June 28, 2003

 

“Matt?”

The voice brought Matt back from the place behind his eyelids where he’d been floating. Which wasn’t a bad place to be, all things considered. He opened his eyes and immediately blinked at the overhead fluorescents, then focused on the face looking down at him.

The man wasn’t too much older than Matt himself, he figured, and was Indian, with a full head of thick black hair, and the white coat and tie and stethoscope kind of gave away his profession. He must have known Matt was back to the real world now, but he was looking at Matt’s shoulder instead of Matt’s face, and pulling back a bandage there.

“How are you feeling?” the doctor asked him, with no accent save a Seattle one in his voice. His tone was professional, confident, and a bit detached.

“Shot,” Matt answered, clearing this throat. Damn, the sound of his own voice was ragged. “Yourself?”

The doctor grinned, still checking out Matt’s shoulder and analyzing it on a level Matt certainly couldn’t understand, nor did he care or need to. “How’s the pain?”

Starting to get as back to reality he was able with whatever they were pumping into his veins doing its trick, Matt answered, “Not too bad. Or maybe it is and I’m just too high to give a shit right now.”

The doctor grinned again. “I’m Dr. Mittal. I understand you’ve had quite an evening.”

“You could say that,” Matt nodded, carefully. Now that the doctor had gone and mentioned it out loud, Matt started giving a shit—a bit—about the pain, and wished they’d avoided the subject. “So how am I doing, anyway?”

“Very well, actually,” the doctor said, nodding himself and replacing the bandage. “All things considered. The bullet passed right through, and very cleanly.”

“A polite bullet,” Matt mused, wincing a little and closing his eyes a moment. “I didn’t know they made those. The British must have thought that up.”

The doctor made a small laugh, but was still in clinical mode. “There were no fractures, and no vascular damage, so we’ll be able to avoid surgery. And no fragments. The ER doctors did a fine job cleaning out the wound, and got you started on antibiotics right away. I think infection’s unlikely, but we’re taking every precaution. As bullet wounds go, if you have to have one, this is the kind you want.”

“Lucky me,” Matt sighed. He looked back up the doctor. “So, what…I’m okay?”

“Within context, yes. I feel very confident that this will heal up well. No signs of nerve damage. You’re going to be with us for a little while, of course. They’re getting a room ready for you now. And you won’t be pitching for the Mariners in the very near future, but you might have a shot next season.”

“Way they’re playing right now, no one would probably notice.”

Another laugh from Dr. Mittal. “Well, at least your spirits are good. That’s the most important thing. This will heal, Matt. You were very lucky. It may not feel like it right now, but you were. I’ve seen far too many of these. Unlike many, yours is going to have a happy ending. You have reason to be thankful.”

“Yeah,” Matt breathed, suddenly sounding very fatigued. “I know. It’s just…of all the places for a bass player to take a bullet, you know?”

“I heard,” Mittal added, kindly. “Your band will have to do without you for a little while. But not that long. You’ll see.”

“Next season, huh?” Matt grinned, weakly.

Mittal smiled. “Maybe even by the All-Star Game. But one thing at a time. Rest and healing first, okay?”

Matt nodded.

“And, I’m afraid, a number of questions from the police. I saw them still interviewing witnesses outside. They’ll want to talk to you.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“I wanted to check you out first before I gave them the go-ahead. They prefer to do this while everything’s still fresh in your mind. Are you feeling up to it?”

“Not really,” Matt sighed. “But it’s important.”

“Well,” Mittal said, studying him. “We’ll let you rest a bit more. I’ll check back in on you first. They’ve got plenty to keep them busy in the lobby. You’ve got a lot of fans out there.”

Matt grinned again, slowly.

Mittal grinned back. “I hear you did a very brave thing tonight.”

Matt started to shrug, then grimaced and decided not to finish.

Mittal smiled, patted him lightly on his good shoulder, and left it at that. “I’ll be back,” he said. “Do you need anything?”

“Do Soundgarden tee shirts come in Kevlar? Apparently I could use one of those…”

With a final laugh, Mittal said, “I’ll see what I can do.” Then he turned and pulled the curtain aside and headed for the door.

Matt tilted his head and watched his doctor go. Mittal stepped though the door and into the hall, pulling a palm pilot from a pocket in his coat. He paused in the hall, suddenly, as a quick look to his left turned into a double-take. He stood there, motionless, watching something that had clearly caught his interest. Finally, taking a last look to his left, he turned and walked off to the right, disappearing from Matt’s view.

Whatever is was he had seen, Matt was too high to give a shit.

He laid his head back and closed his eyes, listening to the humming and beeping of the monitors he was attached to, and to the sporadic din of other voices and activity around his area of the ER. He tried not to think of the muted but ever-present pain in his shoulder, but it was hard to avoid. In a way, he was trying to get used to it, to make friends with it, because it looked like the two of them were going to be stuck with each other for a while.

He let the drugs do their thing and tried to focus on that happy place instead, and floated semi-blissfully in the narcotic stream, trying not to replay the night’s events in his head again. He figured there’d be plenty of that later. For now, a little disconnected nirvana (hey, wasn’t that a special on MTV once? Rim shot…) was what he was trying for, and he let himself get lazily drawn further down the stream.

He came back out of it when he felt a fairly small and soft hand slipping its fingers between his.

He opened his eyes again, and it took a moment to realize that it wasn’t the drugs creating the unlikely sight before him.

It actually was Dyna Girl. Sitting there, next to his bed, holding his hand, and wearing an awkward, forced and sad smile.

He blinked at her a couple of times in his still-not-quite waking state of surprise, and his mouth curved into a smile with a bit more effort than it normally took. “Hey,” was all he could say to react to this still-dumbfounding moment.

“Hey,” she said back, forcing her smile even harder, and squeezing his hand, carefully.

Now pretty sure he was awake, he struggled for the right words, and laughed a little at his own struggle. She was really there. Not a voice on the other end of the phone, as he’d come to know her so well over the past couple of months. Not an image on TV or on the cover of a magazine—or on one of her web sites, the ones with the promotional photos he regularly teased her about. In the flesh, live and in person. For the first time.

“Wow,” he said. “So this is what you look like in real life.” He seemed to study her for a moment. “Kind of thought you’d be taller.” He suddenly craned his neck a little, deliberately, and looked over the side of the bed. “Oh. You’re sitting down.”

This made her laugh, but not a hearty laugh. “Dork,” she whispered, putting her other hand over both of theirs.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, still pretty stunned.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she sighed, looking in his eyes. “I heard a rumor some dumbass went and got himself shot outside the Bad Juju Lounge. It occurred to me that the biggest dumbass I know was playing there tonight, and I put two and two together.”

“Really?” he laughed.

“No,” she said, with a smile that wasn’t necessarily a happy one. “Nightsable heard about it on the police scanner, a little after the fact. She ‘ported down there. The ambulance was already gone, but she talked to the cops and found out it was you. And she called me right away.”

“Wow,” he said, kind of impressed. “I’m surprised she remembered me. And about the Juju.”

“She knows,” Dyna Girl said, maybe looking a little embarrassed. “About you and me. Us talking all the time. She’s the only one I told about it.”

“You never told me that,” he grinned.

“Yeah, well,” she said, smiling tiredly, “girls have their secrets, all right? Of course, now OUR secret isn’t a secret anymore. Now everybody knows I’ve been using the police line for a lot of personal calls. Cat’s out of the bag.” She started looking embarrassed again.

“Oops,” he said. “Sorry. I had to go get shot and blow the whole thing.” And he actually meant it, that part about being sorry. He knew that, for her own reasons (whatever they might be…he’d long given up trying to figure out how the chick brain worked), she didn’t want any of her teammates knowing about their late night calls. Maybe it was because she was using the police line (hey, it wasn’t like they didn’t have call waiting…). Maybe it was some kind of security thing, her talking to some stranger—as Dyna Girl—maybe saying things she shouldn’t. Whatever the reason, she didn’t want them knowing (except for Nightsable, apparently). And, good to his word, he hadn’t told anyone either. Anyone. The fact that he was regular phone pals with a world-famous hottie super-hero didn’t get him so much as an ounce of bragging cred. Which, oddly, he kind of liked.

Her eyes drifted to his monitors and away from him, and after a moment he realized it was probably from him using the “shot” word. Funny how casual he was about it already. Apparently she wasn’t as comfortable with it.

“So,” he said, trying to rescue the still kind of surreal conversation, “are they, like, mad, or…?”

“No,” she said, with a little laugh, looking back at him and losing some of her tension. He definitely preferred her looking at him like he was being silly over the other vibe. “It’s not like that, okay? Seriously, that’s the last thing you need to be thinking about right now.”

He was smiling at her, and starting to say something (while finding himself thinking about how cool her hair looked in real life) when he saw some movement behind her, in the hall, that drew his eyes. And made them blink.

There was a uniformed cop out there, talking, quietly, with a very serious and focused blonde guy that looked a lot like—

“Is that Vortex?” Matt asked.

Dyna Girl looked over her shoulder and then back at Matt. “No, it’s the OTHER guy in the blue spandex with lightning bolts, genius,” she said, shaking her head at him.

He finally looked from Vortex back to her. “How many of you are here?”

“All of us,” she answered.

“What…because of ME?” he asked, looking again at the famed speedster, who was nodding at the cop and asking what appeared to be some very probing questions. Something about that idea just didn’t seem to make sense on ANY level. This was HIM, after all. Record store slacker? Bass player? This night just kept getting weirder.

“Do we know anyone ELSE who got shot tonight?” she asked.

“I mean…” He wasn’t quite sure what to say, and frankly, felt a little embarrassed at the idea of all the fuss. “You guys didn’t have to all…”

“Hey,” she said, quietly but seriously, squeezing his hand. “We take care of our friends. Okay?”

They looked at each other for a quiet couple of moments while he let that sink in. Mostly just the enormity of that “we”. Yes, she was actually talking about Forte. Yes, THAT Forte. That was part of it. The other was him staring into her eyes and realizing just how good of friends she and he had actually become. Maybe the whole phone thing had diluted that idea somehow. But it suddenly hit him just how much it meant to him that she was there. She was really THERE. The girl he’d laughed with and shared with and sometimes bickered with for the last couple of months, months that suddenly seemed much longer. And that he couldn’t think of anyone else he’d want there more, holding his hand at a time like this.

“Besides,” she said, suddenly, taking a breath and breaking the silence and what had suddenly turned into an emotionally taught moment, “there’s an idiot with a gun running around out there shooting people. We don’t just do costumes, you know. We need to find him before he hurts anyone else.”

“Hey,” he said, doing the half-shrug he was going to have to get used to using for a while. “No argument here. Probably better someone a LITTLE more qualified than me tries to.”

Seemingly in response to that, she scooted her chair a little closer to the head of the bed, and to him. “Matt,” she said, looking at him very directly. “Tell me what happened. I mean, I’ve talked to the police already, but…” She stopped speaking and looked away for a moment, seeming to collect her thoughts. When she looked back, she didn’t look very happy. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Apparently, I wasn’t,” he said, with a tired grin.

“Yeah, big surprise with you,” she said back, and there was little humor in it.

“Look,” he said, closing his eyes for a moment, and when he spoke again, it came out more apology than justification. “What was I supposed to do? This asshole was hassling this kid and his date out in the alley. The kid was…you know these goth kids. He weighed like a buck-oh-five. Probably still in high school. And this guy was about to take him apart, just because he could. Somebody had to help him.”

“So you thought it’d be smart,” she said, staring at him with growing disapproval, “to take on the psycho with the gun.”

“Well,” he said, quietly, and looked around the room before speaking again, in a whisper, “I didn’t actually know he HAD a gun. But don’t let the nurses know that, okay? I’m getting some major nightingale cred going here and I don’t want to tank it.”

Dyna Girl was clearly not amused. Wow, and he’d thought her phone silences were heavy. He hadn’t experienced one of her looks before. Ouch.

“I didn’t know he had a gun,” he repeated, slowly, and tiredly, without the sarcasm. “We got into it. He wouldn’t take his hand off the kid, so I shoved him. He took a swing. I told you, I haven’t been in a fight in a while. But it came back fast. I ducked. And I clocked his mosh-pit-loving ass. And a very simple rule about being dumb enough to punch a guy that’s much bigger than you is you don’t wait around for him to hit back. So I whaled on him. Apparently I was doing well, because he bitched out and pulled a gun.”

She took a couple of breaths and her face tightened as he talked, like she was reliving it with him, seeing it all happen.

“So I backed off,” he continued. “And he’s pointing this gun at me, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen. This crowd had gathered around. You know people and fights. That’s free entertainment. The crowd freaked out. Some guy yells for someone to call the cops. And the guy with the gun hears this and freaks out and points the gun at the crowd. People start screaming. Just…crazy pandemonium. His hand was…like, shaking. I mean, he was nuts. I just knew it was going to go off and he was going to kill somebody.

“So I went for the gun,” he said, quietly. And added, thoughtfully, “And I think I almost had it, too. It was looking good there for a minute. Then…”

He looked up at the fluorescents again, momentarily lost in the memory.

“Things get kind of…vague…after that,” he finished, without much strength in his voice.

He turned his eyes, finally, back to Dyna Girl, and there was kind of a sad desperation on her face. She squeezed his hand tighter.

“Dyna Girl?” a quiet, but deep, voice said.

Matt looked first, and there, just inside the door, was Seahawk. The actual Seahawk. In the actual Seahawk armor. Wow.

Dyna Girl did a half look back toward him, apparently knowing the voice and not needing to verify it with her eyes. “Yeah?” she said, clearing her throat and composing herself.

Seahawk stepped slowly forward. Damned if he didn’t look twelve feet tall in person. Maybe that was just because Matt was lying down. Maybe.

The famed (and actually pretty damned scary-looking in real life. Maybe that was the idea, of course) hero looked down at Matt with a not-quite smile. “How you doing, Matt?” he asked.

“Um…fine. You know,” Matt said, fighting the urge to call him ‘sir’. Okay, Seahawk just called me by my first name. “All things being equal.”

Seahawk grinned (actually grinned. Swear to God). “Glad to hear it. I’ve taken a couple of those myself over the years. I hear yours was in and out. That’s good. It should heal well.”

“Where are we?” Dyna Girl asked him, seeming to want to change the subject.

“We tracked it down,” he told her, looking down at her. “Nightsable’s headed there now. She’ll probably be back momentarily.”

“Tracked what down?” Matt had to ask.

“His hat,” Seahawk told him. “When you went down, you pulled his cap off. It was still in your hand when the police got there. We found the cop that’s got it. They could do forensics with it, but we can do something better. Nightsable can use it to get the shooter’s scent.”

“Really?” Matt asked, kind of fascinated. “She can do that?”

“She can,” Seahawk nodded. “And she can use that to track him from the site. That way we’re not stuck doing house-to-house. Actually,” he told Dyna Girl, “Vortex just left to start doing house-to-house anyway. He’s canvassing. We’ve got Max in the air, checking the area. They both got a look at the witness sketch.”

“Good,” Dyna Girl nodded, looking down at Matt’s sheets.

“Getting the hat was crucial,” Seahawk told Matt. “That’s going to end this thing quick. That’s nice work, Matt. Good job.”

“Thanks,” Matt said, with a little laugh. “Wish I could say I planned it that way.”

“Well, regardless,” Seahawk said. “I respect what you did out there tonight. That took guts.”

“Could you not encourage him, please?” Dyna Girl said, sharply, not looking up at Seahawk. In theory, those words strung together that way, and in that context, could be expected to have been a joke. But there was nothing funny in her tone. At all.

Dropping only the briefest glance at her (apparently he’d known her long enough to read her tones), Seahawk stayed diplomatically silent for a moment. Bridging the tension before it got too thick (for Matt, who was feeling it), he told her, quietly, “Anyway, I’m going to muster the rest of the team. Moonspider’s talking to witnesses out front. We’ll let you know when we’re moving, okay?”

“Okay,” she nodded, her voice calmer, maybe to mirror his. “Thanks.”

Seahawk touched her shoulder, lightly, and then backed toward the door, looking at Matt. “We’re gonna get this guy, Matt. I promise you.”

“Thanks,” Matt said, not really sure what else to say to something like that.

“Hey,” Seahawk said, pausing at the door. “You did us a favor once. We owe you.” He grinned again (that’s twice!) and Matt grinned back, and the Seattle icon left the room.

“Wow,” Matt said, when the two of them were alone again. “I think I just met Seahawk.”

“Yeah, I think you did,” she said, with a small ghost of a smile.

“He seems really cool.”

“He is,” she said, looking back at the door for a moment, then back to Matt. Her face got serious again. “Did they call your Mom?”

“Nah,” he said, dismissively, readjusting his head on his pillow.

“Matt,” she said, giving him a look that seemed like it could have COME from his mother.

“She’s out of town,” he explained. “And it’s late, anyway. I didn’t want to wake her up and freak her out with this.”

“Freak her OUT?” she said, incredulously. “Matt, her son’s been shot. I think she’d want to know about that.”

He sighed. “I know. I’m just not looking forward to the reaction, you know? She’s gonna go Kong-style apeshit.”

“You want me to call her?” Dyna offered.

He coughed a laugh. “Yeah, I can picture THAT conversation. ‘Hi, this is Dyna Girl. Sorry to bug you, but I’m actually friends with your son, and by the way, he went down in a gunfight tonight’.” He laughed again. “She’d probably hang up on you.”

She looked away from him and didn’t respond, and he was trying to figure out what was going on in her head. Whatever it was, she seemed to be, as her eyes moved around the room, seeing her racing thoughts, not any details of the ER. She took a couple of quick, harsh breaths through her nose, and when she finally turned back to him, her glare was dark and pretty intense.

“You’re not bulletproof, you asshole,” she scolded, and looked like she was trying not to shake with the growing rage in her. And her words felt like they were ones she’d been holding in since coming through the door.

“Well, yeah,” he deadpanned, rolling his eyes theatrically. “I know that NOW…”

When he brought his eyes back down, he tried to punctuate his words with (what he liked to think was) one of his irresistible Matt smirks. But it was lost on her, as she’d let her head drop, and he now couldn’t see her face. Okay. Maybe there WAS such a thing as a right time and place for jokes. Clearly she wasn’t in the mood, but he’d just been trying to cut through some of the tension. Apparently, his mission was not accomplished.

She kept her head down, and he watched her scalp, waiting for the rest of the lecture. He figured it was best that he kept his mouth shut and let her do the talking. And he kept waiting. But her head stayed down. She wasn’t moving at all, and after a few more moments, her silence went right passed the line of normal.

“Dy?” he finally said, carefully, confused.

Her head pulled back up, and with it, she sucked in a deep, wet breath, as though she’d been bobbing for apples too long and was finally coming back up for air. The sound of her gasp was high and desperate, and he immediately saw the tears that weren’t leaking, but streaming from her eyes.

“Hey,” he said, shocked and staring dumbly at her wet and suddenly nakedly vulnerable face.

She squeezed his hand much tighter and brought her other hand up to her face, cupping it over her mouth and clenching her eyes shut tightly, fighting to hold back sobs that wouldn’t be contained.

“Hey, come on,” he said, kindly but anxiously, and squeezed her hand back. “I’m okay. The doc even said so. And he’s a DOCTOR. He has a degree and a stethoscope and everything.”

She sniffed hard and looked like she was trying to stop, but she broke down again quickly and went back to weeping.

He let her hand go and raised his arm, putting his fingers softly behind her head. “Come here,” he said. She let him pull her face down to his good (non-perforated) shoulder (and it was good that she let him, since there wasn’t a lot he’d have been able to do about it if she HADN’T let him), and she very carefully put her arms around his neck. He held her there and let her cry, ignoring the slightly increased throb in his other, not-so-good shoulder, and rubbed the back of her head gently.

“I’m okay,” he whispered, soothingly. “I really am.”

“You could have been killed,” she wept, in a voice higher than normal for her, and one choked with tears.

“But I wasn’t,” he answered. “I’m here. And I’m going to be just fine.”

“Nightsable could have been calling me from the morgue. I would have been sitting home working on my stupid blog and she would have called and told me you were dead and then I’d never be able to talk to you again and I never would have gotten to say good-bye.”

“Shhh,” he said, and didn’t even realize until after he’d done it that he kissed the top of her head. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

She kept crying as he ran his fingers through her hair, but it finally started to subside.

“You’re important to me,” she said quietly into the fabric of his now-damp hospital gown. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“And I don’t want to be lost,” he said. “And the feeling’s mutual.”

She finally sat back up, and she wiped tears from her face and sniffled as she smiled down at him, fondly. He smiled back, and she found his hand again and raised it to her face and kissed it and held it.

“Don’t you ever do anything that stupid again,” she said, laughing nervously, but clearly meaning it.

“Agreed,” he nodded, grinning. “I’ll try to leave it to the professionals. You know, the bulletproof ones.”

She smiled and pressed his hand against her cheek. He rubbed away a tear there with his thumb as she took her other hand and brushed his hair back from his forehead.

“You’re one of my best friends in the world,” she said, studying his face. “And I’ve never even been in the same room with you before now.”

“Yeah, hell of a way for it to finally happen,” he said, absently pushing her hair behind her ear as she kept her hand over his. “But I’m glad it did. Does this mean I’m not your dirty little secret anymore?”

She laughed. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

“So no more pretending I’m someone at Armor Security on the phone when someone walks in on you, huh?”

“Yeah,” she smiled, rubbing the back of his hand with hers. “No more Armor.”

“Dyna?” a soft voice said, hesitantly, behind them.

Matt looked past Dyna Girl, and saw Nightsable standing in the door. Purple costume, cape, gorgeous blond hair and everything.

Dyna Girl quickly sniffed and wiped her face, and looked back over her shoulder. “Yeah,” she said. “Come on in, hon.” She kept holding Matt’s hand, but lowered it back down to the bed.

Nightsable walked in, looking right at Matt, and was smiling kind of a brave but sad smile. He could see her eyes getting redder by the moment. Pictures, he realized, did not do her justice. She was absolutely beautiful. She RADIATED beautiful.

She stepped up to the bed, smiling brighter, looking down at him with her near-crying eyes. “Hi, Matt,” she said. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

You wanna go where everybody knows your name… he thought.

She leaned down without hesitation and put a soft kiss on his forehead, and then leaned back and rubbed his head. He might not have been bulletproof like Dyna Girl, but all of a sudden he felt like maybe he could fly like her. Or at least float.

“How are you feeling?” she asked, sweetly but sympathetically.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dyna Girl grin and roll her eyes. Which almost made him grin, too, but he held it together.

“Better,” he answered, honestly (just don’t ask me to explain why, and we’ll all be cool). “They’re, um, really good here. They’re taking good care of me.”

“I’m glad,” Nightsable smiled. “You gave us a big scare. You should have heard Dyna when I called her. I’ve never heard her like that before.”

“Thank you, Nightsable,” Dyna said dryly, blushing a little and shaking her head.

Nightsable laughed at her, then turned back to Matt. “We were all really worried. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks,” he said, letting her go right on rubbing his hair. Ambulance ride? Two hundred dollars. Hospital stay? Eight thousand dollars. Two of the most beautiful and famous women on Earth hovering over you, thinking you’re the shit? Priceless.

“Did you get it?” Dyna asked Nightsable, suddenly.

Nightsable nodded. “I did. Got a very clear scent off it. I’m about to ‘port us all back to the alley and start tracking. I just wanted to come let you know first.”

“Thanks,” Dyna said, taking and squeezing the other woman’s hand.

“We’ll probably have him off the streets within an hour if we’re lucky,” Nightsable told Matt. “So don’t worry. He won’t get to hurt anyone else.”

“I’m down with that,” Matt nodded. And he added, to both of them, “Hey, look. I really appreciate all this. I know you guys have other things you could be doing…”

“Oh, will you stop?” Dyna said, concurrently amused at and annoyed with him.

“This IS what we do,” Nightsable smiled. “But every once in a while we get to do it for selfish reasons. Okay?”

He nodded, accepting that, and what they were doing. For him.

“Speaking of which…” she said, turning her head to Dyna Girl.

“Yeah,” Dyna Girl said. “Go. They’re waiting for you. Be careful.”

“I will.” The blonde heroine smiled down at Matt. “You feel better, okay?”

“I’ll try,” he said.

She bent over and kissed his forehead once more, took Dyna Girl’s hand briefly, and hurried out the door.

Dyna Girl grinned at him. “You ever going to wash that forehead again?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, turning his gaze from the door to her. “Did the enormous boner give me away?”

She burst into disgusted laughter. “You’re such a retard.”

He laughed with her and curled his fingers in hers.

“Need I remind you,” she smiled, “that you HAVE a girl? In Denver?”

“You don’t,” he said.

“When are you going to call her?” she asked, serious again.

“I don’t know,” he said, feeling suddenly tired. “Maybe in the morning.”

“You’d better before her friends here do. This is going to be all over tomorrow’s news, you know.”

“I know,” he nodded. “I’ll call.”

He looked back toward the door as a thought hit him, then back at her. “You’re not going?”

“No,” she said, and looked away in what looked like embarrassment. “They…didn’t think me going was such a good idea.”

“Oh,” he said, understanding right away. And, he had to admit, he felt a little pride at the thought. Her teammates were afraid of what she might do to the guy.

She sighed, turning back to him. “I thought I’d just hang out here and keep you company. If that’s okay.”

They both smiled as they looked at each other. “I’d like that,” he said. He moved his hand—in hers—back and forth. “I’m glad you’re here, Dy.”

Dyna Girl glanced behind her, then leaned forward and put her face very closed to his.

“You can call me Holly,” she whispered. “But not until you get out of here. Okay?”

She seemed to enjoy the look of surprise on his face, and she smiled widely as she touched his cheek. Matt smiled back. At one of his best friends in the world.

END.

 

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