“I’ve found that I’m a little shy,” Izzy said, “for such blatantly public displays of self-affection. Besides, I like to be wined and dined before I have my way with myself. I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.”
“Old-fashioned,” Dan scoffed. “Is that the excuse you use to convince yourself that you’re not a shithead? I’m old-fashioned, because back in the eighteen hundreds men regularly took children as their brides …”
She wasn’t a child, Izzy stopped himself from saying, because he was not going to talk about Eden anymore. Not with anyone—and especially not her asshole brother. That part of his life was over and done. In fact, as soon as he got back to San Diego, he was going to ask the senior chief for some help in finding a divorce lawyer.
But Dan was into tit-for-tatting, and since Izzy had stumbled onto one of his hot buttons, dude now felt compelled to jump with both feet onto Izzy’s.
In the past, Izzy would have risen to the bait and their conversation would’ve gone a little like this:
Dan: At the end of the day, you’re the one who was banging a seventeen-year-old.
Izzy: She was eighteen. And I didn’t bang her.
Dan: Oh, excuse me. You made beautiful, tender love to her. That’s right, I always forget. It was the four hundred and seventeen guys that came before you that she banged.
Izzy: Don’t you say that shit about her—
Dan: She used you, man. She uses everyone. Why don’t you just face the truth and move on?
Izzy: (throwing a punch) Why don’t you go fuck yourself …?
“Y’okay?” Izzy asked Jenk instead as the other SEAL experimented with the splint, cautiously moving his arm. Dan was watching closely, too.
And this time when Jenk nodded, it was a solid yes.
At that, both Izzy and Dan turned in a unison that couldn’t have been more precise had it been choreographed, and they went in separate directions—Dan toward Lopez, and Izzy toward Tony V.
It was clear that they didn’t need a debate or a discussion to agree they’d already spent far too freaking much time together today.
Although the good news was that neither of them was walking away with a bloody nose.
Of course, there was still a lot of daylight left.
NEW YORK CITY
THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2009
Jennilyn LeMay was having a day.
It had started when she got to work and realized that she’d gotten the mother of all runs in her pantyhose, and that she didn’t have a spare pair in her desk drawer.
She’d only had time for the quickest trip to the drugstore on the next block over, but that proved ineffective. Unbelievably, they were completely out of queen-size in every color and every conceivable brand, as if the place had been descended upon by a drove of bargain-hunting opera singers. Best Jenn could find, way in the back behind the tube socks, was a pair of thick white tights that were labeled both queen-size and petite—clearly designed for two-hundred-pound height-challenged nurses, rather than giantesses like Jenn who weren’t quite six feet tall if they both lied and slouched.
No doubt about it, as far as her hopes went for—quite literally—covering her ass, the fat lady was singing.
While wearing seventy pairs of pantyhose.
The store clerk helpfully went to the same rack that Jenn had already searched before informing her that they still had plenty of size large—maybe that would work. She then turned and looked at Jenn, squinting slightly as she appraised her, adding, “Probably not.”
And yes, lady. You got it. There was no way in hell that Jenn was going to be able to squeeze herself into plain old regular large. And thanks a billion for the pre-coffee esteem-bludgeoning judgment.
Sticking out her tongue and announcing, “My super-hot Navy SEAL boyfriend likes me just the way I am,” seemed a little childish. Especially since she’d been cautious about referring to Dan Gillman as her boyfriend to her friends and family—let alone acquaintances.
It wasn’t that he didn’t fit the definition. He sent her an e-mail every day, when he could. Usually it was brief—Too tired to say more than hey … was a common one, along with Thanks for the package, and Dreamed about you again last night, wild woman … But sometimes he wrote her long, intimate e-mails about his highly dysfunctional family, about adventures he’d had growing up, about his plans for the future, about the unjust oppression of women that he witnessed every day, about a myriad of things that mattered to him.