“How much do I owe you for gas?” She dug into her jeans pocket for money.
“Not a damn thing.” He smiled. “I offered to take you home. If I would have wanted money I would have told you. What you can do to repay me is tell me how the hell I get to Scottsdale from here.”
She gave him the directions and he started his motorcycle up. As he pulled out of the driveway she stood and waved like an idiot. For a long time after he had left, she stood and stared off in the direction that he had went, thinking about what it would have been like for him to have kissed her. Her mother came out in her night gown and ushered her inside with a thousand different questions about how the night went and who her new friend was.
****
Dan started going to her school a few days later and for the first week she tried to keep her distance, but fate or something had another idea. No matter how hard she tried to avoid him, they always seemed to end up in the same place at the same time. It just happened to turn out that he had the same gym class as her. She pretended not to notice him at first, but he came right up to her with a smile on his face.
She wanted so badly for him to ask her out, but he never did. He would invite her over to his house to study or play video games; he would take her out so they could listen to music and cruise in his car. But he never once asked her on a date. Sure, they ate food when they were out and she would pretend that they were dating when other people looked at them, but deep down in her heart, she knew that she was just one of the boys to him. She wondered sometimes if he even saw her as a woman.
Over the next year of high school, she watched him take out girl after girl. All of the girls in school wanted him and many of them had him. He took Cindy Cantwell to the senior prom. Sara pretended to be sick and stayed home. When she didn’t go to the prom that night, Dan left his date alone and came to her house to see if she was alright. He told her that he thought she might have gotten into a wreck or something, and after some sweet-talking, he got her to go to the prom with him. His date was pissed when he got back, but he told her to buzz off. Sara’s heart soared when he said that, but his next words made it come crashing back down to reality. He told Cindy that his friend wasn’t feeling so hot and he’d chose friends over a woman anytime. Although she felt even worse than she had before she went to prom, Sara danced with Dan for a few of the songs and tried to put on a happy face. She knew that he wasn’t buying it, but she just didn’t have the energy to try any harder.
When they graduated, Dan didn’t go to college, so she didn’t have to bear with him leaving her. She knew that she would never have him in any way other than a friend, but she would be damned if she was going to let him out of her sight. Right away, he began to invent things. Things that changed the world—and seemingly overnight, he went from a bad boy with a motorcycle, to a millionaire with anything he ever wanted, with a different beautiful woman on his arm every night.
Through it all, Sara endured, and they stayed the best of friends. Sometimes, like now, she thinks back to the night that they met and wonders if life would have been simpler if they would have never met, if Pam wouldn’t have ditched her and left her with no way home. She is sure that life would have been simpler, but it wouldn’t have been as fun. Even with the years of torment, heartache, and wondering why he wouldn’t ask her out, she still wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Chapter 3
Sara can feel the drinks starting to hit her as she takes another sip of her Purple Thunder. Across from her, Dan is head-banging to the song blasting from the speakers. On a sudden whim, he grabs up the remote for the stereo and switches it off. The sudden quiet is almost as loud in her ears as the music had been.
“You know what I was just thinking about?” he asks her.
“I didn’t know you were capable of doing something so complicated.” She grins.
“Oh, very funny. No, I’m serious.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking about the first night we met at that party. That was years ago, but I can still close my eyes and see you sitting in that chair in the corner all by yourself. What was the guy’s name that had the party? Chuck? Harold?”
“You’re very close. It was Vince.” She chuckles. “I remember that night quite well myself. You were the ugliest man there. Imagine the horror I felt when a shadow fell over me and I looked up to see your mug standing over me.”
“Sure. Sure, but as I recall if I wouldn’t have came over to talk to you that night, you wouldn’t of had a ride home.”
“True, but you were still ugly.”
“That’s it.” Dan jumps up and leaps over the small glass table between them. He throws his fists in the air and starts to move them about like an old Irish boxer while he shuffles his feet quickly back and forth. “Let’s do this.”
Sara aims a punch at him that misses on purpose. “Go sit down before you get hurt, Irishman.”
Using his best Irish accent he places his hands on his hips and speaks. “What do ya mean b’fore I get meself hurt? I’ll tear ya in half in the blink of an eye. Now what do ya say to a wee bit of food to take the sting from the devil’s nectar?”
“That sounds wonderful.”
“Good. Because I don’t know about you, but those drinks are starting to go to my head and I really don’t enjoy passing out this early in the evening.”
“Me neither,” agrees Sara as she stands from the couch. “I always try to make it a point not to pass out from drinking until the sun has set.”
“Good rule.”
They make their way to the kitchen, and even though Sara has been in it a thousand times, she once again can’t believe the space. Dan’s kitchen alone is nearly as big as the whole apartment that she lives in downtown. He has offered for her to move in here and take one of the floors that he doesn’t use for research and development, but she has refused every time. She has her feelings for him under control now, and she doesn’t want to know what would happen if she moved in with him.
He opens the fridge and looks around for a moment, his back to her. Even though she doesn’t want to, Sara checks out his butt, and finds that it is every bit as sculpted as it was the first night that she saw him. She bets that his abs are just as hard too. So deep is she in thought about how his body would feel under the touch of her hands that she doesn’t hear him when he speaks. She jerks when she realizes that he is speaking.
“What? I was zoned out.”
“I noticed,” he says. “I said that we might have a problem. I know I spoke big about what we could cook and have for supper, but it appears that I may have wrote a check with my mouth that my refrigerator can’t cash.”
He steps aside, and right away she can see what he is talking about. The only things inside his fridge are beer, various juices, four or five bottles of hard liquor, and a bottle of ketchup. Not exactly the ingredients for a great meal.
“I see what you mean. What do you have in your cabinets?”
He goes down through his line of cabinets and opens them one by one. In the end, the only food that he finds is a box of macaroni noodles with the cheese packet missing, and a can of dried tomatoes that are were well past the expiration date a few years ago.
“It would seem that I haven’t been shopping in some time, wouldn’t it?” He grins and holds up the box of macaroni noodles and the can of dried tomatoes. “These seem to be all I have and I don’t think anything in my fridge is going to help.”
“I believe you’re right on that one.” She takes the macaroni and looks it over. “Unless you like macaroni boiling in vodka with some ketchup for flavoring.”
“Yum, my favorite.” He takes he macaroni and tomatoes and throws them in the trash can. “How about instead of a fancy meal cooked here, I order out and get an even fancier—and let’s face the facts—better tasting one brought here?”
“Okay.”
“How does Italian sound?”
“I love pizza.”
“Me too. Will two large pizzas be enough?”
“I should hope so.”
Dan pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and hits a number. He didn’t dial, so Sara assumes that he has the pizza place on speed dial as she wanders off to look at some of his artifacts. She has always found them amazing to look at and she thinks that it might help her get her mind off of Dan and his toned body. Ever since she first came here, she has found the artifacts to be purely awesome. She likes to look at them and think about the people who used or made them. What were they like? Most scientists don’t think of the cultural artifacts in those terms. They merely want to know what it was used for and how it was made. For Sara, she wants to know about the people who used and made it. She stops in front of a mask hanging inside a glass case. The plaque at the bottom says that it is a Hopi Indian mask from the fourteenth century.
She wonders about what the people who used this mask were like, but seconds later, she finds herself wondering what Dan would look like without his clothes on. Dang, it Sara, she scolds herself. It has been nearly fourteen years since you felt anything for him other than a passing fancy. Why bring it up now? She isn’t sure why, but tonight, she can’t stop thinking about him. I’ll just eat some pizza and then make an excuse to leave early. I’ll say I’m having feminine problems. That usually works.