Fumbled (Playbook #2)(15)
“I’m sorry.” She puts the bottle on the table and grabs my hand. “You know I think Ace is the shit and you’re the best mom ever. But now TK knows you’re here. Are you going to tell him?”
I take my free hand and grab my bottle of wine. “I have no idea.”
Then I finish the bottle.
Six
“Damn, Poppy, it must be said, you wear your work uniform well, but nothing can compare to those jeans,” TK tells me as I walk toward him after I knock down all the bowling pins . . . again.
About an hour after the wine had magically vanished, TK texted me and told me to dress casual and to wear socks—a wardrobe request I found odd until I realized my feet would be in rented shoes. Punch Bowl Social is a restaurant/club/arcade/bowling alley I’ve wanted to try for years but never did on account of its being always packed and my having a nine-year-old.
It’s packed again tonight. However, when you’re TK Moore, they figure shit out.
I wish I wasn’t impressed . . . but I hate waiting and it was really freaking impressive.
“Oh no.” I shake my head, the laughter coming often and easily. “Don’t try and throw my game by complimenting me, and also, don’t be that guy.”
“What guy?” He raises his eyebrows and looks more adorable than a man with long hair and a beard should be able to. “What did I do?”
“The creepy guy.” I tug his beard, unable to keep my hands off it. “Who needs to shave and watches girls’ butts from behind his overgrown facial hair.”
He doesn’t pull away and I don’t let him go, so I’m able to see the glint in his eyes up close. “I lost track of how many times you just insulted me.”
The little touches started as soon as I sat my butt down in his blacked-out Range Rover. His fingers would graze my thigh after he changed the radio station. I’d grab his arm when he said something that made me laugh . . . which was all the time.
This is our second game of bowling and I’m kicking his butt. It’s almost unnerving how well this is going. I thought it’d be awkward, like at the Emerald Cabaret. But it turns out, when I’m dressed in regular clothes and we aren’t hanging out in a parking lot, things are just as easy as they used to be.
“Oh my god!” A shrill voice from over my shoulder causes me to jump and let go of his beard. I don’t have to turn around to see who the intruder is because she shoulders her way in between me and TK before I even have a chance to move. “TK Moore! You are seriously the only reason I watch football. Well”—she flips her long, clearly dyed blonde hair over her shoulder and it slaps me in the face—“your pants are.”
I start choking. Whether it’s from a stranger’s hair getting in my mouth or her desperate pickup line, I’m not sure. What I am sure of is it being enough to pull TK’s annoyed face from hers to mine.
“You all right there, Sparks?”
I shake my head. “There’s hairspray in my mouth and I don’t own hairspray.” I cringe and resist wiping my tongue with my fingers, considering they were just inside bowling ball holes.
I start to have a mini meltdown. I jump up and down, shaking my hands and head, whining with my tongue hanging out of my mouth. The perp is standing in front of me, not even acknowledging my presence, but lucky for me, TK turns around and grabs his glass of water, a stack of napkins, and comes to me.
He puts a hand to the back of my head. A hand, I should note, so large he palms the entire backside of my head, wild curls and all. I not only feel but see him shaking with laughter as he brings a napkin up to my mouth and wipes my tongue. I try to narrow my eyes in his direction, but I can’t. Because I’m laughing too.
“Here.” He hands me the glass of water after my tongue has been wiped clean. “Have a sip.”
I take the glass, but I don’t have a sip.
No.
I gulp every last drop down and then go get my Shirley Temple off the table and finish it too.
Dramatic?
Maybe.
But her hair was in my mouth!
“Ugh.” She groans. “It’s not like I don’t wash my hair.”
“Why are you still here?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at the Barbie wannabe.
I don’t intimidate her in the least, though; she just rolls her eyes and hands me her phone, the camera app open.
“Take a picture of me and TK.” She takes a step back and—showing way too many teeth—wraps her arms around his waist, dropping her makeup-covered face onto his light gray tee.
I don’t want to do it.
And I can feel it building from the depths of my soul.
I’m gonna lose my mind.
I mic-drop her phone and make my way into her personal space. “Look here, you stu—” I start, but don’t finish because TK has managed to pry the skank off him and is now pulling me away.
“We’re going to eat now,” he says over his shoulder. “Have a good night, ma’am.”
If I wasn’t so pissed we had to leave the bowling game I was winning, I would’ve laughed at her crestfallen face at being called “ma’am.”
I don’t laugh.
But I do scrunch my nose and stick my tongue out at her.
Whatever. We can’t always be winners.