Love's Little Instruction Book by Mary Gorman Page B

couldn’t keep the dumbfounded expression from his face. “They’re not … ?” He couldn’t think of a diplomatic way to say it.
    “An item?” Presley supplied, reaching for her iced tea and sipping it. “Not really. They used to be, though. Todd says it’s too hard to keep up a long distance relationship like that, what with Tom in New York and him here in Boston, so they only get together every now and then.”
    “I think they’re still close, though, don’t you?” Denise asked.
    Presley shrugged. “Based on the way they just left here, I’d say so.”
    “Do you mean to tell me that Todd O’Connor is gay?” Dave said, in a kind of wheezy stage whisper.
    “Yup,” Presley replied. “A waste, isn’t it?”
    “You know what they say, Pres,” Denise said. “All the good ones are either gay or married.”
    “Too true.”
    Dave sat back and smiled as the waitress set a large vegetarian pizza down on the table in front of them, and suddenly felt like maybe he had hit a home run after all.

Chapter Eight: Painting
    “Hey, guys,” Ghoulie said as he rummaged through his refrigerator looking for something for them nosh on while they waited for the first regular season football game of the year to start. “You won’t believe this. We’ve been reading the wrong books.”
    Kirk looked up from his search for the bottle opener. “What do you mean, ‘the wrong books’?” he asked with a hint of irritation in his voice.
    “Well, I had been taking books from the bottom shelf, hoping that Shelby wouldn’t notice, but she did, and she asked me where they were.”
    “You didn’t tell her, did you?” Dave asked, concerned.
    Ghoulie shook his head. “No, of course not. I told her I missed her and I got curious one night, so I picked some out to see what it was that she was reading.”
    “And?” Kirk prompted.
    “And she told me that if I really wanted to know what she liked to read, I should go to the top shelf. See, she’s got a system, which I didn’t know about. Her favorite books go on the top shelf, and then the ones that she thought were okay go on the middle shelf, and finally, the ones that she plans to get rid of — ”
    “Don’t tell me,” Dave interrupted. “The bottom shelf?”
    “Yeah.”
    Dave drew in a deep breath. It was kind of reassuring in a way. He hadn’t been impressed by most of the books he’d read, especially the ones where the hero or heroine was simply too stupid to be believable or where the heroines had been raped and either got off on it, sexually speaking, or eventually fell in love with their rapists. Those things struck him as downright disturbing. If Shelby hadn’t liked them that meant that they didn’t necessarily reflect the kind of thing that women really wished for. Now he could disregard anything that he’d read that seemed to cross the line.
    “So what happened?” Kirk asked.
    Ghoulie shrugged. “She pulled a book off the top shelf and gave it to me to read. But first she said that when I got to page one-fourteen I had to stop and tell her.”
    “And … was page one-fourteen a sex scene?” Kirk asked slyly.
    Ghoulie grinned. “Hell, yeah.”
    There was a moment of silence, then Dave asked. “How was the book otherwise?”
    “Otherwise?” Ghoulie repeated, as if he had only a vague recollection of the book after page 114. “Oh, it was great. It was about this guy who was a Navy SEAL, and he fell in love with a senator’s daughter, only he didn’t know that’s who she was. Then she got kidnapped by terrorists and he and his team had to go in and rescue her. It was a kickass story, actually. Lots of action. I learned a lot about SEALs, too.”
    “Seals like in the aquarium?” Kirk asked.
    “No, no. It stands for SEa, Air, and Land, because they work on all three. These guys are like supermen. Something like over ninety percent of everyone who starts the training doesn’t make it to the end, and the ones that do, they’re like the top