Free All of Me by Gina Sorelle Page B

years, so I ain’t complaining.”
    Nathan snorted.
    They walked their
beat in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Danny gestured down to
Nathan’s hand.  “So, what happened there?”
    Nathan lifted up
his Ace bandaged hand.  “I cut it on something in my garage.” 
    “What?”
    “I…I don’t
remember.  Something sharp.” 
    “You need
stitches?”
    “No.  It’s fine.”
    “I thought maybe
you did a slice and dice so you could haul ass over to St. Mary’s ER,” Danny
said with a shit-eating grin.
    Nathan ignored
him.  But, as usual, Danny didn’t know when to quit. 
    “When are you
gonna see her again?”
    Nathan shrugged. 
    For such a
loud-mouth, Danny sure had a weird, intuitive side that Nathan despised.  He
stopped abruptly and faced Nathan, hands on hips.  “You saw her already, didn’t
you?”
    When Nathan didn’t
deny it, Danny studied him up and down.  “Well, I can tell you didn’t fuck
her.  You wouldn’t still have that puss on your face if you had.  So what
happened?”
    Nathan definitely
didn’t want to talk about it, but a tiny part of him wanted Danny’s sage advice. 
And he also knew Danny was like a dog with a bone and wasn’t gonna let it go
anyway.
    “I went over
there,” Nathan said. 
    Danny reared
back.  “For real?”  Nathan nodded.  “And?”
    “I fucked it all
up.  As usual.”
    Danny gestured for
Nathan to keep giving him the goods.  “Okay, come on, come on.  Tell me
everything.”
    Nathan shrugged. 
“I returned a lighter I took from her that night at the hospital.  I don’t want
her smoking, but it didn’t belong to me, so…”  Danny made another impatient
gesture.  “Anyway, she invited me in and offered me a drink.”  When Danny’s
eyes lit up, Nathan shook his head.  “Get your head out of the gutter.  Nothing
like that happened.”  He exhaled hard, running a hand over his head. 
“She…forced me.  She said she wouldn’t take no for an answer.  We sat on her
back porch and…” 
    Nathan remembered
it all:  the incredible smell of her, the soothing quiet of her backyard, the
soft, sweet way she had looked at him.  Nathan was sure the look had everything
to do with pity, but it hadn’t felt that way at the time.  It had
felt…exciting.  Different.  And hot as hell.
    “And?  And?” 
Danny was so amped up he could hardly stand still.  “Did you fool around out
there?  You dog!”
    “Jesus Christ,
Danny, get a hold of yourself.  No, we did not ‘fool around’ in her backyard
after three minutes of conversation.  At 9 o’clock at night with kids riding
around on their bikes.”  Nathan shook his head, once again in awe of what must
go on in Danny’s life.  “We just talked.  Well, she talked and I sat there like
an asshole, per usual.  Or I did until I offered to give her your number.”
    Well, that shut
Danny up.  For a second.  He reared back again and then leaned in
dramatically.  “You did what now?”
    “I panicked.  I
didn’t know what to say.”
    “So you offered to
pawn her off on another dude?”  Danny exhaled a hard laugh.  “That’s some hook
up strategy there, brother.  What the fuck?”
    Nathan didn’t have
an answer for that.
    “What did she
say?”  Danny perked up a bit.  “Was she into it?”  At Nathan’s dirty look, Danny
laughed.  “Just checking.  So what did she say for real?”
    Nathan remembered
the confusion followed by the flash of hurt in her eyes before she’d gotten
pissed.  Just thinking about it made him want to punch his own face. 
    “She kicked me
out.”
    Danny laughed. 
“God damn, I would drain my entire bank account right now to have seen that! 
What did she say?”
    “To tell you she
wasn’t interested –“ Danny winced.  “And she called me ‘very junior high.’  I
wasn’t sure what that meant, but she wasn’t saying it in a good way.” 
    Danny laughed
again. “You never hit it up with the ladies in