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Rebound with My Dad’s Best Friend(6)

By:Ava May


“Easy to say from the six-foot-one man who weighs in at two hundred pounds and all of it is muscle,” she retorts.

“Don’t be like that.” Dan pouts his lips.

“You know I’m kidding, Dan. There is no way that you have a perfect body. I mean, look at the face.”

They share a laugh as they step on the elevator and Dan pushes the button for the fifteenth floor, his bachelor pad, but deep down inside, Sara feels like someone had just taken her stomach and twisted it into a ball. For what seemed like forever, she had been keeping a secret from Dan. She was afraid that if he ever found out that she liked him as more than a friend, it would destroy their friendship, and she valued his friendship so much. He was always there for her when she needed him and they had such great times together. For those reasons, she keep her secret and bit her tongue when she was around him.

The elevator jerks into motion and shoots through the fifteen floors in a matter of seconds. Sara never liked elevators and as she is soaring upwards she remembers why. Her organs still seem to be five floors below when they come to a stop and the doors open to a lavish apartment.

The decorative theme of Dan’s apartment is mostly modern, but he also collects old artifacts from different cultures. Sara never grows tired of looking at the different masks, statues, idols, and weapons from ancient cultures that most have already forgotten. Dan points to the couch and tells her to have a seat while he gets them something to drink. As she sits on the white couch with black pillows she feels the same as she always does. Uncomfortable. For a girl that grew up on a farm playing in dirt and manure, the white couch is an oddity. She is forever afraid when she comes up here and sits that she will dirty the couch and ruin it. It’s not like Dan couldn’t buy more. Heck, he could buy the company if he wanted to, but I would still feel bad, she thinks.

Dan emerges from the kitchen a few minutes later with two large martini glasses in his hands. Each glass is filled with a bright purple liquid. Oh lord, thinks Sara, he’s concocted another new drink and wants to know what I think about it.

“Here.” He hands her one of the martini glasses and sits down opposite to her in a chair. “It’s my new drink. I call it Purple Thunder.”

“You know, if I didn’t know better, I would think that you were gay.”

“Well, I’m not.” Dan grins. “I don’t see why everyone thinks that these drinks are girly or gay. First of all, beer is disgusting. Second, these so-called girly or gay drinks have hard liquor in them, which gets you drunk faster and tastes way better. And tell me this. Most of them contain something that is vaguely similar to punch or Kool-Aid. Who the hell doesn’t like Kool-Aid? No one, that’s who. Everybody likes it.”

“Agreed.” Sara raises her glass to her lips and takes a cautionary sip. She is ready for it to be nasty, as most of Dan’s drink combinations are, but the drink is surprisingly sweet and delicious. She takes a larger drink and smiles. “This is great.”

“Thanks, but you could have said that like the other times weren’t so horrible.”

“Sorry.” She smiles over the glass at him, her blue eyes twinkling. “But most of them were.”

“Yeah, you’re right. So, what are we going to do tonight?”

“I don’t know.” Sara takes another sip of her drink. “To tell you the truth, after the date I just had, I really don’t feel like doing much of anything.”

“Well, how about we have a little dinner here later on? We don’t have to go out anywhere. We can stay here and maybe watch a few bad action movies, pop some popcorn, and have some drinks. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds great, except for the bad action movie part. How about a nice romance or maybe a romantic comedy?”

“No freakin’ way. My love for things female goes only so far as the drinks. I’d rather see the action hero blowing away the bad guys with a machine gun than watch a couple row around in a boat while swans and ducks float gently by and they realize that they have always loved each other.”

“Whatever,” she says with a snort of derision. “That all sounds like a great night, but first, I think I’ll take another one of these Purple Thunders.”

“Coming right up.”

Dan leaps up from the couch as nimble as can be and scoops the glass from Sara’s hand. She watches him walk away with a longing in her heart. For so long at the beginning of their friendship, she tried to hint to him that she liked him as more that just a bro, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t take the hint. Eventually, she gave up and fell into a kind of niche with him. She wasn’t exactly a bro, but she wasn’t exactly a girlfriend either. Over time, she had become a person that he could talk with about the women he was dating. These were the stories that she hated to hear, but she sat through them patiently and offered advice when she could.

Oh, how I wish I would have just come out and told him how I felt about him in the beginning, she thinks to herself as she hears him clinking glasses around in the kitchen. But then again it’s for the best that I didn’t. A man like him would have never went for an overweight girl like me. Face it, Sara—you’re fat and alone.

She smiles as Dan comes back into the living room and places the glass of purple liquid in front of her. Digging in her purse, she comes out with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Holding them up for him to see, she speaks.

“Do you mind?” She asks the same question every time she comes up here. It is just one of those things that has become a ritual.

“Why do you ask that every time?” He replies and the ritual moves forward.

“I would hate to ruin your bitching pad with my smoking.” She grins and lights up.

“Sure you would. How about some music?”

“None of that rap shit that you listen to.” She exhales smoke and points her finger at him. “I mean it.”

“You know, you’re the first girl I have ever met in the city who doesn’t like rap. Want to hear some country? That’s were you’re from. Head on back down to your roots?” Dan snickers as his voice takes on a southern drawl.

“You know damn well I don’t.” She laughs along with him. “But if you had some nice grove metal or just plain old heavy metal, that would be fine.”

“Yeah. Let’s rock this joint!” Dan shoves his right hand into the air in devil horns as he head bangs to nonexistent music.

Sara laughs and raises her own devil horns. She deepens her voice as she speaks. “Crank it to eleven and rip the knob off!”

The music starts and the chugging riffs, the thundering of the double bass drum, and the roar of the screamer takes Sara back to the night she met Dan.





Chapter 2

Sara wasn’t the most outgoing person at Hinderburrow High. She was about thirty pounds overweight, and even though it was all in the right places, the boys hadn’t started to care about anything other than the cheerleaders and skinny girls. She went through most of the days with her head down. The only real friend she had was Pam, a girl from Boston. Pam tried to get Sara to go to parties with her every weekend, but Sara refused. She was more of a homebody, and besides, no one could make fun of you or ridicule you if you didn’t go.

But tonight was different.

For some reason that Sara couldn’t quite put her finger on, she let Pam talk her into going to a party at Vince’s house outside of town. Apparently his parents were gone for the weekend and he had the house to himself.

Why would any parent ever leave their eighteen-year-old boy alone for the weekend? They watched the shows on television. Did they think that none of that stuff ever really happened? Heck, they had been young once and knew what it was like. So why would they trust anything a hormonal teenager ever said to them? These things were beyond Sara.

She didn’t really want to go, but she dressed up in her best blue jeans and a nice blouse for the occasion. Pam pulled up in front of her house at seven o’clock and started honking the horn on her little car. On the way out the door, Sara’s mother told her to have a good time and gave her twenty dollars. She knew that they didn’t have much, so for her mom to give her a twenty was a huge deal. She stopped and looked at her mom for a moment.

“I want you to have fun tonight, Sara. You never go out and I worry about you.”

“I’m okay, Mom. Really.” She handed the bill back. “Here. I have some money of my own saved up. I’ll use it.”

“No, you won’t.” Sara’s Dad, a tall thin man, stepped around the corner. “You’ll take the money from your Mom and you’ll have yourself a good time tonight. This is the first night you’ve ever went out and we aim to pay for it. Right, Mom?”

“Right.” Her mom nodded her head in agreement and pushed Sara’s hand back toward her chest.

“Thank you both.” Sara gave each of them a kiss and a hug. “When do I need to be back by?”

“Before you go to school on Monday,” her dad joked.

“Dad!” She rolled her eyes and looked to her mother.

“Just be back around midnight, honey.” Her mother responded. “And if you girls get drunk, please call us. Don’t drive home. You won’t get into any trouble if you just call.”