"Okay," Lindsay breathed deeply. "Okay." Lifting Panda-rooney up in her arms, she stared him determinedly in the face. "I can do this." She nodded to the stuffed bear and bit her lip. "It's just Danny, right? We talk all the time in New York, don't we? This won't be any different, will it?" She worried her lip a bit more with her teeth and took another steadying breath before reaching for her phone.
Danny was too impatient to wait around for her message, so he just turned his speakers back up (though not as loud as before) and went to his room to get dressed. Sitting around in a towel got kinda drafty after a while. He'd pulled on his boxers and was just stepping into some jeans when his phone rang. In his haste to answer it, he pulled up on the waistband before his foot was completely inserted into the leg hole of the garment, and he ended up falling flat on his ass with his jeans tangled up in knots around his ankles. He kicked futilely for a moment before giving up and crawling over to the phone on his bedside table.
"Messer," he panted into the phone, collapsing back against the side of his bed.
"Danny?" came the familiar voice on the other end of the line. "Are you alright?"
Lindsay wrinkled her nose and squinted at the receiver as she listened to the laboured breathing coming through the phone. She'd been gone all of about five minutes. How had he had time to run a marathon?
"Lindsay!" he gasped, still trying to catch his breath. "Hey! You called!" He tried to keep the relief out of his voice, but couldn't stop the grin from spreading across his face. He hadn't figured she'd say yes to his phone proposition.
"I'm not…" she cleared her throat delicately and closed her eyes in an attempt to avoid the mental image this question was likely to call up. "I'm not … interrupting … anything, am I?" Holding her breath, she squeezed Panda-rooney tight against her and tried to stay calm.
Danny held the phone against his shoulder with his ear and reached down to untangle himself from his jeans, grunting a bit at the exertion. "Interruptin'? It's like … I dunno, 9:30 in the mornin' or somethin' like that. What'd ya be interruptin'?" He let out a relieved sigh as he finally obtained his freedom.
"Well, there was that mention of the hot, hot Messer sex, before…" Lindsay began, allowing her mind to consider the possibility of taking him up on that offer. She just as quickly dismissed it. Having a crush on him was one thing. Sleeping with him for real was something else entirely.
Danny's jaw worked up and down for a moment as he started to realize what his grunting and panting and sighing must have sounded like over the phone. "Ya really think I'm gonna do somethin' like that while I'm IMin' with someone, Montana?" he chuckled a bit at the mental image. "I have a hard enough time typin' already." He cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair, self-consciously. This sensitive, romantic shit was just … unnatural. Still, he had to give it a shot. "Besides, that offer was limited to residents and former residents of the state of Montana."
Lindsay's face lit up with a shy smile. Sometimes, he really surprised her. "That seems like an awful waste of your talents, Messer," she teased. "Limiting yourself to people who live halfway across the country like that." Her heart was beating a bit faster, now. It seems those rumours of him turning down other women were true. And here she'd thought that Stella was just making that up as a way to make her believe that he cared.
Danny swallowed to moisten his dry throat. What the hell? Next thing, his palms'd be sweaty and his voice'd crack or some shit like that. This wasn't the cool Danny Messer that made the chicks melt. This was… I dunno… Horshack or something. Time to get back to Vinnie Barbarino. "Hey, I said former residents, too," he said with a sexy grin on his face. She couldn't see it, but he bet she could hear it.
Oh god, he was grinning at her. She just knew it. "You know a lot of former residents of Montana, do you?"
"Just one."
"Lindsay!" came a call from downstairs. Lindsay covered her cheek with her hand, wondering how pink she was blushing just now. There was no way she wanted her sister to see her while she was A) neon and B) talking on the phone to Danny. Crap, crap, crap. Worst timing ever.
"I'm-really-sorry-but-I-have-to-go-but-I'll-call-you-later-and-I'm-sorry-okay?" she hurriedly whispered into the receiver. She could hear her sister calling her name again from the bottom of the stairs.
"What?" Danny frowned in consternation. He was being smooth and romantic. Didn't chicks like guys who were smooth and romantic? Should he stop being smooth and romantic?
"My-sister's-here-gottagobye!" Lindsay said in a rush as she hung up the cordless phone and threw it across the room to land on her bed. She quickly repositioned herself on the window seat so that it looked like she was lost in thought looking out the window.
"Lindsay!" Erin sighed in frustration as she entered her older sister's room. "There you are! Didn't you hear me yelling?"
"Hmm?" Lindsay looked up, apparently dragging herself out of her reverie. "Oh hi, Erin." she smiled. "When did you get here?"
The younger woman sighed and rolled her eyes, apologizing to several bears as she removed them from the window seat and curled up next to her sister. "How are you holding up, Linds?" she asked with some concern, pulling her sister into a hug and kissing the top of her curly head.
"I'm doing alright… for now," Lindsay smiled weakly. "I don't know how long it'll last, but for now I'm… okay."
"Good. I'm glad." They sat together in companionable silence for a moment before Erin broke the moment. "NYPDanny, eh?" she asked, motioning towards Lindsay's still-open laptop. She leaned forward, holding Lindsay behind her back to keep her from hiding the screen. "Sex-god extraordinaire?! Why am I just learning about this now?"
Lindsay tried desperately to crawl over her sister's back to get to the laptop, but Erin jumped up and grabbed the computer, using her height advantage to hold it out of Lindsay's reach. "Give it back, now!" the old girl demanded, stomping her foot like she used to when they were kids.
Erin grinned mischievously. "Does Mom know you're IMing with a sex god?" she asked in the same tone of voice she'd used when enquiring whether or not their parents knew about her kissing Evan Simons behind the magazines in Coleman's store.
"Erin Catherine Monroe, you give me that computer back, this instant," Lindsay admonished, attempting her best 'mom' face.
"Does that work on suspects?" Erin asked curiously, now paging through the IM conversation while holding the computer above her head.
"Pleeeeease?" Lindsay pleaded, desperately.
"Oh, alright," she relented, passing the laptop back to her sister who immediately shut it down. "But I want to know everything about this Danny guy. And I mean everything."
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Danny grumbled about siblings as he finished getting dressed. God knew he understood the problems inherent in not being an only child, but c'mon! They were just really starting to get somewhere, and then boom! Sister. Shaking his head in frustration, he forwarded his home phone to his cell in case she called again and went out to do errands. Women could talk forever, he knew, and sisters could talk even longer. He might as well get shit done while he was waiting.
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Ted and Helen came back from town to find their two children sitting in the living room drinking coffee and eating all of the cookies in the house. Apparently, they'd already made it through all of the ice cream.
"Rinny!" their father called out happily, holding his arms wide for his youngest to give him a tacklehug.
"Hi Daddy! Mom! Glad to see me?" she grinned as she moved to hug her mother hello.
"You know I love it when I have my Rinny and Linny together at home!" Ted enthused. "This calls for a celebration! Helen, do we have any steaks in the freezer?"
Sighing at her husband's predictability, she smiled and nodded. "I took four out this morning when Erin called to tell me she was coming."
Clapping his hands together enthusiastically, Ted fairly sprinted out of the room. "I'm gonna go warm up the barbecue!"
"Thanks for coming, sweetie," Helen whispered into her younger daughter's ear. "She really needs you just now."
"I know, Mom," Erin whispered back. "I know."
Author's Note: I know a lot of you were expecting phone sex, but this just isn't that kind of story. Wow. Did I just say that? Weird. Oh, and I'm sorry about all of the author-created characters. They just keep popping up, and I can't seem to stop them!