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“Reeeeally.”
“Yeah. And I think I know why. The baby goat. Are you using me to spend time with my kid? Because if you are, I have to be honest, I get it.”
She laughed, hard.
“Well, if I do come back there, am I going to be accosted by the pig again? Because that was a lot of excitement for one night.”
“Okay, first of all, that pig has a name. It’s Kevin Bacon. It’s rude not to use it.”
She was laughing again. “Kevin Bacon?”
“Yup. Doug has a petting zoo, and he names them stuff like that.”
“Like what?” she asked. “What else?”
“Well, there’s Scape Goat—that’s Chloe’s mom. Chloe’s full name is Chloe Nose Bleat.” I ticked off on my fingers. “The chickens are Mother Clucker and Chick-a-Las Cage, there’s Barack O-Llama, the miniature horse is Al Capony—”
She howled.
I grinned. “The rabbits are Rabbit Downey Jr. and Obi Bun Kenobi—”
“STOP,” she begged. “You’re kidding me.”
“That’s Doug for you,” I said, grinning. “So what’s your address? I can leave in thirty minutes.”
I heard her let out a breath. She paused for a long moment. “I’m sure you realized this, but I’m a lot older than you.”
I shrugged. “So?”
“Don’t you want to know how old I am?”
“Not really. It doesn’t change anything for me.”
“I’m going to be thirty-eight in December.”
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t care.”
I didn’t.
She paused. “Daniel, this isn’t really a good time for me to get involved with someone. I’m not really emotionally available right now.”
“No problem. We can just hang out.”
“And you should know that I don’t do what we did the other night. Ever.”
Yeah, she’d said that the other night. A few times, actually. “Well, you should know I don’t do it either. Ever.”
And I meant that too. I didn’t.
She went quiet again.
There was something fragile in the silence. I got the feeling that if I hung up without getting her to agree to meet, I was never going to see her again. Like she would just disappear back into the universe. And something told me she could go either way.
I cleared my throat. “You are not going to believe this,” I said. “Doug just bet me a hundred bucks that I couldn’t get you to see me tonight. Wild, right?”
She laughed, and I felt her decision tip.
“Okay,” she said finally. “But I’ll come to you. I won’t be able to get there for another three hours though. I don’t live close.”
