Page 5 of Love & Rockets

“I was joking with her.” His voice rose, but a blast of brass from the band kept it from carrying. “She looked bored and lonely. She’s the only kid in the room—”

“Are you trying to imply I’m a bad mother?”

He blinked, wondering exactly how she’d managed such a tremendous leap. “No, I was simply stating the facts.”

“Like the fact that you proposed to my daughter.”

“I offered your thirteen-year-old daughter my hand in marriage and the rings of Saturn,” he snarled. “You know what? I’m not sure she ever gave me a straight answer. Maybe I should ask her again. I mean, what girl can resist the promise of a nice debris field?” He took a menacing step toward the kitchen door, but Darla literally threw herself in front of it to stop him. “Jesus, Darla,” he cried, incredulous.

“Young girls are impressionable. And they love attention from older guys.”

Stupefied by the whole conversation, he turned his head to stare at the throng on the far end of the ballroom. Never in a million years would he ever have thought he’d wish himself back over there, but life was funny that way. Sometimes, when you least expected, a fucking asteroid came hurtling at a guy out of nowhere and what do you know, Bruce Willis was not around to blow the damn thing up.

“I was talking to the girl about planets and Star Trek,” he muttered. Turning back to Darla, he cocked his head to the side as he searched her expression for a hint of what might have spurred such a gross overreaction. “I did not, nor was I even thinking about touching your child in any way.”

“Maybe you’d be better off talking to a girl your own age.”

He stared down at her, trying to wrap his mind around the turn the evening had taken. While he and Darla had been a couple years apart in school and were never anything close to friends, he’d always been friendly when he saw her at The Pit. He said please and thank you, rarely asked for anything more demanding than an extra cup of sauce, and always over-tipped. In short, he had no earthly idea why she took one look at him tonight and leaped directly to the worst possible conclusion. And he didn’t know what to say to her other than what he said every time he waved good-bye to her at the barbecue joint.

“See you, Darla. Have a nice day.”

His polite dismissal wasn’t exactly a proportionate response to the ugly implications she’d made, but sometimes, when faced with a ridiculous hypothesis, the best thing a man of science could do was focus his energies someplace else.

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