Page 28 of Danny Hall Gets a Lawyer (Goose Run #1)

“And Harlan can’t weasel out of paying?” I asked.

This wasn’t the conversation I thought we’d be having tonight, but at the same time I was glad we were talking about it.

Let’s face it, Miller was much more likely to want to date Danny Hall, college guy, than Danny Hall, gas station attendant and part-time unwilling goose wrangler.

Miller wrinkled his nose and made a seesaw motion with his hand. “Well, that all depends. Getting a settlement isn’t the same as getting a payment, you know? He can’t weasel out of paying, but he can draw it out and be a pain in the ass about it. But that’s what your lawyers are for.”

He was right about that. I grinned. “And my guy’s the best.”

His face did something complicated, and I felt bad. The guy hadn’t come over here to talk about work. He’d come over to eat dinner and hopefully get laid. I mean I was assuming that last part, but based on past evidence—see? I could do lawyer talk too—it was a pretty solid assumption.

“Sorry,” I said. “I guess you didn’t come over to talk about Grandma’s tree.”

“It’s fine,” he said, piling butter chicken and rice onto his plate and adding naan.

I loaded my own plate and we ate in companionable silence for a while. I went back through to the kitchen to get us a couple of Cokes and took a moment to calm the butterflies in my stomach as I tried to figure out a casual way to say, So, this is nice. Wanna try it as boyfriends?

Now that I thought about it, there were worse opening lines. And honestly, finding out that my college dream was closer than I thought had me feeling a lot more confident about the whole thing.

When I got back to the dining room, I handed Miller the soda and said, “So, I wanted to talk to you about something. About us.”

Miller’s fork stilled. “Yeah,” he said, his gaze finding mine. “I wanted to talk to you too.”

My stomach did a weird kind of flip-flop at that, and hope sparked in my chest. Maybe he was here to tell me that he wanted this to be more too. And suddenly I didn't want to wait any longer. The words were bursting to get out.

“I like you, Miller,” I said. “I mean, I really like you. And this whole”—I gestured between us—“thing has been great. But I think that maybe I’d like to try for more?”

His eyes widened, and he stared at me.

“I know, you’re in Hopewell and I’m here,” I rushed to add, to show him that I wasn’t being stupid about this and I’d thought it through, “but we’ve made it work so far, right? And I think we have a good thing going. A really good thing. So, how would you feel about dating properly?”

I stared at him expectantly and waited for him to give me one of his big, wide smiles. When it didn’t come, I felt my own smile drop, and anxiety started to gnaw at my chest.

“It,” he began and set his fork down. “It has been a good thing.” Past tense. That was never a good sign. “And I really like you too.”

Okay. Slightly better? But the expression on his face warned me that he wasn’t done yet. And suddenly I didn’t want to let him finish. The defense got to give their whole argument before the prosecution was allowed to talk, right?

“Like, nothing would change,” I said. “Not really. We’d just keep doing what we’re already doing. But we’d be exclusive. And it’s not like I’m seeing anyone else anyway.” I ended with a small pitiful laugh that transformed into a small pitiful question. “Oh. Are you?”

He didn’t say anything. That divot above his nose was back.

“Oh,” I said, my face hot with humiliation.

“I’m not seeing anyone else,” he said, his voice low. “And if you’d asked me this a week ago, I would have said yes in a heartbeat. But there’s a good chance I’m about to be offered a job in New York, and if I am, I’m going to take it. So this wouldn’t really work.”

You’d think that would make the humiliation fade, wouldn’t you?

But it didn’t. I felt just as stupid as before he’d said it because I’d put myself out there and he’d said no, and I hadn’t really thought of how to react if that happened.

Like, okay, yeah, I’d told myself I’d suck his dick and pretend it never happened, but I hadn’t really thought it’d come to that.

Huh. Turned out my self-esteem wasn’t as bad as I’d thought.

So now here I was, sitting in front of Miller, and dinner, knowing that while I’d been planning some kind of future, he’d been planning his escape.

The last thing in the world I felt like doing was giving him, or anyone, a blow job.

Hell, Henry Cavill could have burst through the front door offering to give me one, and I’d have to take a rain check.

I swallowed around the sudden lump in my throat, waves of hot and cold washing over me, and said, “Oh. Congratulations.”

Because what the fuck else was there to say?

Three hours later, I was sitting in the living room in the dark when I heard a car pull up and then, moments later, the scrape of a key in the lock of the front door.

“Shit,” Wilder said. “Why is it so dark? Did the power go out? Is that why Harlan’s wandering around outside with a flashlight? Did he do something to our fuse box?” And then, “Danny, you home?”

“I’m in here.”

A dark shape loomed in the doorway, and then the lights flickered on. Wilder squinted at me. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“Why are you half-naked and covered in baby oil?”

“Because the asshole fiancé came home and broke up the bachelorette party,” he said.

“It was wild. They had this screaming fight because he thought she was gonna sleep with the strippers, and she said the only reason he said that was because he slept with the strippers at his bachelor party, and I booked it out of there without cleaning up when they started throwing shit at each other. Barely had time to put pants on.” He tilted his head and looked at me. “What the fuck happened to you?”

“Miller’s leaving,” I said, and I hated how just saying it had my throat getting tight. The edges of the world got blurry for a second, and I had to blink to clear my vision. “He’s moving to New York.”

Wilder didn’t ask any questions. He just put down the backpack he’d been carrying, dropped his ass onto the couch next to me, and slung an oily arm around my shoulder. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“Dude, you’re getting oil all over the couch.”

He stank of the stuff. “Not the worst thing that’s happened to this couch, is it?”

I snorted. “Asshole.”

He hummed in agreement but didn’t move, and I didn’t tell him to. I just leaned into him. The moment was nice, but the hug itself was sort of gross. It was part sweat and part baby oil, with a portion of glitter thrown in for good measure, all mixed together with tequila.

“Man, you fucking stink of tequila,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “The bride was doing body shots off me. Also—” He wriggled and dug a hand into his sweatpants. “I think there’s a dollar bill stuck in my ass crack.”

“Fuck, Wilder. Why are we even friends?”

He tugged the bill out and flicked it onto the floor. It landed with the sort of splat a bill should never make. “Because I’m awesome.”

Yeah, that was actually why. We’d been friends since school, even though Wilder had always been more popular than me.

He was that rare high school combination of popular and genuinely decent.

He was still genuinely decent, even though his popularity around town had sure taken some big hits since then.

“So tell me what the deal is with Miller,” he said. “Do I have to go beat him up?”

“No, it was just bad timing, I guess,” I said. “I told him I wanted us to be official, and he told me he was taking a job in New York.”

Wilder winced. “Ouch.”

“Yup.”

Wilder leaned over and grabbed the backpack he’d discarded on the floor and fished around in it before producing half a bottle of tequila. “Drink?”

“Why do you have that?”

He gave me an easy grin. “It fell in my bag while the bride and groom were having their screaming match, and it didn’t seem like the right time to ask if they wanted it back.” He waggled the bottle at me.

“Don’t you have work in the morning?”

He shrugged. “Eh.”

I took the bottle off him and tucked it down between the couch cushions. “No getting drunk tonight if you have to climb on roofs tomorrow.”

He leaned his head back, probably leaving an oily slick on the back of the couch. “Okay, Mom.”

“Fuck you,” I said, but I still didn’t push him away.

And so we sat there, me a ball of misery and Wilder a ball of sweaty, oily, muscled solidarity, until Chase got home.

He came into the living room with one hand over his eyes, saying, “There’s not naked lawyer ass, is there?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Wilder said so I didn’t have to.

Chase glanced around. “Where’s Miller?” Then he looked at me more closely. “Shit, have you been crying? What gives?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” I got up and stalked to my bedroom as my misery swelled, and I threw myself across my bed with all the drama of a teenage girl in a vampire romance. Except the teenager in that vampire romance got her happy ending at least.

Me? All I had was a roommate who sparkled on the nights he worked as a stripper.

I punched at my pillow for a bit but it didn’t make me feel any better, so I just lay there, sad and alone, until I fell into a restless sleep filled with dreams of being sad and alone forever.