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I stepped forward. I took her face in my hands, gently, as if it were a valuable piece of china. A priceless vase. I tilted her chin up so she was looking at me.
“Ava,” I said, “let’s go get a fucking drink.”
Eight
Ava
* * *
“I don’t know,” I said, sipping my margarita. “I wasn’t paying much attention. But I thought Rey should have had hot sex with that Kylo Ren guy.”
Dane put his head in his hands, cradling his forehead. “Ava.”
“What? I like tall, skinny men.”
“Do you even know the plot of any of the Star Wars movies? Name one.”
I frowned at him. We were sitting in a bar downtown, a two-level place full of pool tables and TV screens. It was early, barely dinnertime, and the place wasn’t packed yet. Dane and I sat at the corner of the near-empty bar, him with a pint of dark, bitter beer, me with my fancy drink.
“I don’t need to know the plot,” I said. “I know a hot guy when I see one.”
This was my favorite game with Dane—or it used to be. You could call it Bait the Nerd. The rules were that I would say something absurd about a nerdy thing Dane cared about, and Dane would get mad. Over the years, I’d become a master at it.
Who’s the guy with the dark glasses and the lasers coming out of his eyes? What’s his deal, anyway?
How does Batman pee in that suit?
Why doesn’t Black Widow have superpowers like the rest of them? Is it because she’s a girl?
Do you think Captain America is a virgin?
Why is Wolverine so hung up on that Jean Grey chick? She isn’t even hot.
Made. Him. Crazy. Hence, Bait the Nerd.
I actually didn’t mind most of Dane’s nerdy stuff, and I paid more attention than I let on. But it was too much fun to drive him nuts, so I never admitted the truth.
“The whole movie should have been about Carrie Fisher,” I said, taking another sip and watching Dane’s face. “Actually, all of the movies should have been about her. I mean, what the fuck.”
“You’re making me day drink,” Dane said, lifting his head and sipping deeply on his beer.
“Good,” I said. “I like drunk Dane.”
“He doesn’t come out very often.” Dane drank again.
“Tell me what you’ve been reading.”
He did, and I knew some of it. I told him some of my favorite books—I didn’t read as much as Dane did, and a lot of what I read was romance, but reading was one of my favorite pastimes, especially on my phone during a boring day on set. Dane didn’t judge, and he asked me questions. We talked about TV, though neither of us watched much of it. We drank, and he made me laugh.
After the gut-wrenching way we’d had it out earlier, it was a relief. I felt the muscles between my shoulder blades loosen, my turning stomach ease. And at the same time, I couldn’t deny the other thing I was feeling: butterflies. Deep in my stomach, down between my legs, even while we talked about Game of Thrones.
It wasn’t a date, because Dane and I had too much history to be on a date. And we weren’t friends. If Dane was my friend, I wouldn’t be picturing him in his boxer briefs as we talked. I wouldn’t be wondering if he was different in bed now, slower maybe, more experienced, less frantic. I wouldn’t be asking myself if all that new muscle made him heavier, if it made his weight different, the way he moved different. My mouth was dry just thinking about it, so I took another drink.
“What?” Dane said when I was too quiet. “What is it?”
I swallowed. The margarita was going to my head, making me feel pleasantly fuzzy. And turned on. “All these changes,” I said, motioning to him, up and down. “They’re hot.”
Dane’s dark eyes looked briefly surprised, and then he looked away. The bar was dark and he had a beard on his cheeks, but I thought he might be blushing. “That wasn’t what I was going for,” he said.
