Then again, she admitted to herself yet again, there was a reason why she’d felt compelled to tease him back in the day.
Little Denny wasn’t so little anymore. Five years in the Navy had matured him in more ways than one, which was why she initially hadn’t recognized the clean-cut, muscular young man on their chance meeting downtown a few weeks before. But that boyish grin of his hadn’t changed a bit. That plus the fact that he’d called her by her old nickname had done the trick a moment too late.
“Maddy?! It is you!”
“Hi, um…”
“It’s Denny, Clara’s brother?”
“Oh my God, Denny!” And she’d thrown herself at him in a way she wouldn’t have been caught dead doing back in high school. “Sorry, it’s Martha now. I retired Maddy the Tomboy halfway through college.” On that note she had touched her hair, which was now much longer than when Denny had last seen it.
Grad school being what it was, Martha did usually still dress the way Maddy the Tomboy had. She did own a few skirts now, but none of them had the right look for the occasion at all. That was why she had bought the red and blue plaid one she was now wearing. She felt like an impostor in it, but together with her favorite red sweater it did make the perfect Valentine’s Day outfit.
Clara, who had joined her at the mall last weekend, had agreed — for all the wrong reasons. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone over to the dark side, Martha,” she had said when a display of seasonal red apparel had caught her eye.
“Okay,” Martha had replied with a chuckle. “I won’t tell you.”
She had, thank heavens, also not told Clara that her brother had anything to do with her old friend’s change of heart; in this moment she’d realized just what a good call that was. “Martha,” Clara had said with an exasperated sigh, “Don’t you remember anything about high school? Valentines for the beautiful people only? Didn’t it always make us feel like shit?”
“Of course I remember,” Martha said, and indeed she did recall. Chubby Clara and too-tall Martha, still taller than most of the boys even after they hit their growth spurts, had always been shut firmly out of the cool kids’ clique. “But that was years ago and we’re older, Clara.”
“It’s still a patriarchal mess, all about making women feel inadequate for being on our own in the middle of winter!”
“Only if we let it make us feel that way.” Martha had been more focused on the skirt she was holding up to her waist in the store mirror. Designed to be ankle-length, it hung just past her knees. But Martha was used to making things like that work, and she felt utterly flirtatious even just holding it over her jeans.
“Martha!” Clara’s outraged whine hadn’t changed a bit since they were teenagers. “You’re a grad student! You’re too smart to fall for all that manipulative commercial stuff.”
“For heaven’s sake, Clara, we’re not kids anymore!” Martha had replied. “It’s fine to be on your own on Valentine’s Day, and it’s also fine to celebrate love! Don’t you ever get tired of always thinking anything romantic is saccharine? Or patriarchal?”
“God, you sound like my brother,” Clara had grumbled as she had reluctantly followed Martha to the checkout counter. “He’s at the university too now, by the way, did I tell you that? He’s a freshman, probably the oldest one in his class, but at least he’s getting started.”
“No, you didn’t tell me.” Martha had barely managed to keep a straight face.
“The Navy didn’t do him any favors, I’ll tell you that much,” Clara had grumbled. “I figured it at least would’ve toughened him up a little, but last week at home he was all about some poor woman he was hoping to ring in Valentine’s Day with. Same little starry-eyed twerp as always!”
“What’s wrong with hoping for a date, on any day of the year?” It had taken every bit of resolve Martha had to avoid outward expression of the way her heart was flying all of a sudden, but she had pulled it off.
“Nothing, if you get that no means no. I told him, Denny honey, I just hope you understand if she says no, that it’s Valentine’s Day doesn’t mean anything.”
“Clara, your brother is no rapist!”
“You don’t know him anymore, Martha. And what’s worse, he said she was an old friend, and I’m like, so you’re pretending to be her friend so you can get in her pants? Shame on you!”
“Right, because friendship can never grow into love,” Martha had said, knowing already that Clara would miss the sarcasm in her voice.
Sure enough, she had. “Exactly, Martha. But I don’t think too many men get that, and certainly not my brother.”
Not a moment had gone by then without Martha thanking her lucky stars that she hadn’t told her old friend about her chance meeting with Denny. She clearly did not need to know about that, or that Martha and Denny had met up for drinks and conversation twice since then, or that she had already decided to invite him to her place on Valentine’s Day.
Or that she hoped it would be for a great deal more than drinks and conversation this time.
The muffins were in the oven, the wine was uncorked, and Martha was made up from head to toe, having optimistically worn her sexiest red bra and panties under her clothes, which still felt like a costume. At least it was a sexy costume, she reasoned as she sat down on the couch to wait for the knock at the door.
“Yellow is for friendship,” Denny said with a smile and a shrug as he zipped his coat back up. “And we’ve been — well, I don’t know if you can say we were friends before, but we’ve known each other a long time.”
“Wait, Denny, you’re in the friend zone with this lady?” Pete let out a haughty laugh. “You are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you?”
“Man, give it a rest with that!” Denny said. “Don’t you see how sexist that ‘friend zone’ stuff is? And calling her a ‘lady’ makes her sound fifty years old. She’s only a year older than I am.”
“Sorry, Mister Politically Correct,” Pete said, not even trying to hide his annoyance at his friend. “Man, I look up to you, you know that, even if you are a freshman and I’m a junior. You’ve been around the block more than I have, I get that. So why are you falling for all this feminazi baloney?”
“It’s not feminazi baloney!” Denny said. “And yeah, I saw my share of guys who didn’t know a damn thing about how to treat a woman. That’s how I know what not to do, starting with pushing too hard when she probably does think of me as just a friend. This is my way of saying, hey, that’s fine if that’s all you want, but maybe we can talk about bigger and better stuff.”
“Sounds like feminazi baloney to me,” Pete reiterated.
“I know feminazi baloney when I hear it,” Denny said. “You should hear my sister.”
“Right, you told me about her,” Pete said. “What’d you call her, a ball of rage?”
“That’s about right,” Denny admitted. “You should’ve heard the earful she gave me about the gal I bought this for.” Then he chuckled. “If only she knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Well, Pete…” Denny wasn’t at all sure he wanted to give out the big secret, but he conceded he’d already pushed the envelope too far. “The gal I bought this for? Is my sister’s best friend from high school.”
“WHAT?” Pete was more amused than outraged, and he doubled over laughing. “Man, you must’ve fallen overboard a time too many!”
“Yeah, well, maybe I did,” Denny said. “But she’s not like my sister, not anymore. She’s also not really the romantic type, so you know, I’m already pushing my luck a little bit with yellow here.”
“Doesn’t sound like that’s all you’re pushing, man,” Pete said. “Anything your sister doesn’t know about you two?”
“She doesn’t even know we’ve re-met.”
“No, I mean before. You knew her when you were younger, right? Ever have a quickie in the basement while your sister was on the phone or something?”
Denny laughed. “You kidding? I was her friend’s pesky younger brother! I mean, I would’ve if she were willing, but she was never the type. Except…” He paused and sighed at the guilty pleasure of a memory that had just bubbled up.
“Except what, man?”
“Well, a couple of times, she was changing clothes in my sister’s room, and the door was ajar…”
“What’d you see?”
“First time I ever saw a girl in her bra. Poor thing probably still has no idea.”
“And you think you’re going to get somewhere being a gentleman now?” Pete’s scepticism wasn’t even dented. “Besides, any friend of your sister’s…isn’t she going to just think Valentine’s Day is nothing but commercial bullshit for selling flowers and candy? ‘Cause, I mean, that’s exactly what it is, Denny, you know that.”
“Do I?” Denny asked. “I mean, yeah, there is that side to it, but what’s wrong with a day to celebrate romance?”
“You don’t believe in romance, man, do you? We’re guys, aren’t we?”
Denny laughed to keep from losing his temper at his friend. “I ought to set you up with my sister. You guys’d be perfect together.”
He also knew Pete well enough to know he was the last guy on Earth who ought to be doling out advice about love and friendship, on Valentine’s Day or any other day of the year. Yet some of his comments had hit home with Denny. Was he really falling for Martha, or was it all just a matter of fulfilling his long-ago fantasies? They’d bonded up a storm on those two meet-ups (already Denny realized he couldn’t call them “dates” when nothing romantic had ever been implied at all), talking for hours that had felt like minutes and getting to know one another far better than they had back in the day. But for all that, Denny had never quite been able to forget all the many times back then he’d jacked off to the fleeting vision of Martha — Maddy back then — in her bra.