Hare Today, Bear Tomorrow (Mating Call Dating Agency #1)(9)
“Like what?” Garnet asked.
“Well, like the fact that you’re here now and I’m so out of touch with my home that I didn’t even know a beautiful woman had moved in who was willing to date a muscle mountain and not say anything about it. I really appreciate that, by the way.”
Garnet arched an eyebrow. “Appreciate what? Sometimes I feel like I’m in someone else’s body just experiencing all this like it’s a movie. I’m still kind of—”
“Holy hell, look at that beautiful mess,” Stacy said as the waitress plopped down an enormous plate of Pad Thai, and another round of egg rolls. She looked at the two of them with something resembling either pity or judgment. It was hard to tell, but right then Garnet was having so much ridiculous fun that she couldn’t possibly have cared less what the waitress thought of her or her eating habits. She grabbed her chopsticks and took an enormous mound of deliciously sauced noodles, and looked at it for a second before sticking it in her mouth.
“You gonna let me catch up?” he asked. “It’s sort of embarrassing for a pro-wrestling bear to get eaten under the table by a rabbit half his size.”
“Slow down?” She asked with a grin. “I slow for no man. You’re just gonna have to step it up.”
*
Neither of them remembered having a stomach ache quite as horrifying, or quite as totally, completely worth it, as the one they both parted ways with. Garnet groaned, sighed and smiled as she collapsed into the recliner in her small living room. The TV she had forgotten to turn off played a Magnum PI re-run. She never did like the show much, but what girl can resist Tom Selleck’s mustache?
She had an afterglow. An afterglow that she really, really needed to tell someone about. Problem was, she didn’t have many friends in White Lake. She spent so much of her time either working or fiddling around the library that even setting up some friendships wasn’t much in the cards. She had a few acquaintances she went out to dinner with every now and then, but this was something that needed a capital F Friend. So, she flipped through her contacts for the only person she thought fit the bill.
Dora.
“Hello?” the voice that came through her phone’s speaker was weak, sleepy and confused.
“Oh hell, what time is it?” Garnet asked. “Sorry,” she said, looking at her VCR – yeah, VCR – and realizing it was quarter to midnight. “I had no idea it was so late.” She felt bad, on the one hand, but on the other, she was absolutely charged with energy. “You’ll never guessed what happened tonight.”
“Uh,” Dora was dumbfounded but chuckled. “You had a good date with a professional wrestler?”
“A professional wrestler!” Garnet almost shrieked. “I don’t even like big muscled-up guys. He was just so... what’s the word? Charming? No, not really. Honest? I guess, but—”
“You know that it’s okay just to like someone, right?” Dora yawned, but had the slightest hint of a laugh in the back of her exhausted voice. “How’d it go?”
“You already guessed it,” Garnet said. “I can’t even believe what I’m saying or what I’m feeling, but yeah. We sat there at Siam and yammered at each other for almost five hours.”
“They didn’t kick you out?”
“We drank a lot of sake. And ate a whole lot of eggrolls,” Garnet said.
“Oh no, don’t tell me either of you got ribs, you know what happens if you get Siam’s ribs.”
Garnet laughed hard and loud, the way a person only laughs when they’re properly liquored up and full of egg rolls. “No, no, no ribs. But he beat me twelve eggrolls to nine.”
“You... went on a date and had an eating contest?” the sound of squeaking told Garnet that her friend had pushed up and was sitting against the backboard of her gigantic, 1980s waterbed. “I’m not sure I actually want to know any more about that.”
Garnet couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah we did, I guess. But listen, he was so fun, so... real. There was one point when he told a joke and it wasn’t that funny, but I laughed way too much.”
Dora sighed heavily. “Girl, let me guess. You went through high school without ever having a big ol’ crush, right?”
“And then he ate like half my Pad Thai and then—wait, what? High school?”
“Yeah. You never had a big crush in high school? Laugh too much at shitty jokes, that kind of thing?”
For a moment, Garnet was silent. “No,” she finally said, “I guess not. That can’t be right, can it? I’ve never had a crush before? I mean I’ve had boyfriends and dated and hell, I almost got married that one time to that fox I moved here with, but can I really have gone my entire life without actually falling stupid for someone?”
“I guess you didn’t mind the muscles?” she laughed under her breath, and then yawned a second time. “Look, I’m glad you called, but its past midnight and Eve wants me in early tomorrow. Interviewing a handful of guys to try at slake the ever-growing pile of requests in her inbox.”
“I just had to tell someone,” Garnet said, feeling the smile on her lips warm her chest. “Have a good night.”
But before she’d even wished her friend good night, Dora was fast asleep and snore-whistling. Garnet laughed softly and hung up her phone before reclining back on the bed and closing her eyes.