by Lynn Red
“Hello?” she caught her balance on one foot and hopped from the curb to a parking space divider, and then back again on her other foot. For just a moment she smiled at her own agility. “That was pretty cool.”
“What was?”
The voice coming through her phone’s speaker was so deep, so wonderfully rumbling and growly, that Garnet felt tingles in places she knew better than to tingle in public. “Uh,” she stammered for a moment, then laughed. “Well, ha, I tripped over a concrete thing in the parking lot and wait a second, who is—”
“You know who this is.” The voice was calm, and gentle, but holy hell did it ever give her the craziest little twirl of excitement in her sweet spot. Almost immediately, as soon as the electric tingles washed over her, a cool wave of relaxing sweetness followed.
“I guess I do,” she finally said when she breathed easier. A knot twisted her lungs, but she loved the way it felt and thought about how long it had been since she’d felt this way. Years, she remembered, and even when she’d had boyfriends before, they’d never made her feel as special as this guy had in just a handful of syllables. Hell, she’d never felt like this after a whole night of wine and dancing. “Stacy?”
“Blade,” the voice responded. Finally she managed to listen to his speaking without getting all wiggly. Thank goodness for small victories, she thought, a little pathetically. “I mean, yeah, my name’s Stacy, but I go by Blade. Middle name. And yeah, it was pretty cool.”
You have got to get ahold of yourself, girl, Garnet thought. You’re like the last person on earth to get all stupid and giggly over some meathead. This is just a date, maybe some fun, nothing more. You have GOT to calm down.
She took three breaths, forcibly measuring and pacing the inhale, the exhale. Good, she congratulated herself. There you go, girl, there you go. “So, Blade, where are you?”
“Wait, this is coming off as creepy, isn’t it? I can’t ever tell if something is gonna come out creepy.”
“No,” she said, then paused for a second. “Well, maybe, but to be honest with you I’m not the most socially adept rabbit in the warren.”
“Rabbit, huh? Fluffy tail? Big, brown eyes?”
“You’re working me hard, huh?” she asked the question in a pitched up tone, feigning offense. “You sound like you’ve done this a time or two.”
“Never when it mattered,” he added, somewhat cryptically. “Anyway, sorry if I made you uncomfortable, but I’ve never seen anyone that made me stop and stare quite like you did. And that’s no carny bull horning.”
“Did you just say bull horning? Like, instead of bullshit?”
“My grandpa always said ‘garden seed’ when he wanted to swear. Which,” the rumbling voice paused to chuckle, “come to think of it was kind of a lot. Maybe if he just said the real word he woulda got the frustration out quicker.”
For a moment, the two of them sat silently on the phone. A flicker of headlights caught Garnet’s attention and she looked toward the source, and straight into Stacy’s burning eyes. She could see them even through the darkness. Sometimes, those rabbit senses were pretty great, she thought. As they stared at each other, she felt another squirm in her guts. When he cracked a smile, she thought she’d just quit breathing if he kept it up. And then when he finally climbed out of the car, still holding the phone to his face, her heart did stop for a moment or two.
He crossed the thirty or so feet between where they were, and put an arm around Garnet’s shoulder, like he was greeting an old friend. “So, tell me,” he said, “Ginger, does this place really have all that stuff on the menu?”
“Did you just call me Ginger?” Garnet asked. “I’m pretty much the opposite of a ginger.”
“Oh,” Stacy smiled with just a shred of sheepishness. “Uh, Ginger Rogers, because of the tripping, thing. You know what, never mind, I’m just digging myself in deeper and it isn’t even a very good joke.”
“Oh,” Garnet said. “You’re right, pretty bad joke.” She stared at him for a second, and then gave him a playful jab in the ribs with her elbow and laughed.
“Well, what the hell,” the big guy said, turning the two of them toward the entrance and skillfully changing the subject. “If someone cared enough to plant giant raccoons outside the front door, it must be good. Or must have, at some point.”
“One thing,” she said with a grin. “Avoid everything except the Thai part. The rest is… dubious at best. Let me tell you, one time I got one of their sushi plates and spent at least two days on the—” she cut herself off, blushing furiously before she could start discussing her bathroom habits with a stranger.
“I hear you,” he said with a grin. “On second thought, they’re pandas. You know, they’re related, pandas and raccoons. And neither of them are bears.”
“Little species-based pride?” Garnet said. A hint of mischief snuck into her voice. Gleefully avoiding all logic, reason and caution, she just really liked him. He seemed honest, and that smile, good God, that smile. She caught herself watching his face reflecting the neon from the garish drink menu and immediately forced herself to look away. “This is all new for me,” she admitted. “Blind dates, using one of those services? I dunno. It seems like I’m living someone else’s life and just watching this whole thing playing out through their eyes.”
“That was way too philosophical for pre-happy hour,” he said with a smirk. “I hear you’re a journalist?”
She nodded, still looking back and forth between the sign and where it reflected on her date’s cheek. “And I hear you hesitate to tell people what you do for a living for some reason?”
“Wrestler,” he said. “I just like to get to know people a little to avoid that initial rush of judgment that seems to always come with finding that out.”
“Freelance journalist and a professional wrestler,” Garnet said with a smirk. “I guess I part-time as a librarian’s assistant to make bills. So between the two of us, at least one of us has a sort-of-normal job,” she smiled.
“Normal’s boring,” the big bear said flatly. “And I need a drink. Care to introduce me to the fine world of Chinese, Thai, sushi and, uh, whatever cuisine?”
“Love to,” she said, and stuck out her arm, like she’d seen women do in old movies. He looked at it for a second, quirked a grin, and then hooked his around.
“You lead,” he said. “I might be many things, but I’m certainly a modern man. By the way, Garnet,” he looked over at her, slowing to a stop right before they hit the entrance. “I like you. A lot. If I’m not supposed to be as open as I am, then guilty as charged, I guess. In my life, there’s no time to waste, you know?”
“Are you sure you’re not a writer?” she asked, laughing softly and tugging him lightly toward the door. “You’re a funny thing, either way. Come on, I—” interrupting her rambling, Garnet’s stomach growled deeply enough to make Blade look like a cub.
“You need a doctor?” he said, grinning.
“No,” she laughed. “Just an egg roll. I know I said avoid everything except the Thai part of the menu, but sometimes I like to live on the edge, you know?”
He let out another laugh. “I think I owe Eve a big bonus.”
Those entrancing, hypnotic eyes that Garnet was lucky enough to have caught the big bear’s attention, and wouldn’t let him go for a few seconds. “Yeah,” she said, finally exhaling. “I think I do too.”
*
“How long you been here? I haven’t seen you before, which is sort of strange.”
“About twenty eight minutes,” Garnet said, checking her watch. She stuck an egg roll in her mouth so she wouldn’t have to answer the real question, though she had no idea why she was nervous about it. Also, she was up four to three in the egg roll contest.
Stacy grinned and plucked another golden brown, fried cylinder of deliciousness off the plate before signaling to the waiter that they did, indeed, need another plate of them. He stuck the whole thing in his mouth at once, chewing it with his lips
politely closed. “Wow, you just moved to town right when we sat down? That’s nuts,” he finally said, giving her a half-smile.
He could probably kill someone with that grin of his, Garnet thought. “Very funny. No, I moved to town about four years ago. Honestly, I moved here with a guy, and that turned out to have been partially awful and partially lucky. Why would you have seen me?”
Stacy watched her face calmly, like he was waiting for some sort of reaction. Either that, or he was trying to memorize it. “Been here my whole life. Although I’m barely here at all anymore, I still call it home. I love this place, but, yeah, things have changed.”
“Like what?” Garnet asked.
“Well, like the fact that you’re here now and I’m so out of touch with my home that I didn’t even know a beautiful woman had moved in who was willing to date a muscle mountain and not say anything about it. I really appreciate that, by the way.”
Garnet arched an eyebrow. “Appreciate what? Sometimes I feel like I’m in someone else’s body just experiencing all this like it’s a movie. I’m still kind of—”
“Holy hell, look at that beautiful mess,” Stacy said as the waitress plopped down an enormous plate of Pad Thai, and another round of egg rolls. She looked at the two of them with something resembling either pity or judgment. It was hard to tell, but right then Garnet was having so much ridiculous fun that she couldn’t possibly have cared less what the waitress thought of her or her eating habits. She grabbed her chopsticks and took an enormous mound of deliciously sauced noodles, and looked at it for a second before sticking it in her mouth.
“You gonna let me catch up?” he asked. “It’s sort of embarrassing for a pro-wrestling bear to get eaten under the table by a rabbit half his size.”
“Slow down?” She asked with a grin. “I slow for no man. You’re just gonna have to step it up.”
*
Neither of them remembered having a stomach ache quite as horrifying, or quite as totally, completely worth it, as the one they both parted ways with. Garnet groaned, sighed and smiled as she collapsed into the recliner in her small living room. The TV she had forgotten to turn off played a Magnum PI re-run. She never did like the show much, but what girl can resist Tom Selleck’s mustache?
She had an afterglow. An afterglow that she really, really needed to tell someone about. Problem was, she didn’t have many friends in White Lake. She spent so much of her time either working or fiddling around the library that even setting up some friendships wasn’t much in the cards. She had a few acquaintances she went out to dinner with every now and then, but this was something that needed a capital F Friend. So, she flipped through her contacts for the only person she thought fit the bill.
Dora.
“Hello?” the voice that came through her phone’s speaker was weak, sleepy and confused.
“Oh hell, what time is it?” Garnet asked. “Sorry,” she said, looking at her VCR – yeah, VCR – and realizing it was quarter to midnight. “I had no idea it was so late.” She felt bad, on the one hand, but on the other, she was absolutely charged with energy. “You’ll never guessed what happened tonight.”
“Uh,” Dora was dumbfounded but chuckled. “You had a good date with a professional wrestler?”
“A professional wrestler!” Garnet almost shrieked. “I don’t even like big muscled-up guys. He was just so… what’s the word? Charming? No, not really. Honest? I guess, but—”
“You know that it’s okay just to like someone, right?” Dora yawned, but had the slightest hint of a laugh in the back of her exhausted voice. “How’d it go?”
“You already guessed it,” Garnet said. “I can’t even believe what I’m saying or what I’m feeling, but yeah. We sat there at Siam and yammered at each other for almost five hours.”
“They didn’t kick you out?”
“We drank a lot of sake. And ate a whole lot of eggrolls,” Garnet said.
“Oh no, don’t tell me either of you got ribs, you know what happens if you get Siam’s ribs.”
Garnet laughed hard and loud, the way a person only laughs when they’re properly liquored up and full of egg rolls. “No, no, no ribs. But he beat me twelve eggrolls to nine.”
“You… went on a date and had an eating contest?” the sound of squeaking told Garnet that her friend had pushed up and was sitting against the backboard of her gigantic, 1980s waterbed. “I’m not sure I actually want to know any more about that.”
Garnet couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah we did, I guess. But listen, he was so fun, so… real. There was one point when he told a joke and it wasn’t that funny, but I laughed way too much.”
Dora sighed heavily. “Girl, let me guess. You went through high school without ever having a big ol’ crush, right?”
“And then he ate like half my Pad Thai and then—wait, what? High school?”
“Yeah. You never had a big crush in high school? Laugh too much at shitty jokes, that kind of thing?”
For a moment, Garnet was silent. “No,” she finally said, “I guess not. That can’t be right, can it? I’ve never had a crush before? I mean I’ve had boyfriends and dated and hell, I almost got married that one time to that fox I moved here with, but can I really have gone my entire life without actually falling stupid for someone?”
“I guess you didn’t mind the muscles?” she laughed under her breath, and then yawned a second time. “Look, I’m glad you called, but its past midnight and Eve wants me in early tomorrow. Interviewing a handful of guys to try at slake the ever-growing pile of requests in her inbox.”
“I just had to tell someone,” Garnet said, feeling the smile on her lips warm her chest. “Have a good night.”
But before she’d even wished her friend good night, Dora was fast asleep and snore-whistling. Garnet laughed softly and hung up her phone before reclining back on the bed and closing her eyes.
On the backs of her eyelids danced images of Stacy, or Blade, she still wasn’t quite sure what someone in her position should call him. That was another thing – she wasn’t really sure what her position was. They’d made another date for the next night, but she had the sneaking suspicion she was getting too excited and making hasty decisions, just like always.
She was still thinking about all this when her phone rang. At first it sounded like a distant, chirping bird until Garnet remembered that she’d changed her ringtone to a chirping bird. “Hey Sta—”
“Garnet? Hello?”
Not him, she gulped. “Uh… hi,” she said. Her stomach was clenched with something halfway between panic and embarrassment. It was her editor. “Need something?”
“I’ll say.” Lita Dalton strained, perpetually-nervous voice had a way of making her nervous in even the best circumstances. In the present one, she had Garnet right on the edge of sanity. “There’s some shit going down, and I need someone I can trust to cover the story.”
Story? No, no, not now. Not right now, it can’t happen right now. She immediately felt ridiculous. Her whole life was based around waiting for stories, getting scoops and hoping one of them turned out to be THE ONE that would let her cut out the moonlighting. And here she was, worried that she wasn’t going to make her date with her big, awesome bear the next night. “Is it… a good one?” she finally managed, chiding herself for being so ridiculous.
“I’ll say,” Lita said. “The thing is, you’re gonna have to go on the road for a few nights. There’s a riot in some town I’ve never heard of in southeast Ohio. What’s that? A few hours from White Lake?”
She grimaced. Not only was she not going to make their date, she wasn’t even going to be around to have a fallback night. Once again, she bit her damn lip, irritated at herself for even thinking of something like that. “Doesn’t matter,” she said even though her guts were turning. “I’ll be there.”
5
“I don’t know about all this,” Stacy was pacing the locker room, his feet heavily thudding on the squishy rubberized floor. “I feel like I’
m going crazy.”
“You’re already crazy,” Rush said. The jackal had been his tag team partner and confidant for as long as either of them had been in the business. The two of them had more than enough bar fights under their pelts to know damn well that either of them could hold their own. “Crazy in a friendly kind of way. What’s up?”
The big bear shook his head and cradled his forehead with his massive hand. “I might have got myself mixed up in something I can’t get away from.”
Rush laughed. “Oh what the hell? Don’t tell me you actually went to that dating agency.”
“I’m not as young as I used to be, we’ve been over this a thousand times,” Stacy, who was taping his fists and just about to apply the intricate body paint that turned him fully into Blade, said, deftly dodging the question.
“It ain’t like your knees are going. You’re not starting to tire out, are you? Heart problems or something?” This exchange had become almost a ritual between the two old friends. Except this time, there was one other variable.
Stacy shot a glance up at the monitor. The match before they were set to go on was falling flat. Two big, husky hippo looking guys were slamming into each other over and over. “Why the hell does the boss keep booking those two?”
Rush shook his head. “Word is, he lost a bet with someone, and so now he has to drag those two flab boats around all the time. Thing is, either one of them could probably pick up a damn semi, but they get over with the crowd about as much as a dead pine tree.”
They both fell silent for a moment, watching the unfolding spectacle of boredom. “We’re gonna be on soon, you sure you’re up for this?”
