Page 7 of Summer Catch

Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you first. It was a diaper. A FULL diaper.

Ew. I thought it was going to be a used condom, or something like that.

Kieran laughed out loud. A used condom? Oh my sweet summer child, those are a regular occurrence. Thus, why I have the cleaning crew.

Just for post-Disco Night?

That’s usually the wild night, other than the weekends of course.

Kieran popped into the bathroom, peed, brushed his teeth and flipped the shower water on to heat up. When he was out of the shower, there was a reply from Jon.

Are any of your nights NOT wild?

Kieran considered this. Wednesdays, he said. He did wonder why Jon asked, but when he only sent back a thumbs-up, Kieran wasn’t sure what to think. Was he just curious? Or making a deeper point about how busy and popular the Pirate’s Booty had gotten? Which . . .Jon didn’t need to. Kieran was very familiar with the rise in popularity his bar was experiencing. Or, the best possibility, which was that Jon wanted to come in on a night when Kieran wasn’t too busy to hang out with him?

A few hours later, he was just finishing up the prep for the evening, shoving containers of sliced limes and lemons into the fridge under the counter, when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

Good news, Jon said, guess who’s a Condor as of today?

Kieran smiled. That good guy AKA Thor.

LOL. Yep. Feeling solid about this one.

You should be, it’s a great signing. He’s gonna fit right in.

Maybe not in the old locker room, but the new one we’re building? Yeah, I think so. I thought so this morning, too, but had a momentary freakout.

Are head coaches supposed to have momentary freakouts?

Shhhh. That’s gonna be another one of our little secrets.

Kieran told himself again he wasn’t thrilled from the top of his head to the bottom of his sneakers that he and Jon had secrets they shared now—but he knew he was lying.

Someday I’m gonna have enough to get you here on Disco Night dressed up like Donna Summer, he teased.

Someday.

Kieran’s pulse accelerated even as he told it, very firmly, to decelerate. That hadn’t been a promise. Jon had just been teasing, the same way Kieran had been teasing him. That was all.

Next time you show up, I’m gonna know what you’re drinking, he texted, without really thinking about it. Because surely that had to be true. Surely the next time—and there had to be a next time, right?—that Jon showed up at the bar, Kieran would look at him and know exactly what he should be drinking. His superpower could hardly fail him now, not when he was beginning to know the guy this well.

Except, he’d totally forgotten that he’d never told Jon about it.

You will? *puzzled emoji*

Uh, well, yeah, that’s kind of a thing, actually. A superpower thing. MY superpower. Like yours is coaching really great and ferreting out the good guys from the bad.

And it’s what exactly? Knowing what a person wants to drink? Like you’re a booze psychic?

Uh, not quite like that. More like, people order shit they really don’t want, to impress people, or to pretend like they’re a different person than they really are. I know what they should be drinking. What, deep down, they really want to drink.

Kieran knew the question was coming the moment he pressed send.

So what should I have had to drink the first time we met? I remember you poured me a beer. A really good beer, actually.

He seriously considered lying—something he didn’t want to do, not at all—and telling Jon that yes, that was exactly what he should have been drinking. That the beer he’d poured him had been the one identified by his superpower.

But he’d hardly forgotten, and how could he forget, that when Jon had appeared at the bar that afternoon, his superpower had refused to cooperate for the first time ever.

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