Page 54 of The Moment You Know

Evan leaned against the bar and shook off his darker thoughts. “I’m not quite sure where to start. I’m kind of at a loss. But …” he trailed off, lips quirking, “I think I’m going to start with the sex dreams.”

David narrowed his eyes. “Those better stay between you and me.”

“Of course. I’ll take them to the grave,” Evan promised, his sincerity a little compromised by his obvious amusement. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to give you shit about them whenever I can. Because I will. Opportunities like this don’t come around every day.” He chuckled before saying, “Shit, man, I haven’t had a wet dream since tenth grade.”

“Well, neither had I, before the other night.”

“How was it? I don’t even remember what they were like, to be honest.”

David thought about lying, but really, what was the point? “It was pretty intense, actually.”

“I guess that means you enjoyed it?”

Instead of answering, David took a drink of beer and then held the glass up in the air. “This one is pretty good, too.”

“Nice deflection.”

“What? I thought your question was rhetorical.”

Evan took a long drink of Coke and as he swallowed, his eyes widened as something occurred to him. “You don’t suppose your ex-wife has had any sex dreams about you, do you?”

“What? No.”

“Holy shit, maybe she has.”

“Why would you even think that?”

“Because it’s a logical thing to think. You’ve had them about her,” Evan pointed out.

“That’s different.”

“No, it’s not. I mean, whatever reason made you have them about her, like say, getting to second base with her in the hospital—”

“God damn it, Dick.”

“—could also make her have them about you. Don’t you think?”

David blinked at him. “I’m pretty sure you just went off the rails.”

“Are you seriously going to tell me that it never crossed your mind?”

“It hasn’t, actually. But now that you’ve thrown it out there,” David told him sarcastically, “I’m going to be thinking about it and I don’t want to be thinking about it. I don’t need to be thinking about anything that might encourage me to keep having sex dreams about her, you know what I mean? I’ve had too many, as it is. For fuck’s sake, I’m trying to not have Ashley find out about them, so not having any more is a crucial part of my strategy. Make sense? Yeah?”

Evan adopted as serious an expression as he could manage, considering the topic of conversation. “On that note, here’s where I impart some of my estimable wisdom to you—”

“Estimable? Is that your Word-of-the-Day?” David asked, referencing Evan’s favorite app with a roll of his eyes. “And who says you have estimable wisdom?”

“Fuck you. Says everyone I impart estimable wisdom to.”

“Dick, your nieces and nephew don’t count.”

“Do you want some estimable wisdom or not?”

“Sure. Impart away.”

Evan took a deep breath and let it out slowly, spreading his hands like a game show host as he did so. “Protect your balls.”

“You consider that ‘estimable’? Protect my balls?”

---