Charming as Puck(40)
“Or maybe we’re not looking hard enough.”
Or maybe we’re just not the kind of women who inspire men to fall that hard.
Maybe I should settle for being number two in Nick’s life.
It’s not like I’m going to get a better offer.
Twenty-Three
Nick
Losing sucks.
Losing a home game on a Friday night after losing a game on the road Thursday night sucks worse.
The worst part, though?
It’s my fucking fault again. We were up by one with four minutes left on the clock tonight. Want to guess what happened?
I happened.
I fucking happened.
“Shake it off, Murphy,” Zeus says as we head out of the dressing room after the reporters have finally cleared out. “Shit happens. We’ll get ‘em next time.”
Says the guy who did everything short of blocking the shots for me. Dude’s sporting a busted cheek and probably a few bruises in places he won’t talk about.
“Yeah,” I grunt.
Ares claps me on the shoulder. He’s in a purple T-shirt with a cartoon dinosaur trying to grab its own tail with its short little front legs, and a message that says to Always Tail Your Keep Up.
Dude has the weirdest wardrobe, but Felicity digs it, so whatever.
“Let it go,” he tells me.
On cue, the entire offensive line bursts into that song that gets stuck in my head for days on end.
When you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, so I sing along louder than all the rest until Coach pops his head out into the hall and threatens to institute mandatory cartoon princess movie night once a week if we don’t find better music.
Dude’s pretty relaxed most of the time, but his daughters’ taste in movies gets on his nerves sometimes.
We all split as we hit the parking garage, but Lavoie catches up with me before I get to my Jeep. “Grab a drink?” he asks.
No, I don’t want to grab a drink. I want to go home, to my condo, and text a friend who’ll read my mood and suggest a movie and then randomly whisper your feet are prettier than daisies in a garbage disposal because she has this hilariously twisted sense of humor that catches you totally off-guard just when you need a distraction from yourself.
But I don’t have a fucking friend tonight, because she’s ignoring my texts and calls again, and she wasn’t sitting in the seats I got her, but her cousin and her aunt were.
Nor do I have a home, unless you count my parents’ basement as home. And I haven’t had any luck in getting any leads on new apartments downtown either.
My real estate agent tells me I’ve been blacklisted. It’s going to take a fucking attorney to get me a place downtown.
“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s get a drink.”
Jaeger, Klein, Sokolov, and The Bear catch up to us, and we book two Lyfts to get the four blocks to Chester Green’s.
We could walk, but it’s not always safe on game night.
Win or lose.
The first thing I see when I walk into Chester Green’s is Kami. She’s bent over laughing at something, her brown sugar hair tied up in a messy bun, simple diamonds sparkling in her ears, a Thrusters jersey swallowing her slender shoulders. She’s sitting between her cousin and Maren at the round gold couch in the back corner. Two guys are smushed into either end, all vying for her attention with blatant lust in their eyes.
I swear the one in the Thrusty shirt is drooling.
My chest clenches like it’s a gong taking a bruising from a hammer.
The cousin. Muffy.
I need to pay her a visit.
Find out what it’ll cost me to get her to set me up on a date with Kami.
Lavoie grabs me by the back of the shirt and hauls me down the bar to where a half-dozen bunnies are already making room for us. We wade into the crowd, and the six of us are suddenly separated by a sea of perfume and jerseys so small, they’d fit better on toddlers than on full-figured women.
“Hey, honey.” A bottle blonde with a plunging V-neck pushes her boobs to my bicep. “Tough break tonight. You’ll get ‘em next time. I’m Anni with an I. Want me to make it all better?”
“I’ll help too,” a redhead says in a throaty voice on my other side, also now under boob attack, though so is her Thrusters’ shirt, which looks like it might pop under the strain of being too small to contain her knockers. “I’m Jami with an I and a heart for a dot.”
“I have a heart too.” Anni winks. “Two, but you can only see one if we go somewhere private.”
“Buy me a drink?” Jami bats her lashes at me. “I really like sex on the beach.”
Kami’s giggle carries through the room, and I look across the wooden bar to watch her in the mirror. She and Maren are whispering together. Reminds me of last New Year’s Eve, when we all got together at Mom and Dad’s place for Cards Against Humanity.
Some of the words out of her mouth that night—just because I use them doesn’t mean I expect to hear Kami say them.
Kami.
With an I.
And she’s all heart.
Fuck, such a sweet heart.
But other than a fuck-ton of gifts she doesn’t even seem to want, what the hell do I have to offer her? I don’t know the first thing about being a boyfriend, much less a husband and father. And I’m about to bring my home team down in flames.