Rango gave a low chuckle. "So you don’t mind sharing, huh? You should've mentioned that whenwewere together. I mean, I like to party as much as the next guy."
"Yeah. And I like waffles. So what?"
Ignoring me, Rango launched into some side story about his DJ gig. As he talked, it slowly dawned on me that I was standing there, utterly naked, in Jake's bathroom, listening to a total jackass.
I pulled the phone from my ear and stared down at the thing.
Why had I even answered? But I knew why. Thanks to what was obviously a new phone number, I hadn't known it was Rango calling.
I wouldn’t be makingthatmistake again.
When I returned the phone to my ear, Rango was still blabbing, saying something about his new condo. He finished by saying, "So, uh, you wanna get together?"
"No," I said. "Definitely not."
"If you want," he persisted, "we can meet on the sly, talk, have a few laughs, see what happens."
"Nothing'sgoingto happen," I told him, "because we're not getting together. Not now. Not ever. And Rango, seriously, don’t call me again. I mean it."
And with that, I disconnected the call, tossed the phone onto the folded bath towel that I'd placed by the tub earlier, and crawled back into the steaming water.
I'd barely settled back in when my cell phone rang a second time.
With a muttered curse, I reached down to grab it off the towel. I looked at the display and frowned. Again, I didn't recognize the number, but it was definitely different from the last one.
Was it my boss? Finally?
Unwilling to take the chance of missing him, I answered with a tentative, "Hello?"
"Hey Babe."
"Oh, crap," I muttered.
Rango gave an oily laugh. "What? You're not happy to hear from me?"
"No. And I wasn't happy the first time either."
"Eh, you know what they say. If at first you don’t succeed—"
"What? Make an ass of yourself?"
"I haven't heardthatphrasing before," he said, "but hey, you always were the smart one."
Now, Iknewhe was full of crap. I hadn't been smart. About Rango and too many other things to count, I'd been excessively stupid.
It was a real shame, too. It wasn't that I didn't have brains. It was just that I hadn't spent a whole lot of time using them.
But now, I was turning over a new leaf, and Rango's words had me thinking. There had to be more to this story. The first call from Rango made a weird kind of sense. But two calls? Back to back?
I knew the guy. He never tried this hard.
He had to be playing some angle. But what kind of angle, I just didn't know. Determined to cut to the chase, I said, "What do you want?"
"I already told you—"
"Cut the crap," I said, sitting up straighter in the tub. "This isn't about me, and we both know it. You want something. What is it?"
Rango paused. With a smile in his voice, he said, "Hey, are you naked?"
