Push(57)


“Are you trying to make me feel covetous again?” He looks at me coyly, trying to read my face. I’m guessing he thinks we are treading on thin ice. I, on the other hand, am having a ball.
“Damn straight, I am. Spill it.”
He looks cautious, as if whatever he is about to say might somehow hurt him. “You don’t need to make me feel that way, Emma. I already do. I feel that way every second of every day, whether you are with me or not.” My lungs draw in a rush of air, and I smile, knowing that I have never heard a better string of words roll out of someone’s mouth. “Let’s just say the man is lucky I cut him some slack for taking care of you. If the words that he said had come out of another man’s mouth, you would have had to pry me off his beat-to-death body with a crowbar.”
I pause for a second and then leap at him, throwing my arms around his neck and kissing him.
David takes me to a restaurant down the street from my office building. As we are eating, he asks me if I’d like to go to the firing range again tonight. We decide to spend an hour or so there and then go out for a beer. I’m definitely getting the hang of shooting the gun. I do much better this time, hitting the target a dozen or so times. David, on the other hand, is a great shot.
When I ask him why he’s so good at it, he tells me that he once had a girlfriend who was “a gun hound.” She taught him how to shoot and even bought him his first gun. An S&W revolver that he tells me he still has. I wonder if Anna Spaight is the ex-girlfriend he’s referring to. The thought of a gun in the hands of someone so unstable is a sobering thought. As is the thought of David having other ex-girlfriends. I shut both ideas out of my head.
I ask how many guns he has now, and he tells me just those two. Any more than that would make him “a gun hound,” something he does not aspire to be.
“I really just keep them as protection,” he says. “I didn’t grow up around guns or anything. I just feel better having them around. They make me feel like if all hell breaks loose, I can keep shit under control. You know? And I definitely like knowing that you can load and shoot this one. Even though you’ve got a lot of room for improvement.” He grins at me with his noise-canceling headphones resting on top of his head, and it makes me feel all mushy inside. Gag.
“I’m trying,” I say quietly, “but my teacher keeps distracting me with his charm and good looks.”
“Charm?” he says brightly, as we walk out of the target area and into the lobby. “Wow. I’d watch out for that guy if I were you.”
“Oh, I’m watching,” I say. “His every move.” I’m making myself want to puke.
David reaches up, I think to touch my cheek, but instead he takes off my safety glasses and headphones and places them on the counter. The range safety officer is looking at us as if we are a pair of pandas at the zoo. As if he wants to gut us and hang our pelts on his family room wall. I think for a second David is going to kiss me right in front of the guy, but he doesn’t. Instead he takes the empty magazine out of the gun and signs us out in silence.
We leave the firing range and head to a nearby bar. After downing a couple of beers, our conversation turns to Matt. David tells me they met at a construction site. Matt was consulting with the design team about the electrical setup, and David was interviewing for a carpentry job. He got the job but ended up not taking it because he thought the gig with Carl was a better match. He and Matt ran into each other at a bar a week or so later and traded contact information, initially because of potential work opportunities. When David and his other friends began to organize regular poker nights a few months later, Matt got one of the first invites.
“When the game first started, we used to hang out quite a bit, but these days we’re both so busy that we don’t see each other much outside of poker anymore. But he did text me after he first saw you and me together. I think he about shit his pants when I kissed you in front of your office building that day. Part of me wanted to punch him in the face when I saw him come out the door with you. I don’t know how either one of us kept our mouths closed. He was aiming to get in your pants until he saw that kiss. I know it.” It makes me wonder if the primary reason David kissed me like that was to send a clear signal to Matt. I squish down the thought, especially because every kiss David and I have had since then has been just as rowdy.
“Uh, I really don’t think so,” I say. “He’s made it pretty clear to me that he has no interest in my pants. Or what’s in them.” Any money says my comment is going to open up a giant can of worms.
“What do you mean?” Just as I thought. The worms are out.
“He told me as much. One day at work he asked me about you, and we ended up having a little chat about how I am not a great conversationalist and how he doesn’t want to be the-guy-at-work-who-never-shuts-up. We decided to meet somewhere in the middle.” David looks as if he doesn’t believe a word I am saying. “I believe his exact words were ‘I’m not making the moves on you.’ I was kind of being a bitch, and he shut it down. In a nice way.” I know David was thinking my previous comment had something to do with what happened at his place on poker night when he wasn’t around. I still don’t think he believes me.
“What did he ask you about me?” Oh. His question is not the one I expected. Maybe I’m wrong.
“He just said you seem kind of intense and asked me what you do for a living.” I shrug my shoulders and take another sip of my beer. “Maybe he was trying to find out if I knew about the whole poker thing.”

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