“I didn’t hit him!” I whisper-shouted. “He hit my door!”
“Uh-huh. You don’t think it was your subconscious acting out?”
“Now’s not the time, Sanford,” I growled at him.
He chuckled in my ear. “Why do you sound so freaked out, baby doll? You said earlier that he’d be fine. You’re not going to get arrested or anything. I’ll make sure a claim gets filed for you here and his bills will be taken care of. It’s not a big deal. Nothing’s broken, right?”
“No. Just a concussion and bruising.”
“Then why do you sound like you’re passing stones the size of watermelon?”
“He’s sitting on my couch wearing nothing but bike shorts and my shirt.”
There was a clattering noise through the line. A moment later, “Sorry. I dropped the phone. For a moment, I thought you said that Vince Taylor was sitting on your couch wearing your clothes.”
“And bike shorts.”
“And bike shorts. Yes.”
“You can’t forget the bike shorts.” Nor would I. Ever. “He was the one that wanted to come over here,” I said, as if that mattered somehow.
“Paul?”
“Yeah?”
“You know I love you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Why the fuck are you on the phone with me?” he snarled quietly at me. “Are you out of your goddamn mind? You get your fucking ass back into the living room, and you sit down next to him and you take care of his every single whim, no matter what the fuck it is. Do you understand me?”
I replied with the only thing I could think of, the only thing that had been going through my head for the past thirty minutes. “I told him about Wheels, and he said he thinks he’s going to fall in love with me.”
Silence.
“Sandy?”
“He said that?” Sandy finally said. He sounded funny.
“Er. Yeah. Stupid, right?”
“It’s just like your parents,” he said in awe. He knew the story of how my parents met and this was probably freaking him out as much as it was me.
“What? No. No. I don’t even want to talk about that right now.”
“Paul?”
“Yeah?”
“I need you to listen to me, okay? You’re going to do exactly what I say. Understood?”
“Yeah.” This was why I’d called him. I needed someone I trusted to tell me what to do.
“You are going to go to your room. You are going to get those very expensive pajamas that I bought for you. The ones you never wear because you stupidly say they make your thighs look like sausage encased in plastic after it’s been sitting out in the sun for two weeks. He’s got to be uncomfortable still wearing those bike shorts.”