Thanks to punchfacechampion and soverysesual for my first two reviews ever! Glad to see they were positive ones. Hope you guys like where this goes.
Mindy was still there, after almost everyone had gone, including her "date" for the evening, Peter.
"Need any help cleaning up Danny boy?" she offered.
He was so perplexed he didn't respond for a second, but he shook himself out of it. "Sure. That's real nice of you Min. You're sure it's Mindy I'm talking to? No one put a pod under your bed last night?"
Mindy rolled her eyes "There you go ageing yourself again with some obscure reference."
"Hey, 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' is not obscure!" he replied indignantly.
"Danny, listen to me. I have no idea what you're talking about and no one else does either. It's obscure and you're old. But don't worry, I've got a nice retirement home picked out for you. Just say the word."
She chuckled to herself. Gosh, this was such fun. She waited for his reply, something sharp or dismissive. It was always 50/50 with Danny, but all he said was "Okay."
Her breath hitched for a moment. It means nothing she told herself, but what if it didn't? What if she just said, "Okayyy," in response? What then? She didn't have the answer, so in usual Mindy fashion, she dived in head first to get it.
"Okayyy," she said mimicking the way he'd stretched the word and the lopsided grin he'd paired with it.
His breath hitched. He hadn't realized what he'd said, until he said it. One stupid, simple word: Okay. What would look like a horribly mundane exchange to any outsider, was causing his heart to beat vehemently in his head and his palms to sweat. He collected himself as quickly as he could and just started tidying up.
Well, as they say, many hands make light work and with him, Richie and Mindy all working to put things back in order, they were done in less than half an hour. Richie was yawning and Danny told him to get some shut eye. Danny had already made sure he knew there was no use arguing about who slept on the couch and who slept on the bed because there was no way he'd win that one. And so now it was just the two of them. He looked at Mindy, hoping she would say something, anything to break him out of this trance. This was a dangerous situation for him. If less Mindy time equaled less Mindy infatuation, you can guess what more Mindy time did to him.
But she wasn't saying anything, she was just looking at him. He could feel the cogs in his mind turning, searching for words, any words, phrases, put together, sentences, much would like that, yes, food good, fire bad, Danny caveman. "Snap out of it!" he yelled internally, but then he saw the look of Mindy's face.
"Did I just say that out loud?" he asked.
"Yeah. You doing okay Dan? One too many times under the limbo stick?" she teased.
Danny shrugged. He could do this, he knew he could. This was teasing. this was flirting, this was easy.
"Guess so," he said "Or maybe I was just distracted by that pepperoni stuck in your teeth."
Her eyes widened in surprise. "What?!" she gasped, "And nobody told me!?"
Danny smiled smugly to himself. He'd just dodged a bullet there, deflected that attention from himself. "Smooth one Castellano," he thought contently.