3. David #2
Okay, not fun facts about rabbits.
I clear my throat. “What do you mean?”
She laughs. “Come on, David. Everyone knows you and my dad don’t like each other. We’re stuck here together, no power, no TV, can’t play cards, so we should talk.”
“We could talk about just about anything else.”
I don’t know if I want to get into this with her.
Then again, maybe I should. I like her. If she was anyone else, I’d be flirting with her and would probably ask her out once the power came back on.
Or maybe before the power came back on. Maybe I’d join her on the couch. Before the power came back on.
But she’s not anyone else, and maybe I need to tell her that the next time I see her, I’m going to pretend I don’t see her. Or that I’m going to at least give her nothing more than a smile and a quick, “Hi”, and that’s going to make me seem like a huge asshole. I should at least explain to her why.
“Nah,” she says. “Let’s talk about my dad.”
I sigh. “Okay. Let’s talk about the amazing Chief Hansen.”
“Wow, the heavy sarcasm on the word ‘amazing’ is noted.”
“I realize I’m the only person who knows your dad who doesn’t think he’s amazing.”
“I’m guessing you have your reasons.”
Now I wish we had some light in here. That’s not really what I expected.
“I do have my reasons,” I agree. “We go way back.”
“Tell me about it.”
I blow out a breath. “I was an angry kid who acted out a lot and he was the one who got called when that happened,” I say, trying to keep it simple.
“Acted out how?”
I settle back into the chair. There are so many stories. “Fighting. Underage drinking. Drinking when I was of age, but well past the limit of…”
“Common sense and rational action?” she supplies.
I chuckle. “Yes.”
“What else?”
She sounds interested and I think I know what this is.
The good girl is fascinated with the bad boy.
Well, I can certainly entertain her if that’s the case.
“There was a stolen combine once,” I say.
She gasps softly. “Those are so expensive, David.”
I nod, though she can’t see me. My eyes have adjusted somewhat to the dark and I can make out her shape on the sofa, but not much else.
“We didn’t keep it. Or wreck it. We just took it joyriding.
And half of Mrs. Wilson’s garden did not survive.
But the combine was fine. And I replanted her garden. My parents insisted.”
“Still…”
“It was very stupid,” I say, nodding again.
“There was a lot of shit like that. Stolen beer. Stolen cigarettes. I stole a car from a kid in Carterville who I didn’t like.
He got it back, of course, but not before I made him tell his brother that he’d slept with his girlfriend.
” I take a breath. “I was the first guy a lot of guys punched. I was the first guy a lot of girls slapped. I got a lot of people drunk the first time. I got a lot of…” I trail off.
It’s got to be the dark making me forget who I’m talking to as I rattle off my offenses.
“A lot of what?” she asks. “Come on.”
“I just did a lot of stupid stuff and got a lot of people in trouble with me. I think that’s what frustrated your dad the most. The way I influenced other people.”
I hear her move on the couch. The springs creak and her clothes rustle against the fabric of the cushions. “Come on. What were you going to say? You got a lot of…”
Fine. Maybe if I’m just blunt she’ll stop poking. “Girls naked for the first time.”
“Oh,” she responds.
I bark out a short laugh. “You sound disappointed.”
“Well, I just assumed that. I was expecting you to say you got people arrested for the first time or taught them to pick locks or hotwire cars or something.”
“No. I didn’t teach people to do illegal things.”
“You just did the illegal things.”
“Right.”
“Interesting.”
Is it? “You just assumed I got a lot of girls naked?” I ask, not quite ready to move past that for some reason.
“Of course.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You’re exactly the guy most girls would want to lose their virginity to in high school,” she says as if it’s obvious.
“The good-looking hometown bad boy. You had that dangerous edge, but you were from here, from a great family, so the girls knew you weren’t going to hurt them or anything.
You were just really hot and experienced and fun and sexy.
I’m sure they all talked about you. Probably said you were really good at it and treated them well.
Then, of course, other girls were willing to take their clothes off for you. ”
I’m staring at her despite the dark. The sweet, good girl librarian is so matter-of-fact about the fact that I was a man-whore in high school. And okay, a few years after high school. “You seem to know a lot about this.”
“I read a lot.”
“You read a lot,” I repeat.
She laughs. “Yes. Bad boys have always been appealing. Not to every woman but to a big majority.”
“I was a criminal ,” I say. “Please tell me you were smarter than to go for a guy like me.”
Wait, am I trying to convince her that all of those girls were wrong ? That I was a bad choice?
Yes.
I had been trouble. Not fun trouble. Not ‘oh, he drinks beer and swears and my daddy hates him so I’m going to rebel and sleep with him’.
No, I had been actual trouble. I had more or less dared Scott Hansen to put me in jail.
For real. I had wanted him to intervene, to stop me, to keep me from getting worse.
He hadn’t.
He’d kept giving me second chances. And third chances. And fourth.
I’d spent the night in the jail cell downtown four times. One night each. That was it. I’d never been officially arrested, despite stealing and mouthing off and putting other people in danger.
The asshole had kept saying he knew I could do better. That I had potential. That I was going to figure my shit out.
“No, I lost my virginity to Ryan Wilkins.”
I blink. Again, she’s so matter-of-fact, I have to shake my head. “Doesn’t he work at the bank?”
“Yes, he’s a loan officer. Funny thing, I actually tutored him in math,” she says.
“So, not a bad boy.”
She laughs. “No. Though I assume bad boys can be bad at math, and guys who end up working at banks when they’re thirty could have drunk and smoked and stolen combines in high school and then changed their ways.”
Right. “Yeah. I suppose.” I hesitate. My next question is absolutely none of my business. But damn, I really want to ask it. And self-restraint is not one of my strengths. Still. “So things didn’t work out with Ryan, I take it. Was he your only one?”
Yes, I just asked Mia Hansen if she’s only slept with one guy. Am I stereotyping the librarian as a near-virgin? Yep.
Am I surprised when she laughs and says, “Well, no”?
Not really. Because I’m already learning that Mia is not exactly who I think she is.
And I like that.
“Ryan and I didn’t even date. I was tutoring him and one night it was late, we were alone at his house, one thing led to another, and I decided it was time to lose my virginity. But that’s all it was.”
I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman this pragmatic about everything .
“But I did like it,” she goes on.
And I choke on air. There’s nothing else to choke on. I’m not eating or drinking, but I’m suddenly coughing for no reason.
“So, I dated Cody Jenson that summer. And we had sex a few times.”
I’ve stopped coughing, but I’m still not breathing normally.
But that’s not my biggest problem.
Nope. My biggest problem is that I like Mia Hansen. A lot.
And I’m now wondering about how she likes her sex. Is she a hard and fast girl? A slow and sweet girl? Lots of foreplay? Dirty talk?
“Then I went to college. Cody and I broke up, of course.”
Of course? I don’t know why that’s of course, but the way she says it, I’m not going to ask because apparently it should be obvious.
“I dated a couple of guys in college but didn’t really like them enough to have sex with them, so it’s been a while. I did date a police officer I met at a fundraiser in Omaha my dad took us all to for a few months. And of course, I fell for him.”
I really want to know what ‘a while’ means, but I’m distracted by the ‘of course’ and the eye roll I swear I can hear in her tone.
“So I slept with him. But that didn’t last. It was long distance and he didn’t want to move here and I didn’t want to move there, so it fizzled. And…that’s it. It’s been a while.”
Yeah, she said that before. I need a definition here.
There’s a long beat of silence and I realize that I now know Mia’s entire dating and sexual history.
Wow.
“What do you mean ‘of course’ you fell for him?”
“I have a thing for guys in uniform,” she says simply. “Because of my dad and the way he saved me and became my foster dad and then adopted me. It’s natural and not a huge problem since I’m aware of it, but it is kind of cliché.”
Again, I’m just blinking.
“It’s why I want to know what your issues are with him,” she goes on. “I have my dad up on a pretty high pedestal and since you and I are becoming friends and I really like you, I thought I should know what happened between you.”
I open my mouth to…I suppose tell her that we can’t become friends and that she shouldn’t like me…but she keeps going.
“But it sounds like you know all the stuff you did was problematic and you don’t strike me as the type of guy to blame him for that,” she says. “You enforce the laws and rules now, so you have to respect that he had to do that, right?”
Yes. She’s right. My problem with Scott isn’t that he picked me up or broke up the fights or made me apologize or make amends.
It was that he wasn’t harder on me.
And that…he was too hard on me.
I swallow. “It’s complicated.”
“Tell me why. You’re a grown man now. Thirty-something. You’re a law enforcement officer. Tell me what’s complicated between you and my dad.”
I can see that she’s changed positions again. She’s now sitting cross-legged in the middle of the cushions.
Fuck.
I’m going to have to do this.
I like her.
I really like her.
And she thinks we’re becoming friends.