“Donnie . . .” she started.
“Marina,” he interrupted. “I know what I want. I want you. I will have you. Eventually.”
“You are unbelievable!” She feigned outrage.
He grinned at her. “Just wait and see.” She just smiled at him. He knew it was true. She was afraid it was true. “You say I don’t know you very well. Can I ask you some questions that I’ve been wanting to ask you but never found the right time?”
“Sure. If I get to do the same thing.”
“Quid Pro Quo Ms. Walker.”
“I get to go first.”
“Deal. Ask away.”
“Do you really come up with your own twitter words of wisdom every day?”
He laughed hard. “That’s your question?” She nodded. “Yes, I do. I like to encourage people to think positively at the start of their day. Some days…I struggle with it, but it’s not like I have a book of encouraging phrases with me or anything.” He paused. “But this means you are on twitter, right?”
She said nothing. “Do I follow you?” She still said nothing. “Why aren’t you answering me?”
“I feel pretty certain you had a different question in mind than asking if I’m on twitter…”
“Shit. You’re right. Hold on.” He pulled out his phone and touched some buttons…it looked as if he were scrolling thru something. “No, I’m not following you already.” He checked his mentions. “I think I found you. ‘marinagirlie says I swear it looked like @donniewahlberg just blew a kiss at me, but I know it was to the whole crowd on this side of the stage.’ Let’s just check your previous tweets. He laughed reading them. “Yeah, this is you. You are followed now. And let me just reply to that last tweet real quick.” She just shook her head in disbelief. “@marinagirlie no, that kiss was just for you ;-). And send.” He put the phone back in his pocket ignoring the text messages from the guys wondering why he wasn’t at the party. “Now let me see. I know. Why didn’t you come to our concert when we were in Memphis?”
“Honestly, I had a ticket. I was planning to go. But one of my nurses got sick and I ended up taking her call that weekend. If I had gone to the concert, you would have never met me.”
“Thank God your nurse got sick!”
“My turn. How long do you work out every day to maintain the Walhberg Abs?”
He laughed. “During the tour, not more than 30 or 45 minutes. But when I’m just acting, at least an hour a day. I don’t want to disappoint the fans. The whole group tries to stay in good shape. Danny kind of helps make a routine for us. Different stuff for if we are wanting to drop a few pounds or just maintain things and tone up. He’s kinda great like that.”
She got up and got some bottled water out of the minifridge for them. “All this talking makes a girl thirsty.”
“I know what you mean. So you mentioned having been married before.” The look she got on her face let him know that this was a very sensitive subject. “Why did you get divorced?”
“We didn’t get divorced.” She looked at him. “It’s complicated. He got sick. It was after he went to Iraq with the Air National Guard and came home. I don’t know what happened to him there, but he was never the same. I don’t really want to talk about him. Let’s just leave it at he got sicker and more and more depressed. He eventually killed himself after being home a year. That was almost 6 years ago now.”
“I’m so sorry Marina.” He crossed the room to where she was and pulled her into a hug. After a few minutes they went and sat back down, but on the bed sitting across from each other. “I know how hard it is losing someone that’s just a friend to suicide. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you.”
“His mother has never forgiven me. She said that, as a nurse, I should have known what he was going to do. She said I was almost happy when he died. She has no idea how many times I sat there with him and he held a gun to his head. Or how many times I took the gun away from him. I sold them all at one point so he wouldn’t have access to them. He was so mad at me. He ended up buying another gun from a neighbor and using it. The neighbor had no idea that he was so…depressed.” She paused. “When someone decides to take their own life, they don’t give warning signs or cries for help. The one’s that are serious about it just do it.”
“I don’t have any idea what to say. Who found him?”
“I did. I had worked a night shift and came home. We lived out in the country then and people were always shooting guns, so a gunshot in the middle of the night wasn’t that unusual.” She took a deep breath to clear her head. “I called 911 and in time, I got on with my life. I sold the house and moved to where I live now. I had about a million hobbies for the first year so that I wouldn’t stop and think about it. But I gradually got myself refocused on what was important to me: Nursing and my volunteer work.” She suddenly jumped up out of Donnie’s arms and off the bed. “Crap. I forgot to reschedule that meeting with Dr. Land. He might kill me.” She looked over at him. “Do you mind if I send an email really quick to let him know I’m out of town?”
“Of course not,” he leaned back and relaxed on the edge of the bed while she grabbed her phone from her purse. He didn’t realize that she had deliberately changed the subject on him.
“oh…wow…” he heard her say and looked up at her. “I may have to make my twitter profile private. You just created a follow frenzy. I think I have 75 new follower notifications from twitter.” He just laughed.
“Yeah…you’re gonna have to figure out how you want to handle questions about me in the future. People will ask if you know me.”
“What are you gonna say when people start asking you about me?” She walked back over and sat down next to him again on the bed.
He sat back up. “Well, for now, I’m gonna just establish that I’ve met someone I’m interested in. When you get comfortable with me in your life, I won’t hesitate to tell people about you.” He leaned over and kissed her. “However, kissing you out in public might not be a good idea for a while.” He took a deep breath. “I‘ve known you for about a minute of my life and I know that I want to spend as much time as I possibly can spend with you. I love being with you. I know you can’t say that you feel the same way. But there are people that come into your life and you just know that they are meant to be part of your life. I know that with you. I can feel it.” He leaned closer to her as if he were going to kiss her again. “And I know that you feel it too, even if you can‘t say it yet.” He could almost see a wall come down in her eyes.
“It completely rattles me that I just told you about the way my husband died. You are kind of like everything a girl ever wants to dream for, but she grows up and finds out it doesn’t exist in the real world. You’re attractive. You’re funny. You’re kind. You’re honest to a fault.” She paused and smiled. “You talk dirty to me but so that no one else can hear you. You make me feel like the center of your world, even though I can’t possibly be. I never expected to even want to let another man into my life like that. But then you barged into my life and you’re so…what’s the word I need here?”
“Sex-rated?” he offered.
“Oh, no you didn’t! You can’t steal my word.” She playfully hit him on the arm.
He grabbed her hands and held them. “But I thought you and your friends came up with it just to describe me?”
“I never said such a thing, Donnie. You are delusional.”
He started tickling her. “I’m delusional, huh? Well, one way or another, I’m gonna hear you scream tonight.” He had her pinned on the bed and was tickling her. She was laughing and saying “Donnie, please!” over and over. “I love the way you scream my name.” He leaned over her and stared into her eyes. “I look forward to hearing you scream my name when I’m buried inside you, and when I’m tasting you.” He stopped and considered the position they were in on the bed. “So there’s no sex, because we aren’t married. But Marina, exactly where are the boundaries for this relationship?” He slid his hand up her leg and up into her shorts. He just kept staring into her eyes. “Do I get to at least do this?” He could already feel that her underwear were damp and just pushed them out of the way and gently started to touch her folds. “I mean, this isn’t technically sex…”
“Donnie, as much as I really, really want…” he eased a finger inside her. “Oh God,” she whispered. He was watching her face closely. Her body was starting to respond to his touch, but he could see in her eyes that she really wasn’t ok with what he was doing. Even if she liked it. A lot.

He reluctantly stopped what he was doing. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I should stop. You may like what I’m doing, but I don’t think you trust me enough to do this. I don’t want you to regret anything.” He smiled and leaned down and just touched his lips to hers and whispered. “Even if it makes you feel good at the time.” He had eased his hand out of her pj shorts and then he sat up. Even though his back was to her, she saw him lick his fingers. Those same fingers.
“So,” he said after a minute and turned back around, “can we continue our question and answer stuff?”
She put her hand over her eyes and sat up. She finger combed her hair and answered. “I could definitely use a distraction.”
“I’m not distracting enough for you,” he teased?
“I need a distraction from you. And your hands. And must you even smell great after a concert? Seriously, can you please do something unattractive?”
He wasn’t sure if she was joking or serious. He chose to get her to elaborate. “Define ‘unattractive’ for me.”
She sighed. “Can you just not do anything that makes me want you? For 5 minutes or so?”
That he could understand. He felt the same exact way about her. Just being in the room with her made him want her. “Should I leave you alone and come back later?” he offered.
“I don’t want you to go yet. Surely there is something we could do that wouldn’t cause me to lose my mind.”
“So what were you supposed to meet with this Dr. Land about?”
Her brain scrambled. She looked over at him. He knew her better than she had realized. He knew that work made her focus and relax. “Dr. Land is the medical director for the HIV clinic at the hospital. I do some education for the patients. I’ve been trying to help them get additional grants for medications for some of the patients. Those patients who would take their meds and live full lives even with HIV often can’t afford their meds. It’s very frustrating.” Marina was all back to her usual state of composure again.
“Do they do fundraisers,’ he asked. He was genuinely interested now.
“They have been talking about it. Actually my meeting was to discuss a possible fundraiser. I used to help out with the Trauma Center‘s fundraisers. Thought I was out of that until you showed up. ”
“You and Danny should spend some time together. Maybe you two could swap ideas about fundraisers and help each other out.”
“That’s a great idea. Can you give him my number and tell him we need to talk?”

“Sure, I never mind giving my girlfriend’s number to my bandmates that have biceps bigger than my thigh….” He started laughing.
“I am not your girlfriend, Donnie.” She dared him to argue with her.
“So kissing and making out on a bed is something you do with guy’s you are just friends with?” He was amused by the outraged look on her face. “I need more friends like you…” he teased.
“Ok, so we might be more than just friends. Maybe. I can tell you that you really don’t have to worry about Danny with me. Danny’s kinda scary to me. I like muscles…but he’s got so many.”
“He’s a big teddy bear.”
“Like you?” she teased.
“We’re all kinda soft-hearted. We’ve been through so much together. Danny’s kind of the one of us who see’s the big picture the clearest.”