“I’m not sure. She’s not really into sports. I could see her with a theater nerd, or a musician.”
“Then you might be asking the wrong guy for help.” He uncapped the shaker and strained the results into two dining hall glasses. “I wish I’d thought to snag some salt. Cheers.” He handed me a glass.
I took a sip. “You know, I thought the honey was a strange choice. But it’s quite good.”
“Stick with me, babe.”
If only I could.
“Tell me this,” Hartley said, bending his knee a few degrees, and grimacing. “If Dana asks me for advice about who to set you up with for Screw Your Roommate, what should I tell her? There are a couple of frosh on the hockey team who would like to go. I don’t know their game schedule, though.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going.”
“You don’t want to be screwed?”
I felt my face heat. “Gosh, I wonder if that joke has ever been made before?”
“It’s a tough crowd here for a Friday night,” Hartley grinned. “Look, it’s really kind of fun, and a low pressure way to meet people. No offense, Callahan, but you’re not exactly getting out there.”
I nearly choked on my drink. “Hartley, if I wanted someone to nag me about meeting people, I could always call my mother.”
“I’m not nagging you, I just don’t understand. I know why I’m sitting here on a Friday night, popping Advil on the couch. My leg is sore and my girlfriend is overseas. I’m on, like, the injured reserve list.”
I took a very large gulp of my drink, the lime shimmering on my tongue. “The injured reserve list is a good analogy. I think I’m still on it. It’s a dance, Hartley. Why would I go?”
He swirled his drink in his glass. “Okay, so maybe it’s not your best event.”
“You think? And you’d set me up with an athlete? He would say you had a sick sense of humor.”
Hartley put his elbow on the back of the couch and turned so that he could see me better. “You think athletes only like other athletes? Some of the women I’ve dated think that putting on makeup counts as a physical activity.”
Of course he was right, but that didn’t mean I felt very dateable. Nothing about me was the same as it used to be. My hair was the wrong length, my legs were beginning to thin out from too much time in the chair. Just because Hartley didn’t see all that was wrong didn’t mean I couldn’t.
After my accident, a well-meaning therapist had given me some literature about body image after spinal cord injury. The pamphlet was full of perky suggestions for “learning to love the ‘new you.’” But my heart was full of dark questions that weren’t answered anywhere on those shiny pages.
Meanwhile, my margarita was disappearing rapidly. “The old me would have loved to be set up with a hockey player,” I told him. “But I don’t look the same as I used to. I don’t feel the same.” Also, I’m in love with you. But that’s a separate problem. “Maybe it will just take a while longer.”
“You’re still trying to get your feet under you.” Hartley’s brown eyes were soft. “I hope you don’t mind a little gallows humor.”
“I adore gallows humor.”
“See? You’re fun, Callahan. It really isn’t all that complicated.”
“Everything about it is complicated, okay?” The tequila was starting to get to me. “Everything. I don’t even know what I’m still capable of.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Never mind.” I picked up my game controller, but Hartley took it out of my hands.
“Callahan, do you mean sex?”
I shrugged, miserable. “I can’t talk about it with you.”
“Well, who can you talk about it with? Because that sounds like a pretty big fucking problem.”
“So to speak.”
“Seriously. When I told my friends that my leg was broken in two places, everybody said, well, at least your dick isn’t broken. So life can’t be all that bad.”
I tried not to aspirate my margarita. “And that’s the difference between how guys and girls speak to one another.”
He ran a finger around the rim of his glass. “When you say you’re not sure what you’re capable of, do you mean…”
“Hartley, really. Not an easy topic for me.”
“More tequila, then.” He reached over to refill my glass. “Okay, so, if a guy is paralyzed, that means he can’t get it up anymore, right? Stacia made me watch Downton Abbey.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “Something like that. But it depends where the injury occurred, and what sort of injury it was. Some guys in wheelchairs do fine. But some of them can raise the flag, only they can’t feel it anymore.”
His eyes widened with true horror. “Shit.”
“Exactly.”
“So, for a woman…”
I shook my head. “Next topic, please.”
“I guess a woman could always do it. But if she couldn’t feel it, then she might not want to.”
I stared up at the ceiling, hoping he would let it go.
He took a sip of his drink. “Callahan, one thing you might not know about me is that I don’t embarrass.”