Having a Ball! Read online

  Wending my way through bodies bumping and grinding across the floor, I tried to watch out for flying elbows and potentially lethal feet. It was a minefield of lust and longing, one I was happy to have no part of. I was completely content with my unrequited love from afar. The dating scene reminded me of one big shark pool full of guppies.

  I arrived at the small round table in one piece, threw my bag over the back of the tall chair, and plopped down. “Why is it that after twenty years of friendship you still refuse to listen to me when I say my name is not Dan, Danny, Danny-girl, or any other derivation of such?”

  “So formal. Is Corporate Danner making an appearance this evening?”

  “Thanks for completely ignoring my question.”

  “Hey, what are friends for?”

  “Apparently, a whole lot of nothing.”

  “Oh, now, don’t say that. You love me, and you know it.” She fluffed her platinum blonde hair and laughed. If I didn’t like her so much, I’d hate her. But how can you truly hate someone who has known you for over two-thirds of your life? I couldn’t, even if she did call me Danny-girl and hum “Danny Boy.”

  “Anyway, thanks for getting the table. Monday night can be a tough one.” I settled into the uncomfortable chair as much as humanly possible. God only knows why they couldn’t have made these things more ass-friendly. If I was going to drop some serious money drinking, I should at least be able to relax.

  “Yeah, all of those upwardly mobile stiffs with their bad beginning of the week.” She laughed again. “Thank God you and I don’t have to deal with that kind of crap.” She took a healthy swig of her martini and sent me a conspiratorial wink.

  “Yeah, well, don’t wink at me like that. I happen to be a working stiff, if not exactly upwardly mobile.”

  I caught her hand before she could whap me in the arm. One of the benefits of having known someone so long was knowing their next move. “Stop trying to abuse me.” I gave her the Stare of Containment. “Now, what’s the plan for tonight?”

  “Pfft. Plan, shman. We have no plan, lady. We have the entire night stretched out before us. No Toby in sight for the next few days and a free evening with nothing to do. What more could you ask for?”

  Quite a bit, actually. “A little structure wouldn’t actually kill you, you know.” I grabbed a handful of peanuts from the wooden bowl in the center of the table and munched.

  “Structure will make your ovaries shrivel up and die. Do you want that at your age, before your childbearing years are over?”

  Chapter Two

  I choked on the peanuts. “Can you please warn me before you say stuff like that? Jeez,” I croaked out. Caro slid a mug over my way and I took a quick sip. Ah, nice cold beer sliding down my throat soothed the worst of the burn. Once I got myself under control, I gave her the Stare of Containment again, even though it never seemed to work. “My childbearing years are not listed under acceptable topics for this evening.”

  “And what are acceptable topics, now that you can’t sit here and drool over Toby in a dark corner?” She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

  I hoped the chair would leave a mark on her back.

  “I do not sit in a dark corner.”

  “Not even going to try and deny the drooling?”

  Okay, Toby was a bone of contention between us. She thought I should either make a move or get off the pot, to mangle my clichés. I thought there was nothing wrong with sitting back and enjoying the fantasy while still having a good friend and landlord. If I sometimes sat in my upstairs apartment and wished for Toby to climb my trellis and ravage me, well, call it my love of romance books. But I wasn’t willing to mess up a perfectly good friendship with all those complications. Besides that, she thought he took up too much of the time I could be hanging out with her. It was hell having two best friends.

  “No, I’m not going to contest any of it. What I am going to do is completely change the subject and tell you I had a wonderful day of shopping.”

  She huffed out a breath. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to go along with my plan to completely leave the subject of Toby, my god in a tool belt.

  “Fine, but you better have bought something worth the little money you have to throw away.”

  “Oh, I did. This is a perfect purchase. It reminds me of my wonderful youth and the good times I had before I became a full-fledged adult, with all the crap that entails.” I rubbed my hands together in glee, then reached around for my bag, where I’d stowed my prize possession. I pulled the ball out of my oversized purse with a flourish and set it reverently on the table. I polished the top with the edge of my sweater and sat back with a satisfied smile on my face. She was going to love this; I just knew it.

  At first, she didn’t say anything, just looked at me, then at the ball, then at me, then the ball. Her mouth quivered on the right side, and I knew she was fighting a smile.

  “Go on, tell me how wonderful it is to see one of these babies again.” I waited with bated breath for her to squeal over what a magnificent purchase I’d made.

  Instead, she laughed—laughed like a loon until she snorted. I didn’t think it was quite that funny.

  “Oh,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You cannot do that to me without fair warning.” She looked down at my precious ball again and snorted with more laughter.

  She must have seen my glare, because she straightened in her chair and made an obvious attempt to calm herself. It didn’t work, but I guess it did count that she’d tried before guffawing again.

  “I probably don’t even want to know what’s so funny.”

  “No, no.” She gasped and held my hand to steady herself in her seat. “No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you just caught me off guard.”

  That still didn’t explain why the ball was so damn funny. Not to mention she hadn’t completely stopped laughing yet. She ought to get the hiccups for being such a brat.

  But of course that didn’t happen. She eventually composed herself and wiped under her eye, where her eyeliner was still perfectly applied. Leaning across the table, she placed her hand on top of mine again and squeezed. “You know I love you with all my heart, but your delusions sometimes crack me up.”

  Okay, the first part of that was all right, but I could have done without the tacked-on part at the end. Why did no one respect me? “And what delusions are we talking about?” She couldn’t be talking about Toby. I had no delusions there, only a nice little fantasy life going on.

  “My perfect youth.” She did a pretty good impression of me.

  “It was damn near perfect. No worries about money or whether I’m going to screw up some tax law or a client’s deductions. I got to dress however I wanted, and I knew where my place in the world was.”

  “Yeah, right on the bottom rung, and sometimes posted on the boys’ bathroom wall for a good time.” She raised an eyebrow at my scowl. “Didn’t anyone ever call you?”

  “Ha. Ha. Ha.” I was not amused. “High school was fun.”

  “High school was hell. Not to mention the way you couldn’t make a move without your precious fortunetelling ball. And you always got the wrong answers no matter what you asked it. Remember when you wanted to know if Scott Turner would ask you to the winter formal, and it said, ‘Yes, definitely’? You went out to buy yourself the perfect dress to answer his question and another for the dance itself. Spent over a hundred dollars, if I remember correctly.”

  “Yes, and he did ask me to the dance.” I folded my hands on the table to keep them still.

  “He asked you if you’d run the drink table at the dance. I don’t quite call that being asked to the dance.”

  “If one was optimistic and a believer, one would definitely consider the ball’s answer, as well as the results, satisfactory.”

  “Ohhh, Snotty Danner has come out to play. I love when you get all uppity on me. Means you’re highly offended, and you know how that pleases me.” She sipped her martini again, and I resisted trying t
o fit her head into the shallow glass.

  The object of my fantasy life came strolling down the street at that moment and abruptly cut off my thoughts of friend-icide by martini dousing.

  His stroll was something to behold. All six foot three of him strode down the sidewalk like he owned the town. He wasn’t arrogant, just confident, and that confidence was extremely attractive. He knew where he was going and what he was doing. He knew who he was. I defy anyone to tell me that was not wet-your-panties territory.

  Out on the walk, he passed near the window at our table. I waved and sighed at his perfection even as the street lamps lining Buckley Street gave his skin a faintly green cast.

  He must not have seen me. Normally he would at least have waved back. As I said before, he thought we were the best of buds, even invited me over to Eagles games and spent the whole three hours explaining to me what precisely seven and ten meant.

  But he’d just walked by like he hadn’t seen me. I wasn’t waving furiously or anything, but he’d never flat out ignored me. I was sure his gaze had passed over me without a second’s hesitation. That was weird.

  He entered through the front door with a brisk wind at his back. It barely rippled the hair standing straight up from his head, but the just-rolled-out-of-bed-tousle was a great look for him. In the dimness of the slowly emptying bar, I couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but I would be happy to report they were a startling blue, almost crystalline in their beauty. And normally, they were at least excited to see me. But tonight he scanned the room, jumped over me again, and sat down at the bar next to some woman I vaguely recognized.

  I whipped around to Caro, still sober enough to do that without falling out of my chair. “Can you believe that? He didn’t even look at me!”

  “Close your mouth, girly, or something might crawl in. And yes, I can believe it. He never really notices you unless he has nothing else to do.” She rolled her eyes and frowned at me.

  “That’s not true.” I gripped my second mug of beer and forced myself to take a nonchalant sip. “Toby often has time he sets aside specifically for me.”

  “Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced but put up a hand to forestall what she surely knew were more arguments from me. “I’m not going to fight with you about it.” She stuck out her bottom lip after a second. “Poor Danner, that mean old Toby shouldn’t ignore you that way. How dare he?” She worked her jaw back and forth and rolled her lips. After flipping her hair over her shoulder, she said, “Better?”

  No, it damn well wasn’t.

  “I’m sorry, Danner. I get that you think he’s cute and his perpetual bed-head turns you on for some reason. But after a year of hearing you longing for him but never doing anything to get his attention, I don’t know what else to tell you. He’s always going to think of you as just Danner and not a full-on, bona fide woman. You should move on.”

  Caro and her mile-wide self confidence would never understand why it was easier to look from afar. She lived life right out in the open and right in your face. How we’d managed to stay friends for so long amazed me, but I think part of her needed part of me, and vice versa, to keep us grounded. And she was always there when I needed her, which said heaps.

  “I’ll move on when I’m ready. For right now, I’m going to go see why Toby’s home so early from his sister’s wedding.” I picked up my mug and made my way to the long stretch of mahogany. My good friend Charlie the Bartender kept a clean place. The name, The Total Dive, was a bit of a deterrent, but if you knew your way around our small town, you knew it was a great place and a testament to Charlie’s love of surfing.

  “Hey, Charlie, can I have another?” I stood right next to Toby, who didn’t even glance my way. His head was all but buried in the cleavage of the woman next to him. Guess he had other things on his mind, the slime.

  “Sure, Danner. Hey, Toby, aren’t you even going to say hi to our girl?”

  Toby lifted his head from his ample pillow, turned toward me, said, “Hi,” and immediately resuffocated himself.

  Charlie shook his head and handed me my beer with a shrug.

  “It’s okay,” I said, feeling anything but. I trudged back to my table with Caro watching me the whole way.

  “Don’t say it.” I plunked down in my seat, not caring about wood digging into my back.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Don’t even think it.”

  “Now that I can’t help, but I promise not to say ‘I told you not to want him’ out loud.”

  “Thanks for that, anyway.”

  ****

  Several more beers and a sip or two, or four, of Caro’s martini later, I just didn’t care anymore. “I like the ball. Nothing you say can make me change my mind.”

  “Gah, I thought we’d concluded that conversation. Must you be so obsessive?” Caro rested her head on the table and ignored the bartender as he yelled last call.

  “I am most certainly not obsessive, nor anal retentive. And yes, I heard you say that under your breath ten minutes ago. You have gone way past whispering, with that fifth drink.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. How are we getting home?”

  It was my turn to be a bit smug. “I live around the corner, Caro. I’m walking. And what about you? Don’t you have a hottie all picked out to drive you across town?”

  She heaved a sigh, and guilt tugged at me for about a second until she pulled out her cell phone and hit a button. “Hey, Branson, babe. Can you come get me?”

  Bitch.

  But I loved her, so I stood outside with her until this month’s piece of meat came trolling up in his brand-spanking-new Ford Mustang. Caro kissed me on the cheek and offered to have the guy drive me home. I declined. This was a very safe town, and I was a whopping block from home. Toby had left earlier, alone, thankfully. If something happened between here and ten houses away, I was sure I could get someone to help me. And fortunately I was steady enough on my feet not to need a helping hand. One time I had actually had to drape myself over Caro, and she essentially walked me home like a growth on her shoulder. Not pretty.

  I got home without any incidents, nary a hitch in my stride. No lights shone from any windows. I had forgotten to turn my own lights on before I left, and Toby must have already gone to bed. Smart boy.

  I was not going to be a happy camper when I got up in the morning. And I had Mr. Herkowitz to deal with at one in the afternoon. Thank God I’d had the forethought to schedule that appointment later. Phew.

  When I let myself into the apartment upstairs, the only sound I heard was the humming of the refrigerator. Strange. Normally Toby kept his television on low, and since this building had once been one whole house, built in the 1820s, I could usually hear the monotone drone. But everything was silent.

  I admit it was slightly fiendish, but I couldn’t resist the idea that popped into my mind. I crept over to my stereo, though there was really no need to creep. Once at the built-in shelving in the living room, I quietly selected a favorite song and giggled quietly while it loaded. I was a bad girl and about to get worse.

  I depressed the play button. “She’s My Cherry Pie” came blasting out of the speakers loud enough to wake the dead. If Toby had been downstairs sleeping peacefully, he wasn’t anymore. Which sent me off into more gales of laughter.

  After getting myself a glass of water to stave off the hangover sure to plague me in the morning, I plopped onto my couch and retrieved the ball from my bag. I turned it over and over in my hands, watching the white cube roll through the clear liquid inside the ball.

  I didn’t care what Caro said; my youth was exactly as I remembered it. Perfect. And if that was a delusion, I was willing to hold onto it. She’d scoffed at the ball, but even she had to admit that the boy had asked me to the winter formal, even if it had not been in the way I had intended. The dress didn’t go to waste either, since my uncle got married that year and I was able to wear it to the wedding. All things work out in their own way, I told myself.

&
nbsp; So many burning questions ran through my poor, tired brain as the next Warrant song came on. I turned down the stereo a little since I didn’t want to actually wake the dead, or Mrs. Fink next door. There would be hell to pay if she didn’t get her full night’s rest. She called it her beauty sleep. She was old, and certainly you could still see some glimmers of what had won her the Miss Pennsylvania crown all those years ago, but didn’t most old people only sleep five or six hours a night?

  Regardless, she’d come banging on my door first thing in the morning to wake me up. Actually, she’d probably bang on Toby’s door, since she wouldn’t walk all the way up my stairs. Hmmm, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.

  Then again, the level of noise was already giving me a headache. I turned it down a little more so I could hear myself think.

  Now, what did I really want to ask the ball? Which question should I go with first? I walked around my tiny living room, holding the ball out in front of me. With my hand stroking my chin, I pretended to be one of those great thinkers. The mysteries of the universe were open to me. No one could tell me what question to ask, but I did need to remember to be careful with my phrasing.

  The phone rang, scaring the bejesus out of me. I picked it up quickly. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Dan, just wanted to make sure you got home okay,” Caro said over some background noise I couldn’t identify.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “What the hell are you listening to?” she said at the same time. “No, you first,” she insisted.

  I could practically hear her crossing her arms over her chest and setting her face into a firm look of disapproval.

  “I am listening to a little night music.” I even put my nose in the air, regardless of the fact she couldn’t see it.