Push(56)

“Tuesday night was pretty crazy,” he says. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.
“That it was,” I say as calmly as possible.
“Do you remember everything?”
“No, but David has filled me in on some of the more embarrassing details.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” he says with a heaping pile of innuendo, “especially since he wasn’t there to see most of them himself.” He turns his head toward me, and my eyes shoot to his. Panic rises in my throat, but I decide to make light of it all. I don’t know if he’s joking or not. Either way, teasing me about it is a complete dick move.
“Yes, I’m sure you got an eyeful. Are you going to share?” I say.
“I didn’t tell him everything that happened, Emma. Because if I did, you and I wouldn’t be standing here right now.” I am mortified. “I would be dead in the gutter, and you and David would be screwing on some beach in Cozumel.” What?
“What the hell are you talking about?” We are nearly to the lobby now, and I do not want to have this conversation with anyone else in earshot. When the elevator gets to the lobby, I press the door close button and hold it down tight.
Apparently Matt is not joking. I must have put on quite the show. “I’m talking about all the stuff you don’t remember. You were pretty f*cking hysterical, Emma. Going on and on about how much David likes the blue panties you were wearing. You took all your clothes off so you could show them to me. You danced around in them for me. He would kill me if he knew I didn’t stop you.” He is right.
“And the whole time you were prancing around, you were talking about David and how bad you have it for him,” he continues.
Ugh. “Thanks for not telling him all this. It’s a little humiliating.”
“I’m not trying to humiliate you, Emma. I’m trying to enlighten you. He never would have dreamed of bringing a woman to poker before—and he sure as shit wouldn’t have sat outside her office building waiting to drive her home after work every day.” Matt’s eyebrows go up, and his mouth moves into a soft pucker. It is a look intended to hammer home his point.
“Oh,” I sigh, unsure of what else I should say.
“Look, I’m just saying that I think he’s got it bad for you, too. I think you guys fit.” This is not how I expected our conversation to go. I feel relief. But also trepidation. I am reminded of my conversation with Matt about David looking like a man with food poisoning versus a man in love. Did Matt know something even then? What had David already told him? I want to ask him, but there is no way in hell I’m stepping out on that limb.
I lift my finger from the elevator button, and the door opens. We step out of the building together and into the courtyard. David isn’t waiting by the car. He is sitting on a bench opposite the building’s front door. When he sees us come out, he gets up and walks over. Just before he reaches us, Matt grins at me and tells me to have a nice weekend. I smile back at him and tell him to do the same.
“Thanks,” I say, “for Tuesday night and today.”
“No problem, Emma. See you Monday.” Then he turns to David and says, “Hey.”
“Hey,” David says to Matt in return, with a lift of his chin.
“She knows, dude. I just told her. You can thank me later.” And with that, Matt turns away from us and runs like hell toward the parking garage.



chapter Twenty-Five

“What was that all about?” David asks. “Should I be running after him right now?”
“No,” I say with a laugh. “Just let him go.”
“What did he tell you?” He looks a little worried.
“That you’ve got it bad for me.”
“No news there.” Inside I am jumping up and down like a schoolgirl.
“And that he thinks we fit.”
“Is that right?” he says with a grandfather-like inflection. “I was unaware that Matt is such a good judge of relationships.”
“Yeah, well, it was kinda nice to have a neutral third-party’s opinion on the whole thing. Truthfully, I wasn’t really convinced until I heard it from him.” I am teasing him, but he looks almost chastened.
“What makes you think Matt is a neutral third-party?”
Oh. “What makes you think he isn’t?”
“He knows more about me than you might think,” he says. “Plus, he put you in the shower and saw you half naked.” It makes me wonder what Matt knows about David that I don’t. But I decide that now is not the time to ask.
“Well, regardless of the extent of his neutrality, I’m putting a great amount of faith into his opinion.” His brow raises in question. “And actually, what you just said makes his vote carry even more weight in my book,” I add.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. It means that either he must think you’re an okay guy, even with all the horrible things he supposedly knows about you, or that I am horrible enough myself to deserve to be with the likes of you. And frankly, I’m okay with either of those. Plus, he must not think I’m ass-ugly. I’m sure he wouldn’t want his mate to be seen with a hideous skank. Big relief there, that’s for sure.”
“First of all, I didn’t say that what he knows about me is horrible. And, secondly, he did not refer to your body as ass-ugly.”
“What did he refer to me as?” Hmm. Matt said he didn’t tell David about my panty dance, but clearly they talked about the fact that I was half naked. It makes me wonder why David isn’t making a bigger deal out of it.