We ordered a pizza to share, Ernie swearing he was already hungry again. Then it was my time to tell them about that night. I shared everything from dropping my phone to giving him the bracelet to being called into the office to him saying I could buy him dinner. No detail was left unshared.
Ernie took both my hands. “I love you, Hal, I do, but you are so clueless.”
“What do you mean?”
“He thought you were asking him on a date, and you sent him takeaway.” Ernie rolled his eyes.
“You two think it was meant to be a date?”
“Oh, my gods!” Ernie had his hand on his forehead and was shaking his head back and forth. “If you were anyone else, I’dthink you were doing this on purpose, pretending you didn’t know, but you really don’t know, do you?”
“I wanted it to be a date,” I confessed, “but that didn’t make sense. He’s my boss.”
“He was wearing a unicorn,” Ernie said.
“Hey, I wear a unicorn. What does that have to do with anything?” I ran my fingers along the chain.
“And you’re little,” Ridge said.
“Do you think he’s little?” I asked.Please don’t let him be little.As much as I’d love new little friends, what I wanted from that man wasn’t friendship…at least my body wasn’t wanting friendship, unless friendships now came with a side of naked fun.
“No, I don’t.” Ridge let go of my hands.
I stared at the salt-and-pepper shakers.
“I think he’s a daddy,” he continued.
“Can we stop?” I pleaded. “I already feel silly enough.” My face was burning up.
“I think we need to figure out a plan for you to get your man,” Ernie said.
“I think we should eat the pizza when it gets here and play claw machines until one of us wins something,” I said, and that was what we did.
As a shock to nobody, none of us won anything. When Ernie’s daddy arrived to pick him up, our cards were loaded with all our tickets to be saved for next time. One day, we were going to get a decent prize or win something from the claw machine. Today was not that day.
At least, we always got the pizza.
“I meant to ask you before,” Jovan said to me, “did you have any car trouble lately?”
“You mean my tire?” Had Ernie mentioned it? It would make sense. Those two knew how to communicate like a boss.
“I knew it.” He winked at me and then wrapped his arms around Ernie from behind. “I told you it was him,” he whispered into my friend’s ear.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Ernie grinned.
“What’s the name of the person who helped you with your car? August Jones?” Jovan asked.
“How’d you know?”
“What Daddy’s saying is, you should go for it with him.” Ernie leaned back into his daddy.
“How did you get that from what he said?”
He ignored my question, turning in his daddy’s arms. “Can you win me a claw machine bunny, Daddy?”
I loved how Ernie did not care who heard him call Jovan “Daddy.” Maybe it had to do with the atmosphere of this place, but I had a feeling a lot of it just had to do with how comfortable Ernie was with who he was.
