Hare Today, Bear Tomorrow (Mating Call Dating Agency #1)(10)
On the backs of her eyelids danced images of Stacy, or Blade, she still wasn’t quite sure what someone in her position should call him. That was another thing – she wasn’t really sure what her position was. They’d made another date for the next night, but she had the sneaking suspicion she was getting too excited and making hasty decisions, just like always.
She was still thinking about all this when her phone rang. At first it sounded like a distant, chirping bird until Garnet remembered that she’d changed her ringtone to a chirping bird. “Hey Sta—”
“Garnet? Hello?”
Not him, she gulped. “Uh... hi,” she said. Her stomach was clenched with something halfway between panic and embarrassment. It was her editor. “Need something?”
“I’ll say.” Lita Dalton strained, perpetually-nervous voice had a way of making her nervous in even the best circumstances. In the present one, she had Garnet right on the edge of sanity. “There’s some shit going down, and I need someone I can trust to cover the story.”
Story? No, no, not now. Not right now, it can’t happen right now. She immediately felt ridiculous. Her whole life was based around waiting for stories, getting scoops and hoping one of them turned out to be THE ONE that would let her cut out the moonlighting. And here she was, worried that she wasn’t going to make her date with her big, awesome bear the next night. “Is it... a good one?” she finally managed, chiding herself for being so ridiculous.
“I’ll say,” Lita said. “The thing is, you’re gonna have to go on the road for a few nights. There’s a riot in some town I’ve never heard of in southeast Ohio. What’s that? A few hours from White Lake?”
She grimaced. Not only was she not going to make their date, she wasn’t even going to be around to have a fallback night. Once again, she bit her damn lip, irritated at herself for even thinking of something like that. “Doesn’t matter,” she said even though her guts were turning. “I’ll be there.”
5
“I don’t know about all this,” Stacy was pacing the locker room, his feet heavily thudding on the squishy rubberized floor. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“You’re already crazy,” Rush said. The jackal had been his tag team partner and confidant for as long as either of them had been in the business. The two of them had more than enough bar fights under their pelts to know damn well that either of them could hold their own. “Crazy in a friendly kind of way. What’s up?”
The big bear shook his head and cradled his forehead with his massive hand. “I might have got myself mixed up in something I can’t get away from.”
Rush laughed. “Oh what the hell? Don’t tell me you actually went to that dating agency.”
“I’m not as young as I used to be, we’ve been over this a thousand times,” Stacy, who was taping his fists and just about to apply the intricate body paint that turned him fully into Blade, said, deftly dodging the question.
“It ain’t like your knees are going. You’re not starting to tire out, are you? Heart problems or something?” This exchange had become almost a ritual between the two old friends. Except this time, there was one other variable.
Stacy shot a glance up at the monitor. The match before they were set to go on was falling flat. Two big, husky hippo looking guys were slamming into each other over and over. “Why the hell does the boss keep booking those two?”
Rush shook his head. “Word is, he lost a bet with someone, and so now he has to drag those two flab boats around all the time. Thing is, either one of them could probably pick up a damn semi, but they get over with the crowd about as much as a dead pine tree.”
They both fell silent for a moment, watching the unfolding spectacle of boredom. “We’re gonna be on soon, you sure you’re up for this?”
“You should know,” Stacy said, grunting a laugh.
“Oh my God, you went? Thank all that’s holy!” Rush clapped his friend on the shoulder.
Stacy shook his head, smiling down at the bench. “I’ve never felt like this before, which I know is what everyone always says. But this one seems different.”
The great hippo brothers had managed to knock themselves unconscious with a mistimed headbutt exchange. “They’re gonna kill each other someday,” Stacy said offhandedly.
Rush, for his part, ran his hand through his black hair with the shock of white right in the front. “Well, either way, I won’t give you any shit about it. Any more than I have to if I want to keep my man card. But I’m happy for you. Really. You know how hard it is to keep up any kind of relationship on the road.”
“That’s the other thing.” His fist was taped up nice and thick. He wasn’t chancing any broken fingers or sprained wrists this time. “I keep thinking about settling down. Only problem is that I don’t know if I actually can. You know what I mean? I don’t know if I’m built to not be on the road all the time, living by the skin of my teeth and always going.”
Rush shrugged. “Could always take up gardening or something. Model trains? Get you one of those neat-o engineer’s hats and sit around making choo-choo noises?”
Stacy shot out a fist, grabbing his partner’s shirt, and snarling. “A what?”