Page 18 of The Pucking Wrong Man

Ari: Do we, though...do we?

Me: ...

I pocketed the phone in disgust...and amusement that my teammates were not taking my distress call as seriously as they should have been. That last “…” I sent showed them, though.

At least I think it did. I wasn’t quite sure yet what it meant. The meanings seemed to change in every conversation I found myself in with those guys.

The lights dimmed and Geraldine gripped my arm excitedly. Dang, she was freakishly strong for a seventy-five year old. “It’s starting!”

I did a fist pump of excitement for her, and she snorted in amusement. “Cheeky boy.”

The fact that I didn’t give her an exasperated eye roll showed how “unboylike” I was, I decided.

Music began and some women dancing in pink tutus started leaping across the stage. Oh, alright. Ballet. She’d never dragged me to one of these before. Maybe it would be interesting.

“Aren’t they wonderful?” Geraldine practically cooed.

I nodded exaggeratedly. The jumps and leaps were impressive.

But not quite doing it for me.

I really wished I had some snacks. I eyed Geraldine’s purse. She probably had something in there.

I just couldn’t trust it was from this decade.

The ballerinas finished, and I clapped along with the crowd absentmindedly, eyeing the program and checking my phone to see what time it was. These things couldn’t go for hours, right? People could only dance for so long.

Or at least that was my hope.

A troop of cloggers came on the stage. At least, I thought they were cloggers. I wasn’t exactly an expert on the art of clogging.

Was it called clogging?

I thought this was a ballet?

I glanced at the program.

Nope. Definitely called clogging.

I sent a text because this seemed noteworthy.

Me: Cloggers. That’s how much trouble I could get in with a seventy-five-year-old woman.

Ari: Is that some kind of kinky sex position, Hero?

Scoffing, I threw my phone back in my pocket.

I sat through five more performances, jerking awake in the middle of a particularly enthralling jazz routine.

Or at least they were using a lot of jazz hands, so I figured it must have been a jazz routine.

Or did jazz routines have anything to do with jazz hands?

My hands itched to text the guys again. I could see Ari knowing about jazz hands and jazz routines—but Geraldine was side-eyeing me like she could see in my mind.

Something about silver-haired women with spectacles had the ability to make you feel like an errant school boy.

Focus, Camden. Don’t let her down.

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