Page 15 of The Thing About My Rival

“Anyway, on the way along the hallway out, we stumbled into each other, and he grabbed a door handle to steady himself. The door opened. And he…er…well, he pulled me in.”

“I knew this would be a good story,” Joyce says.

“It was a janitor’s closet. Pitch black in there when he shut the door. And he kisses me again. And things…er…progressed.”

“You banged Hugo Powers in a janitor’s closet?” Joyce shrieks it so loudly three people at a table on the other side of the pub turn our way.

“Joyce. Shhh.” Winston gives her a disapproving stare. “Save the girl’s blushes.”

“It’s okay,” Joyce says. “They’ll think I meant Mona.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t say no to that handsomeyoung man,” Mona says. “Even if it was in a janitor’s closet. Or any other form of closet.”

Joyce taps my arm again. “Keep going, my love.”

I’m definitely skipping the gruesome details. “Anyway, at one point he stumbled backward into the door and must have hit the handle because the door flew open and he fell out and landed flat on his back in the hallway. Fortunately at the feet of one of his friends.”

Definitely not telling them Hugo’s pants were undone. “His friend dragged him over to lean against the wall and he immediately fell asleep, slumped right there. Hugo, that is, not the friend.”

“So did you hook up with his friend instead?” Joyce is a horror.

“Hell no. Do I look like someone who would kiss a guyandhis friend in the same evening?”

She shrugs. “Never look a gift horse, and all that.”

“Anyway, his friend was really nice. Said he’d arrange a ride back to my hotel for me while Hugo took a nap.”

“I would hope he did,” Winston says. “I’m glad someone behaved like a gentleman and made sure you got back safely.”

“He did. Hugo, however, was not as much of a gentleman. I never heard from him again.”

“Maybe he lost your number.” Mona’s glass is always half full.

“He never asked for it. But he could easily have gotten a hold of me via work. Even if he was too drunk to remember that I’d told him I was at Dijon FCO, I’d told his friend too. He was definitely not smashed. And he was polite enough to kill the time waiting for my ride by asking me lots of questions about my job, so I’m sure he would have remembered.”

“Well, now’s your chance to get reacquainted.” Joyce jiggles her eyebrows.

“Absolutely not. Hugo Powers is a selfish ass of the highest order. And, in a cruel twist of fate, we now have to work together. And work together well enough to get the Commoners winning so I can keep this job. At least then, to some degree, it would mean I get to hold on to the club my father sold to strangers.”

Not just strangers, but four men with piles of influence and even bigger piles of money, but zero soccer experience apart from watching games from fancy corporate boxes at stadiums around the world.

Winston sucks in air between his teeth and shakes his head.

“Anyway”—I glance around at my audience of three—“that, ladies and gentleman, is the humiliating story of my encounter with Hugo Powers in the janitor’s closet of a Paris nightclub.”

And either he’s flat out refusing to acknowledge it ever happened or he was so drunk he doesn’t remember.

Not entirely sure which would be worse.

CHAPTER SIX

HUGO

“What the hell is that noise?” Tom’s voice says through my earpods.

“Me scraping the cremated remains of my dinner off the frying pan and into the bin.”

“You’recooking?” I might as well have suggested I’ve sprouted wings and am currently flapping my way over the Midwest en route to visit him in LA. “Has every restaurant and delivery service in Boston closed down?”

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