When I get to my apartment and unlock the door, David is sitting at the table. Spread out in front of him are mounds of money. Stacks, actually. He is sorting the bills and putting them into piles of the same denomination. I feel for a second as if I am interrupting him. But then I remember that this is my apartment and that he knows I come home at this time. I close the door behind me, lay my bags down, and walk over toward him. He holds up his index finger, silently asking me to hang on for a minute. I put my hands on the top of his shoulders and watch him finish counting the bills in one of the stacks. Next to him is a small pad of paper and a pencil with a novelty eraser in the shape of Spider-Man’s head. It looks silly sitting amongst all this money. There are numbers listed on the paper, and when he stops counting, he scribbles the number 8200 on the bottom of the list. Then he looks up at me, lifting his hand to his shoulder to stroke my fingers.
“Hey,” he says. “Sorry I’m taking up your table, but Brad and some of the other guys are up at my place, and I didn’t want to do this there.”
“No problem,” I say. Then I tip my head down at the table and add, “From poker?”
“Yeah,” he says. “It was a pretty good night. I didn’t get back here till nearly five in the morning, and I was exhausted. There was no way I was gonna count all this then. I slept here until like four o’clock this afternoon. When I went up to take a shower and get changed, Brad and the guys were already up there. So I came down here instead.” My eyes skim over the stacks of money on the table. There must be at least twenty thousand dollars sitting there. “I hope you don’t mind,” he adds thoughtfully.
“Mind what? That you’re counting your money here or that you slept in my bed until four o’clock?”
“Both,” he says with a small grin.
“I don’t mind one bit. Just surprised to see you here, that’s all,” I say. He looks up at me and shrugs. “That’s a damn lot of money you’ve got there,” I add as I walk into the kitchen to get something to drink.
“Yep, it sure is. It’s not all mine, though. In fact, most of it is someone else’s. Like a tenth of this is actually mine.”
“Still...” I say, my voice trailing off in suggestion.
“Yeah, well, I usually get a bigger cut. But not this time.”
“Why’s that?” I ask from the kitchen.
“Just one of those times when someone else has to get paid before I do,” he says as I am walking out of the kitchen holding a pair of water bottles. I hand one to him and watch as he finishes counting the last pile of bills. When he’s done, he packs them all into a metal box, puts the pad and pencil on top, and closes the lid. The box has a combination lock, and I watch as he twists the dial and tests the lid to be sure it won’t open.
“That little lock isn’t going to keep your money safe from me, sir,” I say in jest. “Picking locks is one of my surprise talents.” I am leaning on the wall now, my shoulder flush against the frame of the kitchen doorway. He raises his eyebrows.
“Any other surprise talents I need to know about?” he asks.
“I’ve got lots,” I say with a smile, “but if I tell you, then you won’t be surprised.”
“True,” he says, “and so far all of your talents have been very interesting.” He stands up from the table and walks over to me, putting his palm against the door frame and leaning in to give me a kiss. It is hard and sweet. And it leaves me feeling a little woozy. When he pulls back, he strokes his thumb back and forth over the crest of my cheek. Instinctively, I drop my eyes toward the floor and lean my face into his hand.
“Your skin is warm,” he says, slowly moving his hand from my face down the side of my neck.
“Yeah, well, a kiss like that tends to do such things to a girl,” I say weakly. I sound like a meek little kid when I say it.
David steps back from me and looks down at his shoes just as I raise my eyes to look at him. I’m not sure why, but I think I’ve made him uncomfortable. I thought that he would take my comment as a challenge. I thought he would have whisked me off to the bedroom by now. But instead, he is backing away from me, shuffling his feet back toward the sofa, with his eyes still on the ground.
A moment later he lifts his eyes to mine. “I’m sorry,” he says. Why on earth would David be sorry? I don’t understand. Does he think I don’t like feeling this way?
“No need to be sorry,” I say with a look of confusion. “Why would you be sorry? I like what you do to me. I like it when you make me feel like that.” He is looking at me as if he doesn’t believe it. “David, pretty much everything you do makes me feel like that.”