Page 19 of Danny

I laugh. Catch it too late — it comes out loud, bright, the kind of laugh that turns heads in a room designed for whispers. A woman at table six glances over. Matteo raises an eyebrow.

Danny laughs with me. I can see people out the corner of my eye turning to stare, because Danny Sterling never shows any kind of emotion. But honestly, he looks so fucking handsome smiling, I can’t bring myself to look away.

"Keep reading," I say. "It gets better."

"When does Wentworth show up?"

"Chapter seven."

"That's a long time to wait."

"Some things are worth waiting for."

He looks at me. I look at him. The room hums around us, and the table between us might as well be a canyon and also might as well not be there at all.

"I'll keep reading," he says.

****

Lola finds me on Friday.

She isn't dramatic about anything, which is part of what makes her terrifying. She just appears at the end of my shift, in the staff corridor, same fluorescent lights and linoleum, wearing the face of a woman who's been deciding how to have this conversation for three days and has finally settled on direct.

"Walk with me."

We go out the back door to a small concrete courtyard I hadn't known existed. A couple of metal chairs. A string of dead fairy lights someone never took down. Cold air, city noise, the smell of the dumpster from the restaurant next door mixing with the November chill in a way that is not remotely romantic.

"Danny has been on the main floor four nights in a row," she says. No preamble. "Table four. Your section. He hasn't sat on the main floor regularly in over a year."

I don't insult her by pretending I don't know why.

"How much trouble am I in?" I ask.

"You're not in trouble." She leans against the railing. Looks at me the way she'd looked at me in the interview — assessing, direct, not unkind. "I like you, Anna. You're good at this. And I'm not interested in telling grown people what to do with their personal lives."

"But..."

"But I need to say something, and I need you to hear it as someone who cares about you, not as your boss."

"Okay."

"Danny is... difficult." She chooses the word carefully, like selecting a tool from a drawer. "He’s not a cruel man, he’s not unkind either. He’s just a bit difficult. He's spent his entire adult life building systems that keep people at a distance, and he's very good at it, and I think he's done it for so long he's forgotten there's a person underneath all the machinery." She pauses. "And now you're down there with a crowbar, and I don't think either of you knows what's going to happen when the machinery comes off."

"That's a — that's kind of an intense metaphor."

"I've been workshopping it." She smiles, warmly. "Here's what I actually want to say. You have a mother who's sick. You have debt that would crush most people. You need this job, and Danny signs the checks. That's a real thing. That's not going to go away because you have feelings for each other."

"I know."

"So protect yourself. Not from him — from the gap. Make sure you're here because you want to be, not because you're afraid of what happens if you're not. And make sure he knows the difference too." She pushes off the railing. "That's all I've got."

"Lola."

She stops at the door and looks at me for a long moment.

"In four years," she says, "I have never known Danny Sterling to read a book someone recommended. I have never known him to read a book that wasn't about finance or property law." She opens the door. "Be careful with him. I mean that the other way around too — he doesn't know how breakable he is right now. Don't be the one who finds out."

She goes inside.