She rolled her eyes. “Thanks.”
“I’ll tell her you’re gorgeous, stylish, and incredibly cool. That work?”
“Don’t oversell it.” She smiled a little. “I don’t want to see the disappointment on her face if she ever meets me.”
I looked her over, letting my gaze linger deliberately on her tits, then her mouth. “You don’t disappoint, Danica Vola.”
Our crab cakes arrived, saving her from responding to that. I put one on her plate and one on mine. “Thank you,” she said. “So, tell me—”
“So who do you fuck,” I cut her off, “if you won’t fuck clients?”
She coughed a little and took a sip of her cider. “You’re very direct, you know?”
“Thanks. It’s something I’m working on.”
An adorable, hesitant smile crossed her lips. “Well, congratulations, then. You’re very good at it. But I’m not sure my sex life is your business…”
“Hey, we’re friends, right?”
She gave me a skeptical look.
“You gonna sit there and tell me your friends don’t know who you’re fucking?”
“I’m not fucking anyone. Obviously.” She gestured at her crab cake and the table in general. “I’m in a restaurant eating dinner. But I do date.”
“Who do you date?”
“Men.”
“What kind of men?”
She didn’t answer that right away. Instead she started eating her crab cake. “The wrong ones?”
“Meaning what?”
“Well… If they were the right ones, they’d be sitting here with me right now, wouldn’t they?”
“Yet here you are with me.”
She sipped her drink and said nothing to that.
“Okay,friend,” I offered, “if you don’t want to go there, I’ll go first. You know about my last relationship. The three-way thing. Got my heart broken, twice over. Already mentioned that to you. Before that, I was with a woman for a while. We had a casual friends-with-benefits thing that didn’t end so well, for me, but we’re still friends. Before that—”
“What do you mean, it didn’t end well?”
“Well, I started to fall for her, and then she dumped me and hooked up with someone else.”
“Oh.”
“Before that I was pretty much a free agent for a few years. Had another exclusive three-way for a little while, couple of casual relationships, lot of casual non-relationships. Before that, I was with Summer.”
Danica seemed to digest all that as she sipped her drink, but she didn’t look surprised. So maybe she’d read about that, too. “And how did that end?”
“Same way they usually do. Ugly breakup. She broke my heart, actually.”
“I see.”
“Don’t worry. That was years ago. I’m over it now.”
