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“He’s got a great ass. Nice arms too.”
“He probably forgets leg day.”
r /> Phillip giggled, that oddly endearing high-pitched thing he did when he found something really funny. “Listen to you, talking gym talk.”
“It’s not like the porn.”
“No jocks in the locker room waiting for a four-way?”
“None at all. Lots of flab. And back hair.”
“Not on you.”
He patted his stomach. “Still got this.”
Phillip smiled. “You gotta keep that. I always—I always liked your belly.”
David flushed, looking down at the table, twisting the fork in his hand. “Thanks. I think.”
Melissa dropped off the glass of wine at the table and left without speaking. She did smile at the both of them, but that was all.
The silence that came then wasn’t quite as awkward. It wasn’t—it wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t like it’d been before either. He was nervous still, his palms a little sweaty, but his heartbeat had slowed, and he wasn’t struggling with something, anything to say. He didn’t know where this was going, what they were doing, and that question was still stuck in his throat, but it wasn’t… bad.
It was kind of nice.
And then David opened his mouth and ruined it. “I spoke to Detective Harper this week.”
A neutral “Did you?” was the only response he got.
“I, uh. I still call her. You know? Just on Mondays.”
“I know.”
“Okay. Good. I just… I wanted to point something out to her, just to see if they’d heard of it.”
“She told me.”
And that startled him. “She told you,” he repeated flatly.
Phillip didn’t even look like he’d been caught doing something wrong. “She told me.” He ate another potato. They were almost gone. He’d go on to the broccoli next. But the steak had been there for so long, he might just move on to it before it was lukewarm. Nobody liked lukewarm swordfish steaks.
“When?” David asked.
“When I spoke to her on Tuesday.”
And now maybe he knew why they were here. “Before or after?”
Phillip looked confused. “Before or after what?”
“Before or after you texted me. Before or after you said that you wanted to see me.”
Phillip picked the napkin off his lap and daintily wiped his mouth. He set it back on the table and sighed. “Before.”
David wanted to punch something very hard. “I see.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Isn’t it? I call and tell her that a sex-trafficking ring had been broken wide open in Baltimore and maybe they should look into it, and now here we are. You couldn’t call me, so you called her to check in, to check up, and once you heard that I’d fucking called her, trying to get them to do their goddamn jobs, you decided that maybe you should get me out, maybe you should make sure I wasn’t drowning like—”
