He held up his hand, thumb and index fingertips spaced millimeters apart. “Tiny bit.” He grinned and dropped his hand into his lap.
“So tell me. How do you know this lot?” he asked, indicating the group around us, all of whom now seemed completely unconcerned with our presence.
“I was just about to ask the same of you,” I replied, arching an eyebrow. “But since you asked first, I guess I’ll have to wait.” I reached for the seltzer water in front of me, rolling the skinny red stirring straw between my fingertips as I formulated my reply.
“You want the short story or the long one?”
“I’ll take the Reader’s Digest condensed version for now,” he answered, his eyes leaving my face long enough to catch the attention of our waitress. She gathered her round plastic tray from the corner of the bar where she’d been holding post and began to weave her way through the packed tables dotting the room.
I held my answer until she’d left us to retrieve Matt’s requested bottle of beer.
“Let’s just say we all met through a mutual acquaintance, and I got custody of the friends in the divorce.” I lifted a shoulder and pressed my lips together in a rueful smile.
Matt widened his eyes. “Ah.”
I realized my cryptic answer was a little too cryptic and left too much to speculation. “Not that there was an actual divorce,” I said hurriedly. “Or even a marriage,” I continued, growing more and more flustered by the second.
And redder.
Let’s not forget redder.
“I think we should keep all the paper in the place away from you, or you’re liable to start a fire.” Matt chuckled, enjoying my embarrassment entirely too much.
“Oh, shut up,” I muttered, glaring at him good-naturedly.
“Wow. Five minutes I’ve known her, and already she’s telling me to shut up,” he said in mock injury. “Feisty spirits to match the hair.” He was smiling crookedly at me, so I knew he wasn’t serious.
“Oh, stop it!” I lobbed a balled up napkin at him. “Seriously, though,” I continued, trying to regain some sort of grasp on a serious expression. “Just a bad break up.”
“And you got to keep the friends,” Matt supplied. “Must have been really bad. Anyone I would know?” he asked, his curiosity obviously piqued.
I pursed my lips. This was really not something I wanted to get into – not here, not now. Not with a guy I’d only just met. Wasn’t there some sort of rule against that, anyway? Not dredging up old flames and old wounds on a first date? Not that this was actually a date, just a chance meeting of two people who seemed to be hitting it off quite well.
But still.
“How ‘bout let’s not and say we did?” I suggested, smiling mirthlessly. “Spotlight’s yours, Matt. How did you come to be part of this merry band of misfits?”
He shifted in his chair, settling against the back and bringing an ankle up to rest on his knee. He rounded out the move by draping his right arm across the back of my own chair, the picture of cool and casual.
“Nothing as interesting as your story, I’m sure. I work on base with a few of these knuckleheads,” Matt replied with a shrug.
I watched him closely, unsure of where this conversation could possibly go now.
“I wonder where that waitress is with your beer,” I said, looking around the bar with a curiosity I didn’t really feel.
Matt followed my gaze, then shrugged.
“Maybe she had to fly to Belgium to personally pick it out,” he said with a small smirk. “Either that, or she got lost on her way back to our table. She didn’t seem all that bright.”
I turned my full attention back to him, raising my eyebrows in surprise. It seemed such a rarity that intelligence trumped looks in the eyes of the male population.
“You mean you noticed that, what with those boobs staring you in the face and all?” I asked, smiling sweetly.
“Oh, I see,” Matt laughed, his eyes twinkling.
“See what?” I narrowed my eyes.
Matt looked left, then right in mock furtiveness and leaned forward. He motioned me in closer so that I would be able to hear him.
“Boob envy,” he whispered soberly.
I frowned at him and punched his forearm. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you’re violent,” he teased. “Has anyone ever suggested anger management classes?”
“Only once or twice,” I laughed. “Right before I introduced them to my mean left hook.” I held up my balled up fist and broke out into a devilish grin.
“Brains and brawn, huh? Aren’t you the full package.” Matt studied me for a moment, and I felt myself start to flush again.
“Well, when your cup size sounds like a battery size,” I said, glancing down at the nearly imperceptible bumps that occupied the region of my body required to classify them as breasts. My eyes widened, and I looked back up at Matt in horror.
“Did I just say that out loud?”
Fortunately, he was laughing.
“Wow,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “You know, not every guy out there is concerned with that. At least, not the ones who actually have their priorities straight.”
Our overly-endowed waitress magically appeared with Matt’s bottle of beer and set it down in front of him with a flourish.
“There you go,” she declared breathily. She twinkled vacantly at him, ignoring my attempts to get her attention until I tapped her on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I can see that you’re extremely busy and all, but could I get some more seltzer?”
While my sarcasm wasn’t lost on Matt, it seemed to fly right over the waitress’s head. The smile plastered on her spackled face slipped for a second, then slid back into place. She’d turned off the sparkle, though, since I wasn’t a muscle-bound member of the male species.
“Sure thing, sweetie,” she said, heading off to get my drink, her hips swaying pendulously in her skin-tight jeans
