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“Peter snores too,” Bev confides. “Too much meat and cheese. You should try one of those sleep apnea machines. I tell Peter all the time he needs one.”
“And look like bloody Darth Vader?” Peter demands. “Then you’ll never shag me.”
“I’m with Peter on this one,” Mark says.
I glance at Dani. She gives me a bewildered look, but she’s smiling. I lean down and whisper in her ear. “Let’s go test out our hot tub. They'll never even notice if we leave.”
She bites her lip in amusement but shakes her head. “Be nice.”
“I’m always nice. Except when I tie you up and tease you.”
Her eyes widen, and she sucks in her breath. “Is that what you’re planning to do?” she whispers.
“Come inside and find out.” I wave to everyone. “Great chatting, Dani and I have an appointment we need to run to.”
“Don’t you even—” Nathan starts to protest but Michael gives him a small head shake.
I’m counting on the two of them to be too polite to scrap with me in front of the neighbors or to blow them off, and I’m right. They continue to chat and I make my escape, hauling a giggling Dani behind me.
CHAPTER 22
Michael
“So Michael hidthe beer in the washing machine of the dorm laundry room and then sat on it when the dorm supervisor came into the room,” Garrett Baker, my oldest friend from undergrad, says. “Like sitting on the lid would make it seem super casual, that we weren’t breaking dorm rules by drinking.”
I shake my head in amusement at the story. “Really? You have to tell my girlfriend about my college antics?” I ask him. Poor Deb, his wife, has already heard this story but she’s smiling too as we sit at a table with Dani, drinks and appetizers laid out in front of us.
“This is my favorite Michael story,” Deb says. “Hands down.”
I groan and lift my wine glass. “This is embarrassing. Seriously. Keep in mind I was eighteen, please, and panicking because I was on a full scholarship and didn’t want to get busted.”
“What happened?” Dani asks. “Did you get in trouble?”
“This genius,” Garrett says, finger pointing at me, grin on his face, “is sitting on the machine, assuring the dorm supervisor up, down, and sideways that we are in fact, just doing our laundry and studying in the laundry room on aFriday night,until the guy, who was like forty years old and no idiot, asks why the washer isn’t actually turned on. It’s not running. Dead giveaway.”
“Here’s the part where I panicked entirely,” I tell Dani. “I was scared witless he would make me lift the lid.”
“Oh, no, what did you do?” she asks sympathetically, a smile playing about her lips. “Did you do what I think you did?”
“Oh, yeah. One hundred percent. Without even thinking, I just turned it on so he wouldn’t look inside. At first it was fine, just water filling the tub with two twelve packs. I was actually relieved, feeling like we got away with it. Then the agitator started to oscillate. Things went downhill from there.” I wince even now at the memory.
Garrett grins. “The second the dorm supervisor was out of there, we tried to recover the beer but the machine was locked from the starting cycle. We could hear the beer cans clanking around in there. So Michael unplugged the machine.”
“Why?” Dani asks me, looking bemused.
“To stop the beer from being shaken up. Plus, what do they always tell you with electronics? Turn it off, then turn it on again.”
Deb is shaking her head and gives Dani a smile. “My God, I’m so glad I was never an eighteen-year-old boy. It’s a wonder any of them survive.”
Dani laughs. “To be fair, I would have probably just blurted out everything to the dorm supervisor in my panic. Confess and cry, that’s more me. I’ve never been the naughty girl.”
“Want to fucking bet?” I ask Dani with a grin, unable to resist. I reach down and squeeze her thigh.
“Michael!” she says, her cheeks turning a fiery red instantly. “Oh, my God, I can’t believe you said that.”
She looks genuinely shocked, but not upset. Just startled.
With Nathan and Crew around, there isn’t much opportunity for me to shock her with innuendos, but here, at a casual dinner with my oldest pre-med buddy, I can. It feels good to be here, with her.
