Page 80 of Dire Straights

“No big deal,” he said, waving off my thanks. “It’s like a five minute drive from my work, dude.”

“Anything for love, right?” I asked, smirking when he scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, yeah. Just call me Cupid.” The words were dripping with sarcasm.

“See you tonight,” I said, as he turned to walk away.

“Maybe,” he answered, raising his eyebrows suggestively. “I have a sneaking suspicion he might want you to stay over tonight.”

“Well, maybe,” I admitted. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“Alright. See you.”

Back inside, I filled up large cups of orange soda and Sprite to bring back to the table, but as I headed over, I noticed a girl standing at the edge of our booth.

“And you’re honestly really cute, so I was hoping maybe I could get your number?” I only heard the last sentence of whatever her speech had been, but it was enough to convince me to hang back and observe. I didn’t want to embarrass the poor girl.

“Sorry, I’m with someone,” he responded, but he’d barely glanced up from his phone. Ouch. I hoped she was more robust than me, because that kind of bored rejection might have murdered my self esteem. Not that I would have ever had the balls to approach someone that looked like Maddy in the first place.

“Well, your girlfriend doesn’t have to know,” she insisted, popping her hip up onto the edge of the table. He finally looked up at her, setting his phone down.

“I have a boyfriend,” he corrected her. He was the king of bad manners, but it definitely put a little flutter in my stomach to hear those words from him. “And even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t beinterested in anyone desperate enough to try to go after someone who said they’re in a relationship.”

I could hardly keep myself from wincing, and hoped she didn’t notice me watching them from the safe distance of a few tables away. I expected her to clap back at him or something, but when she just stared at him in a shocked manner, he made a very condescending shooing gesture with his hand to indicate that he wanted her to leave. Absolutely brutal. After she stormed away, muttering some unpleasant words directed toward him under her breath, I counted to ten in my head before plopping our cups down onto the table.

“Oh, thanks. I could have gotten it myself,” Maddy said, popping his straw through the plastic lid and taking a big sip. He was very clearly not shaken about what had happened, like I probably would have been. “What’s that?” He asked, reaching for the box.

“It’s for later,” I snapped, snatching the box out of his reach. He gave me a weird look, raising his eyebrow.

“Okay.”

“Don’t look in here,” I said, with as much of a commanding, authoritarian tone as I could muster, even though that kind of thing only seemed to work on him when we were naked. When we weren’t having sex, he was pretty much in charge. We were both pretty fond of that dynamic.

“Okay,” he repeated. “Don’t have a heart attack over it.”

When our order was called, I rushed up to the counter to grab it and hurried back to the table, just in case he got curious about the box. I was pretty sure my attempt at being scary and threatening about looking inside hadn’t exactly worked.

“Oh yeah,” Maddy said, after swallowing a bite of chicken. “I talked to my mom on the phone last night. She told me to tell you hi, and that she’s really excited about the trip.”

The trip he was referring to was an upcoming camping trip up in the mountains my parents and I would be going on with Maddy, his mom, and his brother and sister over the summer. My mom had ended up adding his mom on Facebook and apparently they’d hit it off and become great friends.

“Oh, nice,” I answered. “Me too.”

“I still think it’s weird that our moms are like besties now,” he complained.

“Better than her being besties with my psycho ex,” I pointed out. I hadn’t heard a peep from Gwen after that day she’d ambushed me.

“That’s a good point,” he conceded. “You think they’ll let us share a tent?”

“Probably. But it’s not like we can do anything. We’ll all be like six feet apart with nothing but super thin nylon between us.”

“Well, you know, maybe we can take a walk together or something. A really long walk, far away from where anyone could hear us. We haven’t done it outside yet.”

Grinning, I popped a French fry in my mouth after dousing it in mayonnaise. Maddy hated that, but I found it kind of funny when he got grossed out by my culinary experimentations.

“That’s true, but I don’t know if the woods is the best idea. I don’t want to traumatize the birds and squirrels with all your screaming.”

He laughed, but didn’t correct me or deny it.

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