Legs Read Online Free Page A

week long.
    The odd-ball grin was quickly wiped
off his face when he realized who it was.
    The funny thing was, he had Kim’s
number too. He wondered if he ever would have found the
guts.
    Not that he didn’t want to…or did
he?
     
    ***
     
    “ Hi.”
    “ Hi, Brandon?”
    “ Yup. What’s up, Kim?” His
mind went into overdrive.
    You could pop the question. It might
be easier when you’re not eye-to-eye, the trouble was that he could
see too many negatives implied there—no woman would be happy being
asked if she was a girl, right? That’s not very flattering—and she
seemed, if nothing else, kind of flat-chested. Surely this would be
cause for some insecurities, for the world was what it
was.
    Half the chicks in town seemed to have
implants these days.
    Nor would a guy be pleased,
intent on stalking some big hunk of man-flesh… that sounded stupid even to me.
    He’d give anything to know without
hurting someone’s feelings.
    But Kim was very tall, too. Kim had
those long, slightly-shamed silences, when Kim just looked at you,
and seemed so vulnerable and shy. She was a big girl in a petite
world. Surely that affected her vision of herself.
    He and Slam had both read the book on
how to pick up chicks. One of the possibilities mentioned was that
you might end up with a pretty good girlfriend—if you weren’t
careful.
    That one always got him in the guts
for some reason.
    Yeah, fuck, I’ll take the worst-case
scenario. Don’t mind me, guys—just leave me here to a fucking fate
worse than death. You guys go on without me…
    You’re a better man than
I, Gunga Din.
    The trouble was that he’d loved his
last girlfriend a little too much. In some ways. Maybe he still
did, he certainly missed her sometimes.
    He missed her a lot.
    But Kim was a possibility.
He hadn’t even seen one of those in a very long time.
    It’s not something I can
lightly dismiss.
    Brandon liked what he saw. Kim had
some attractive qualities.
    He kept wanting to
say her —her
qualities.
    God, if only I knew for sure. Even
then I would probably ruin it. He was in the process of doing that
anyway, if he didn’t think of something to say very
quickly.
    “ Not too much. Just looking
for a new job, at least I think I am.” Brandon listened, not going
on too long.
    Try and draw them
out…
    “ Yeah. I hear you.” The
voice was low, soft and sultry—and yet kind of generic when he
over-analyzed.
    What made a woman’s voice any
different from a man’s would be questions of frequency, timbre,
tone, a certain non-smoker’s lack of vibrato…all of that was
bullshit and he knew it, unfortunately. In some ways, it could be
anybody on the other end.
    “ So, Brandon. What are you
doing on the weekend?”
    His heart pounded. They’d exchanged
phone numbers after having what amounted to a wonderful time, at
least for Brandon. Now he had a better idea of how Kim felt about
it. But even so, under those circumstances, the question of gender
wasn’t all that pressing.
    It was just two people having some
hotdogs and that bitter, dark coffee and doing more people-watching
and talking about baseball than anything else. Kim was a big
fan.
    “ Well. Not much, as far as
I know.” Kim was drop-dead beautiful, too.
    That was the real problem, and why in
the hell did Kim ever ask Brandon to dance? That wasn’t exactly
unheard-of, but rare—certainly in his experience.
    It really wasn’t in character for an
ostensibly-shy girl (or boy) to suddenly walk up to a stranger in a
club and ask them to dance. Especially when he wasn’t exactly the
most macho, or the best-looking, or what the hell am I telling
myself? He wondered at his own thought processes at times. He was
reading too much into it and had ridiculous
expectations.
    Maybe that was the key—low
expectations.
    “ We could go
out.”
    “ Ah—yeah. I would love
that.” His mind raced.
    How much money have I got? Not much,
he realized.
    “ I mean, I’m kind of broke
and