking, she makes more of those noises like she’s coming undone. “Danny, Danny,” she chants, and her voice is low, and it hits him right in the pants.
He lays his free hand on her thigh, her legs falling open for him in such a sweet invitation that it makes him throb. Makes him thrust his hips and bite down on her tit, maybe too hard.
His middle finger slides perfectly between her legs, and the feeling of her tight, scorching pussy milking him is the last straw — whatever he was going to do, now he’s got to be inside her when she comes.
He spreads her legs and takes his cock in his hand, tries to ignore how good it feels when he pushes into her so maybe he’ll have a chance to do it again. She whimpers and hiccups, tightening around him when his thumb finds the side of her clitoris, coming for him like it’s all she was made to do. He closes his eyes because it’s like looking at the sun.
When she stops convulsing and opens her eyes they just stare at each other. He takes a little — maybe a lot of pride in the daze on her face.
She runs her thumb over his bottom lip and it’s so gentle he lets his eyes flutter shut — then she’s laughing, squirming in front of him, and he groans because he’s still painfully hard inside her.
“Mindy,” he growls into her neck, marking her there. “Turn around and put your hands on the dresser or I’ll do it for you.”
“Whoa.” She bites her smile with wide eyes and complies. “You’re kind of bossy.”
He pulls her back to his front with an arm around her waist. “I’m the boss,” he whispers against her ear, dragging her hair over her shoulder. “Now bend over.”
Kind of bossy, Mindy thinks, upon reflection, may have been an understatement.
“Do you want to, uh, let me loose now officer?” She wiggles her wrists where they are handcuffed securely to the headboard of the previously disgusting bed, now stripped clean of its bacteria ridden sheets. She’s on her stomach with her arms up over her head and there are a dozen spots she really needs to itch.
Danny stretches and she watches the pleasant ripple of his pectorals. “I don’t know, maybe not.” He scratches his jaw beneath the wrinkle of his smug grin and gives her a sweeping once-over. “I like you like this.”
“I think it’s disturbing that you carry these around. You’re off duty, what else are you packing? A gun? A billy club?”
He waggles his eyebrows and his grin is lopsided and perfect.
“Come on, uncuff me. Let me be on top,” she purrs, jutting her ass out and giving him a little show. “Let me blow your mind, Castellano.”
He turns on his side, draping a heavy arm across her back. “I got something else you can blow…”
“Oh, god. That’s your line?” She looks at him with more disbelief than disgust. “Why don’t I hate it.”
“You ready to go again?” His palm is damp, warm against her chilled skin as he cups her ass with a nice sort of kneading motion. She’s getting wet again, and he runs two fingers over her.
Normally after two rounds she’d be ready to curl up in the bath with The Novelization of Thor, but the sun is almost up now and somehow this swarthy little Italian scrooge has her feeling only insatiable.
“Hey! I’m not a scrooge,” Danny pipes up, not looking very indignant with his body practically melting into hers.
When he rolls on the last condom and sits up to straddle her ass, nudging her onto her knees, she squeezes her thighs together. “You don’t get any of this action until you let me loose, buddy.” She yanks at her handcuffs. “I’m starting to chafe!”
As soon as he has her free she shoves him on his back. He has a look on his face like he might protest, so she sinks down onto him before he can form the words.
“Jesus,” he grunts. “Warn me before you do that.”
She steadies herself with a palm flat on his chest and rises slowly, clutching at him with her kegels before dropping back down. “Does that feel good?”
He makes the ungodliest noises. “Please, baby.” It sends a little thrill down her spine to hear him call her that. It’s gratifying, the way only hard-earned things are, that she’s reduced this basket of grouch to begging and using affectionate pet names.
“I’m the boss now,” she whispers.
He pulls her down by the waist and buries his face in her neck. “We’re going straight to hell,” he moans.
“But doesn’t it feel like heaven?”
The shiny gold cross on his necklace stares up from the nightstand, daring him to disagree.
Check-out is in fifteen minutes and Mindy is squeezing back into that dress that is still just as indecent in the daylight. Short or tight, you can pick one, but both? With an ass like that? It’s just not fair.
They had that talk, the one that’s awkward and hesitant and always signifies the end of the sex. The one where they say this was fun but it was crazy, and we should maybe do it again sometime, you know, if the opportunity presents itself.
But now she’s wiggling side to side, bouncing a little as she works the hot pink number over her hips, and there’s enough sunlight coming through the crack in the curtains to give Danny a show that makes him think about asking her to come back to his place for the whole weekend.
He won’t. He’ll go home, alone, with a well-worn copy of The Bourne Identity and a cup of black tea, and maybe, if he gets her number, in a week from now they’ll meet up again, but maybe not. He prefers it that way anyway, he could never handle a girlfriend like her.
So why does he feel something wistful in his chest every time he looks at her.
“You know this could actually come in really handy for me, you being a cop,” she pipes up.
“Yeah, how so?”
“Well if I ever want to get into the writing-fake-prescriptions game I’ll have an NYPD contact. You can tell me if the feds are hot on my tail.” She does her hair up a foot tall and ridiculous. “Plus the next time I get picked up by a mall cop for sample fraud I’ll just be like hey man, why don’t you call up my friend, Danny Castellano, yeah, maybe you’ve heard of him Paul Blart.”
Danny blows past all of the ridiculous things she’s saying to get to the one that matters. “Friend?” It leaves a sweet taste on his tongue - but maybe that’s just her - and an uneasy feeling in his stomach.
“Yes, Dan, friend.” She exaggerates the word. “I’m sure you’ve had one once.”
He feels the palm sweat coming on.
“Listen I’m not, you know, that guy. I mean, I’m not saying I wouldn’t do this again — hell, getting us this room was the best money I’ve spent in… I mean...” He shakes his head. He just wants her to stop talking about scary things, and maybe write down her number and stick it in his jacket pocket, but he’s pretty sure he’s describing her as a prostitute instead.
“Relax, I’m not saying I want to date you. You’re crotchety, and sex with me would probably explode your frail old heart —”
“We literally just had sex! A lot of sex!”
“— but we can be friends,” she asserts with a frown, sounding only a little less irritated than sure.
“It would never work. You run around, talking smack about The Boss, breaking the speed limits — they’re there for your protection!”
“I am unpredictable and daring, I’m like the hot guy from fast and furious, you can’t tie me down with a speed limit sign!”
Danny does up his belt buckle with a sigh.
“We’d make an awful pair of friends, sweetheart,” he promises as he pulls one sock up to his calf.
“We’ll see.” How is she so damn sure. “Pretty soon I bet you won’t know how you ever lived without me.”
Then, somehow, he’s the one sticking his number in her jacket pocket.