Take a Hint, Dani Brown

by Talia Hibbert

  “It’s okay. I’m twenty minutes early.”

  Her eyebrows flew up as his words sank in. Dani finally looked at the clock hanging on her kitchen wall and realized he was right. “Oh. You . . . erm . . . so . . . ?”

  “I had a feeling,” he said wryly, “that you might need a nudge.”

  Dani supposed she should be outraged by the presumption, or at least mildly annoyed, but frankly, she was just pleased to have one less irrelevant thing to think about. And yes, she was aware most people considered time to be the opposite of irrelevant. But pretending to agree with them had always been exhausting.

  Still, she couldn’t let Zaf know he’d done something helpful, or he might start thinking they had some sort of doing helpful things for each other arrangement, and that was a dangerous dynamic to get into. People tended to take it personally when the other party defaulted. So she scowled and said, “What, are you trying to manage me now?”

  His smile was slight, lopsided, and . . . fond. That was the word. Fond. “I know you have a lot on your mind, and you don’t do well with time when you’re busy, so I thought coming early might help. That’s all.”

  He made it sound as if she struggled to remember his existence—which she certainly did not, thank you very much. But perhaps she behaved that way, sometimes? Dani found that idea infinitely bothersome. Zaf took up a lot of space and spread a lot of warmth and did a lot of good, and someone like that should not be treated as an afterthought. It was the principle of the matter. It was bad for the balance of the universe. So maybe, next time she was supposed to meet him, she’d set an alarm to make sure she wasn’t distracted or forgetful.

  “I understand, but you don’t need to worry. I won’t be late again,” she said decisively. And then she had to turn away, because something about his expression changed. His eyes seemed even darker and more dizzyingly lovely than usual, and she couldn’t bear to hold his gaze. “I’ll just . . . get ready, then,” she blurted, heading toward the bedroom. “There are glasses in the cupboard over the sink, if you want some water. Or mugs, if you want tea, do help yourself to tea.” When he didn’t answer, she glanced back to make sure he hadn’t fallen through an interdimensional gap or been kidnapped—giant-napped—by a team of skilled and silent individuals.

  No, he was simply staring, his mouth hanging slightly open, at her arse. Ah. Yes. She’d forgotten about the cut of these sleep shorts, and also about the tattoo on her bottom. Cheeks burning—which was ridiculous, since she planned to show him far more skin after they dealt with this interview—Dani slapped a hand over her backside. Zaf responded by bursting into laughter, possibly because her hand wasn’t big enough to cover even a fraction of that particular body part.

  “Well, I never,” she muttered, and hurried off.

  “Sorry,” he called after her, not sounding remotely apologetic.

  “Pervert!” She hoped he was, anyway.

  “No, no,” he said, utterly deadpan. “I just really like tattoos.”

  * * *

  Danika Brown was fucking impossible.

  Zaf stood by the living room window, watching her walk away in the dark mirror created by its glass. She was all strong calves and heavy, dimpled thighs, half her arse exposed by those fucking shorts, her palm covering a tattoo that read BITE ME. She disappeared through a door he assumed led to her bedroom, slamming it shut. Zaf released a long sigh of relief and leaned forward until his brow touched the cold glass. He needed to calm down. His pulse was a rhythmic punch against his throat, so violent it must be dangerous. He’d be in the news tomorrow: MAN KILLED BY OWN AROUSAL. ARTERY BURST BY THE FORCE OF HIS BLOOD.

  No messing around with Danika, he told himself firmly. Not before they’d gotten this fucking interview out of the way. His nerves about the whole thing mixed with the hot, electric anticipation of what they’d do after, and it was making him shake as if he’d downed three espressos in a row. Or maybe he was shaking because he had downed three espressos in a row. Hadn’t wanted to yawn midinterview.

  Then again, was he even capable of yawning with a woman like Dani beside him? Probably not. His dick had been hard before he’d even crossed her threshold. He’d never seen her wear anything other than black, never seen her barefoot and braless without a scrap of makeup, so the way she looked tonight had hit him like a fist to the gut. Who else saw her like this? Not many people, he’d bet. It was a tiny and ridiculous and meaningless thing, but to Zaf, it whispered intimacy, and the fact that it was all in his head didn’t stop him from biting his fist. Hard.

  The pain didn’t help; it just reminded him of that tattoo. He’d bite her all right, if she wanted it. He’d kneel at her feet, put his hands on her hips—soft, she’d be so soft—and turn her around. Slowly. Drag down those shorts to expose the full, fat curve of her arse, and sink his teeth so fucking gently into all that ripe flesh, until every inch of her was marked by him.

  Then, obviously, he’d stand up, push her against the wall, free his greedy cock and spread her pussy open. Cram her full of him and rut until he couldn’t see, burying his face against her neck, all that lovely skin so bare and vulnerable for him and, holy fuck, his dick was thick and leaking in his jeans and he really needed to stop this or they’d never get to the fucking radio station.

  Slow and deliberate, he breathed in through his nose, then out through his mouth, a twisted smile curving his lips. He was officially using his old anxiety tactics to deal with an erection. His brother’s laughter rang in his head, so real he almost turned around to see if Zain Bhai was there. But he didn’t turn, in the end. Because Zain was never there.

  “Nope,” he muttered under his breath. “What we’re not going to do is swing straight from horny to depressed.” He rubbed a hand over his freshly trimmed beard—what? Every guy wanted to go out looking his best—and turned away from the window, since Dani wasn’t around to spot the fucking baseball bat stuffed down his jeans. “Distraction. That’s all I need, a distraction.” He had a feeling he was going to spend this entire fake relationship looking for distractions, because Danika got impossibly prettier and sweeter and smarter and sexier every time he saw her, like a very sophisticated torture device.

  But he wasn’t going to think about that, not when he couldn’t do anything about it just yet. He was going to think about . . . about all the things in this huge studio apartment he’d never seen before. Like the books and statues and the pink sticky notes on the wall. Like the countless plants packed onto windowsills and counters, standing tall in ceramic pots, hanging from the ceiling, even. He ran his fingers over the fine prickles of a nearby cactus, and when that didn’t help, he wandered across the room to the bookshelf. It was made of some glossy wood, taller than Zaf and twice as wide, taking up the whole sunshine-yellow wall by the front door. He squinted at the titles, failed to find any he’d heard of, and gave up when he saw something called Summa Theologica, which didn’t sound like English, Punjabi, or Arabic, and was therefore none of his business. Some of the shelves held glass jars, too, like fishbowls—but instead of water, they were filled with cut leaves and dried flowers and random crystals. He recognized lavender in one of the jars. Another held a teardrop stone that gleamed like the moon.

  When Zaf and Zain were kids, their dad used to tell them stories about the moon, just before bed. Zaf should’ve flinched away from the memory, but he didn’t. And nothing bad happened. Instead, for a moment, he thought about sharing it with Danika, and how she’d probably say something weird and wonderful like “Moons are eminently important. Your father sounds a very sensible man.”

  Or maybe that was wishful thinking. Maybe she’d be like everyone else, and say, “Your father and brother died at the same time, and then your mental health plummeted and your life spun out of control? Sounds awful. Tell me all about it, every gory detail.”

  That didn’t seem likely. But it hadn’t seemed likely with anyone else, either.

  Zaf left the strange little bowls and moved on to the coffee table
in the center of the room. It was small and sturdy and polished, with a golden statue of a woman planted dead center. The woman had a head full of curls, bees on her wrists and collarbones like tame pets, and a mirror in one hand. There was a marble cup of water in front of her, along with a little dish of orange slices. There were candles all around her, solemn white things with wax dripping at their edges and burnt-black wicks. It took him a moment to realize this was probably an altar, and he was gawking at it like it was a circus sideshow. Oops.

  He turned away, moving on to the last oddity in the room: a wall of pink sticky notes beside Danika’s desk. He studied them for a few moments, taking in the scrawled words and phrases, most of which he’d only ever heard from her mouth. Then he realized what he was looking at. This wall of sticky notes was Danika’s brain.

  Well, part of it. Probably a tiny part, considering how smart she was. Once, a few months back, she’d come into Echo looking kind of annoyed, and when he’d asked her what was up, she’d launched into a speech about thesis statements, specificity, and cissexist understandings of gender and family in an essay about something called Creolization. He was awed, not because he didn’t understand most of the words—although, no, he didn’t—but because he understood just enough to realize how quickly she was jumping from point to point. How many logical steps she didn’t even feel the need to say out loud because, apparently, they were obvious to her. Kind of like how, if he were going to do a spin pass, he wouldn’t consciously think about his sight or his hands or his wrists, because he wouldn’t have to. He’d just know how to do it, and that would make him faster and sharper than someone who didn’t.

  Danika Brown was faster and sharper than a whole lot of people. And by the time he’d read all of her haphazard, sticky, pink thoughts, Zaf was grinning.

  “Good Lord. I’ve never seen you so cheerful.” Dani’s voice came from the doorway she’d disappeared through. He looked up and found her standing there, transformed in a way he could only call impressive. The pajamas had been replaced by painted-on black jeans and some kind of tight, sleeveless top that did gravity-defying things to her chest—which he really could’ve done without. Especially since she was still wearing her usual black leather necklaces, and they disappeared between her epic cleavage like arrows to paradise. Her makeup was the glossy, shiny, heavy kind that made a woman’s entire bone structure look different, the kind his niece had attempted last Eid before Kiran had seen her, frowned, and said, “Really, Fatima? Go upstairs and wash your face.”

  Dani was much better at it than Fluff.

  “Wow,” he said. “You look . . .”

  “Aggressively sexy and mildly terrifying?”

  He paused. “Yeah, actually.”

  “Thank you.” Her smile was privately pleased. Apparently, that was exactly what she’d been going for. He didn’t know why, since they were going to be on the radio, but—

  The click of her high heels cut through his thoughts as she stepped closer. “You like my Wall of Doom?”

  “Your . . . ? Oh, the sticky notes?” He turned back to the sea of pink and felt another smile tug at his lips. He had no idea why the sight of her chaotic, almost-impossible-to-read handwriting and her brilliant, almost-impossible-to-follow thought processes fizzed through his mind like sherbet on his tongue, but they did. “Yeah, I like it. What’s with the doom?”

  “This is my preparation for the Daughters of Decadence symposium in a few weeks. I agreed to sit on a panel discussion about intersectionality in feminist literature, and, since my lifelong idol will be there, too, it’s possible I’m overpreparing.” Her shoes kept clicking, and Zaf looked down to study them. Silver high heels covered in little diamonds, her black-painted toes peeking out, tiny skulls lining the ankle straps. His smile widened.

  Then her words sank past the adoring fog blanketing his brain. “A few weeks?”

  “Mm-hmm. Eighteen days, to be precise.” Dani was standing beside him now, tall enough to kiss, thanks to the heels. He would take advantage, only kissing was a slippery slope that might lead to his dick inside her when they should both be inside a taxi, and also—

  “You never mentioned a . . . a symposium. Or the fact that you’ve been doing all this work to get ready.”

  “Of course I didn’t. I bore you with my work often enough by accident. I certainly won’t subject you to a mind-numbing speech about my quest to cover every topic that might come up on a panel you don’t care about.”

  He stared. “Dani . . . you don’t bore me when you talk about work.”

  She gave him a look that reminded him of a GIF his niece liked to use. The one that dripped pure skepticism, with the caption Sure, Jan.

  “You don’t,” he insisted. “I mean, I wouldn’t read the books you read, and I don’t always understand the words you use, but I like your voice, and it’s cool when you get excited about nerd stuff.”

  She blinked a few times, as if she’d just walked into a cloud of dust, then looked away. “Oh. Uh. Hmm. I . . . see. Right. Hmm.”

  If Zaf didn’t know any better, he might think she was blushing. But Dani should already know how adorable she was. She should’ve been told a thousand times by a thousand different people, and the suspicion that she hadn’t been was making Zaf feel personally offended.

  “Anyway,” he went on, brushing that spark of annoyance away. “If I’d known you were this busy”—he nodded at the chaos of the wall—“I wouldn’t have asked you to come with me tonight.” Because he knew her well enough to realize she’d rather be holed up in here like Gollum, stroking books and murmuring, “My precious.”

  But she looked at him as if he’d said something ridiculous and replied, “You didn’t ask. I insisted, because you’re my friend. You do know that, don’t you, Zaf? That we’re friends?”

  Well—when she put it like that, yeah, he supposed he did. He’d always known. But lately he was starting to realize what friendship with Dani really meant, just how strong and deep and powerful it ran, how much she’d do to support the people around her. And he couldn’t help but wonder how a woman who was so secretly, subtly lovely had gotten to a point where discussing romantic relationships put shadows in her eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said softly.

  “I’ve told you about thanking me,” she grumbled, but now he saw the discomfort and the sarcasm for what they really were. She was the sweetest person on earth, only she wasn’t used to getting any of that sweetness back.

  Which was a fucking crime.

  “Are you nervous?” he asked. “About the panel, I mean?”

  Her smile was more like a wince. “I’m never nervous.”

  “Sure. Who’s your lifelong idol?”

  Dani shifted on her heels like a little kid, her lashes fluttering as she looked down, her mouth curving into a just-can’t-stop-it grin. “Inez Holly. She’s one of fewer than thirty black woman professors in the UK, and her essay on the politics of desire changed my life, so I sort of need to impress her or I might die.”

  Something blossomed in Zaf’s chest, as fresh and delicate as a flower, and it smelled like honey and candlewax. It smelled like Danika. “That is the cutest thing you’ve ever said.”

  When Dani was surprised, she looked especially catlike. She gave him that look now, lips pursed and brows arched, as if she was annoyed by her own astonishment. “Oh, piss off,” she muttered, but he could tell she was blushing again. Precious, she was so fucking precious. The look in her eyes, a tentative, self-conscious pleasure, made him want to grab her and kiss her and never let go.

  But if he tried it, they’d be late, so Zaf satisfied himself with sliding an arm around her shoulders and squeezing. “Is this panel thing open to the public?”

  “Yes, indeed,” she murmured.

  “Want me to come?”

  “No,” she said instantly. But then, just as quickly, she looked up at him and blurted, “Would you? Why would you? You wouldn’t. Would you?”

  Well. That was interest
ing. “It’s like cheering someone on at a match, right? I’ve got to come.”

  “Because I’m your fake girlfriend.”

  “Because you’re my real friend,” Zaf said, and meant it.

  She flashed a bemused smile, as if she didn’t understand him but wasn’t willing to argue. “It’ll be terribly boring.”

  “If you’re talking,” he said, way too honestly, “I won’t be bored at all.”

  Her smile widened, so bright and beautiful, he felt like he was stepping into sunlight after months in the dark. And Zaf could say that with certainty, because he knew exactly what it felt like. Something deep inside him shifted and thunked and . . .

  And if he didn’t change the subject soon, he might do something foolish. He scrubbed a hand over his beard and checked his watch. “Oh. Crap.”

  She caught his wrist and angled her head to read the time. “We’re going to be late.”

  “Not if we get a taxi.”

  “Genius, darling.”

  Even though he wasn’t either of those things, the words curled around him like affectionate cats. They kept him warm as he and Dani ordered a cab and ran downstairs, as they drove through the city to the building Radio Trent shared. It was only when Zaf stood in front of the place, the evening breeze nipping at his skin and the light from the building spilling through its glass doors, that his warmth disappeared like smoke and memories bombarded him.

  Shouted questions as he left practice, strangers stabbing at an open wound. Headlines, the smooth voices of sympathetic commentators, sober newsreaders mentioning his family’s devastation in calm, measured tones during the sports update. Pictures of him and Dad and Zain, grinning side by side, posted in “tribute” by people who didn’t even fucking know them, who couldn’t feel it, who’d never feel it, but who wanted, for some twisted, suffocating reason, to be involved. And now here he was, voluntarily walking into a place full of people just like that, with nothing but a fake girlfriend and a polite request “not to discuss certain topics” as his shield. The fact that nothing about this situation was safe or easily controlled slammed into him like a big, panic-stricken fist. He felt his chest tighten, felt the tide trying to pull him away, and why the fuck was this happening when it had been so long and he’d been doing so well and—