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I shook my head. “I’m fine, Bambi. Worry about yourself.”
“Fine, sheesh.”
The waitress came over with our food and I was thankful for the distraction. Because I needed one. I needed a distraction from the life I led. Sometimes, even the simplest of things gave me that same kind of anxiety Dani talked about. Even the ringing of my phone was bad. It
could range from a group update to a group death. A group job to a group meltdown. There was no normalcy in my life. No pattern. Nothing to count on, except my father’s sadistic, psychopathic tendencies.
I found myself envious of the life Dani lived.
“How’s your burger?” she asked.
I picked it up and took a massive bite before I gave her a thumbs-up.
“Got a bit too much mayonnaise on it for me.”
I shrugged, then took another bite of my burger. It gave me an excuse not to talk to her.
“Want some ketchup for your fries?”
I shook my head as I swallowed hard. Then I drained the rest of my beer and slid the glass to the edge of the table, where the waitress scooped it up, ready to bring me another one. And a few seconds later, she slammed another brew in front of me.
“You sure you should be drinking so much even though you have to take me back to campus?”
I held her stare as I lifted the glass to my lips. I chugged, mouthful after mouthful, watching as her eyes widened like a deer in headlights. ‘Bambi’ suited her perfectly.
If only Benji hadn’t used that shit as an insult.
After gulping down half my beer, I picked up a few fries. I shoved them into my mouth without ketchup and listened to Dani sigh. I was done with this question game. She had a way of getting under my skin that I didn’t like. I didn’t want to talk about my life anyway. I didn’t want to tell her the number of times I’d gotten a phone call in the middle of the night, just to tell me a friend was dead. I didn’t want to talk about my childhood, all the bullshit my father put me and my brother through. I didn't want to talk about the guys, or the gang, or anything that had to do with the shadows that followed me around. With the nightmares that clung to my mind at night.
Dani was a nice distraction from all that.
And I wanted to keep things that way for as long as I could.
“What’s your favorite color?”
Dani’s question caught me off-guard. “What?”
She smiled. “There’s that voice of yours. I knew you had it in you, Buckaroo.”
I furrowed my brow. “Buckaroo?”
“I’m Bambi, you’re Buckaroo. Deal with it.”
“You’re not calling me that.”
“You sure… Buckaroo?”
I heard a few guys snickering as they listened in on our conversation. I took another bite of my burger and chewed slowly, burrowing a hole with my eyes into Dani’s face. She seemed undeterred. She sipped her Coke without moving her eyes away from me and ate a french fry from between the tips of her fingers as she held my stare.
“I’m waiting, Buckaroo,” she said.
“Don’t call me that.”
She shrugged. “Then don’t call me Bambi.”
I licked my lips. “Red. Favorite color’s red.”
“Shocker. I guess you are a bit more predictable than you care to admit to.”
