Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,91

it was the fun of sitting down. When you have a bunch of police, or certain types of military, sitting down in public is harder than it sounds. The booth was against the wall, so that was good for everyone, but there were pros and cons to it all. Sitting in the middle of the booth meant your back was securely against a wall and you had a clear view in all directions; the farther from the center you were, the more easy viewing you lost on one side or another. Of course, if you were in the middle and there was an emergency, you were trapped behind the table. You couldn’t run either toward the emergency or away from it, depending on what was happening. You were sort of committed to doing something from where you were sitting. On the ends of the booth, you could move easily if you needed to, but you had your back toward one side of the room or the other. Did you keep your field of view and sacrifice maneuverability, or lose the view and maintain your ability to move? I expected that sitting arrangements would be complicated. What I hadn’t expected was for Olaf to complicate them even more. I shouldn’t have been caught off guard; that I had been meant I was in a certain amount of denial about him and me.

Livingston went back to the center of the booth, which surprised me until I noticed that the table moved freely as he scooted into his seat. Obviously the table wasn’t bolted down, which gave him an option if he had to move fast. He could just tip the table over and get out. Despite what you see in movie shoot-outs, most tables won’t stop bullets from hitting you, because they are soft cover, not hard cover. Hard cover is what it sounds like, something so hard or dense that it will absorb or block bullets before they hit you.

Kaitlin slid in on Livingston’s left side, and Newman slid in on his right. I started to slide in beside Newman, and it would have been normal for Olaf to sit beside Kaitlin on the other side so we’d be even, but he slid in beside me. I scooted as close to Newman as I could get, or thought I had until Olaf moved all the way in and suddenly Newman’s sidearm was digging into my hip. I was also in danger of hitting my head against Olaf’s shoulder.

“Can someone please move down? I’m getting squished,” I said.

Everyone else moved down enough for me not to be in danger of getting stabbed by Newman’s holstered weapon. I moved over enough so that my face wasn’t pressed in against Olaf’s shoulder or any other part of him. Of course, I could only go so far before I bumped into Newman again, and I was not going to make them all scoot down again. I had enough room—we all had enough room—I tried to convince that part of me that wanted to crawl under the table and go to the other side of Kaitlin, but I wasn’t a child. I could do this with a modicum of cool. Sure, I could, and I told that tight feeling in the pit of my stomach that it could fuck off and let me be a grown-up.

I really expected Olaf to push the chance to sit close to me, but he didn’t try to put his hip or leg up against mine. Even with him behaving himself, it felt tight. I think it was the height difference, and his shoulders, though not as broad as Livingston’s, still crowded me. Olaf seemed to realize that he was a little close because he raised his arm and put it across the back of the booth. He wasn’t trying to be smooth or even aggressive; his shoulder was just at a bad height for us to be this close. With his arm up, we fit better. The span of his arm was so long that his hand went all the way past Newman to the edge of Livingston’s shoulder. God, Olaf was just so big. Even if he hadn’t been creepy, he was over my height preference for dating. I didn’t like to feel this physically overwhelmed just sitting next to someone.

“I don’t have cooties, I promise,” Kaitlin said. She tried to make a joke, but I saw her eyes flick to Olaf, then to me. She was doing some