A Few Good Men by Cat Johnson

See you later.” He smiled wide.
    As Jazzy made his way slowly toward his quarters, John called after him, “I better not see you anywhere but in your rack.”
    Jazzy waved a dismissive hand and kept walking.
    Waiting there with nothing to do, John found himself with too much time to wonder. Was Summer going on a date that very night? How much longer would Gonzo be before he could log in and check his email? And where had that romance novel gotten to?
    Shit. After reviewing those thoughts, John realized he was in big trouble.

Chapter Eight
    “A bar fight.” Peter flopped back into the plastic chair in the hospital’s emergency room waiting area while expelling an annoyed-sounding huff of breath.
    Maureen hung her head and waited for the onslaught as he continued.
    “I’ve lived thirty-two years without ever being in a fist fight in a bar, restaurant or any other establishment, gay or straight. But one date that I let you plan for us, and I’m spending the night in the hospital emergency room.”
    In Maureen’s defense, neither Peter nor herself had a scratch on them. They were in the hospital waiting for her date to get his bloody head stitched up. Since he’d had the foresight to shove both of them out onto the sidewalk and out of harm’s way before he jumped into the fray, she figured she owed him at least a ride to the hospital.
    When her date had suggested they go to the bar and see the band playing there, he could have had no way of knowing that a drunk with a broken beer bottle would go after the baseball-bat-wielding bartender. Or that he himself would get whacked in the head when the giant basketball game in the bar got flipped over. Or that the fight would eventually make its way out onto the sidewalk where she and Peter stood, causing them to have to scramble back inside and take refuge in the bar’s kitchen. The good news was that there in the kitchen they’d found Peter’s date hiding.
    Lucky for Maureen, Peter’s date, a male nurse by profession but at a different hospital, had gone into the examining room to sit with her date while he got stitched up. First of all, she didn’t feel close enough to the guy after only knowing him for a few hours to play dedicated girlfriend. Second, she felt nauseated even thinking about watching someone get stitches.
    So here she and Peter sat at two in the morning in a hospital in Brooklyn, waiting for their dates to emerge from behind the examination room’s magic curtain. The sick thing was, Maureen couldn’t wait to get home, or at least back to Peter’s, so she could write it all down in her blog.
    There was seriously something wrong with her since she had become a writer. No matter how bad things got—things meaning mostly her dating record—she viewed it as a writing opportunity. And she’d had two doozies to write about recently.
    “Well? Don’t you have anything to say?” Peter crossed his arms and stared at her.
    “Um. What’s for breakfast tomorrow morning?” His narrowed stare led her to abandon the comedic approach. “Okay. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say to you. When you plan to date as much as we have, you’re bound to have some bad ones. It’s statistically impossible not to.”
    There. Blame the odds. People can’t argue with statistics.
    Peter didn’t look impressed. “If I thought you were honestly sorry, it would be different. But you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
    She tried not to smile and failed.
    “Maureen.”
    “I’m sorry. On the other hand, I never thought I would say this, but I’m enjoying our dating disasters. Our dates are so unbelievably bad that I’m actually looking forward to the next one just to see how much worse it can get. I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I get to share them with you. Even the worst horror is fun if I’m with you.”
    Peter sighed. “How am I supposed to stay mad at you when you say stuff like that?”
    She leaned her head on his shoulder and gave him her