Page 13 of Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
“What?”
“No, it’s—okay, well, I’m sure you got asked this all the time, but—was there anything that last day? Anything at all?”
“No, Ava. Trust me. I’ve been asking myself that for a decade. If anything, you spent more time with her that day than I did.”
It was true—she and Danielle had spent most of the day together, divvying up the Volunteer Ava shifts for the next two weeks and gorging on pizza. Ava had finally left to pick up her parents at the airport. And sometime in the four hours that followed, Danielle was butchered like a veal calf in her own bedroom.
Dennis had been out of town for twenty-four hours—an overnight kegger followed by a day trip to the U of M. By the time he got back, it was all over, and not just for Danielle.
“Senseless crime,fuck,” Dennis said, startling her with the abrupt comment. “Hate that phrase the most, I think.”He was staring into the dregs of his black drink. “The reporters loved that one and it’s so stupid. Who’d stand over a stranger’s mutilated corpse and say, ‘This crime makes perfect sense.’ Obviously it’s senseless. Christ.” Dennis, finished with his third black drink, looked around for their waitress.
“Maybe you want to take a break from the tar?” she asked, smiling so he wouldn’t think she was taking his inventory.
“You mean switch to bourbon?”
“Uh…”
Half an hour later, Ava was helping Dennis out to the parking lot, if “helping” meant “staggering under his weight.”
“Ggggggnnnnn work with me, Dennis! We might be the same height, but I’m pretty sure you’ve got at least twenty pounds on me.”
“Haven’t lost my winter weight,” he slurred, which made her laugh, which made her lose her grip, which meant Dennis’s ass was about to meet pavement.
“Captain Capp?” Suddenly most of Dennis’s weight was gone. “May I be of some assistance?”
“Some,” Dennis mumbled to… someone. “But don’ go overboard. With the… uh… the assist-tancing. Assisting. We could use a little. Of the assistancing. But not too much.”
The man who had come to her assistancing—wait, nowshewas doing it, and she wasn’t even drunk—was over six feet tall, with the broad shoulders and overall musculature of a regular lifter. His eyes were deep brown (probably—it wasn’t a well-lit parking lot) and his nose was a blade; he was clean-shaven and unabashedly bald, with broad wrists
(Why am I noticing his wrists?)
and casually dressed in tan slacks and a navy-blue dress shirt. His voice was a deep rumble, almost a baritone, as he quietly answered Dennis’s questions.
“You’re super tall. Andbig. Are you a skyscraper sometimes?”
“I am not.”
“Well, you should drink about it. Think about it. Is what I meant. Not drink. D’you want to get a drink and tell me how you became a skyscraper?”
“No, thank you.”
“Thanks a lot,” she told the mystery hunk after he’d manhandled Dennis into the car with about as much trouble as she’d have with a sack of groceries. “We’ve had a long day.”
“Not as long as Danielle’s!” Dennis shouted from the back seat. “That day, I mean. Her last day. Not today. Ava, is this a rental car? Cuz I might have to throw up in it. So much. Not right this second. Prob’ly later. Just so you’re apprised of, y’know. The situation.”
“Thanks,” Ava said to the mystery man, and she could feel her face getting warm. Drunken ex-boyfriend shouting inappropriate observations? Check. Long-ass day including her best friend’s memorial? Check. Mysterious hunk seeing her and Dennis at their worst? Mark that one off, too. Vomiting imminent? Of course! “I’m not sure I could have gotten him in.”
“Where do you have to go?”
“The Hyatt next to the mall. But we’ll be fine. I’m sure I can manage.” Her confident tone was immediately contradicted by the sound of retching from the back seat. “Anyway. Thanks again.”
He chuckled, a wonderful rumble that she practically felt, then held up a finger in the universal gesture for “give me a minute,” and sprinted away. Yeah.Sprinted.If she wasn’t seeing it, she wouldn’t have believed a large man could move so quickly. And he was back in seconds, reaching through the open back seat door and handing Dennis a…
“What is that?”
“Emesis basin.”
“Thanks, man! If my dead sister wasn’t dead, she’d really like you! She’s dead, though. So. There’s that.”
