Page 14 of Love You
“What up?” He gave her an efficient once-over and grinned. Maybe it was his imagination but she seemed to have dressed up today. White pants that came to her ankles and a tight short-sleeved sweater that showed off her assets. Instead of her signature ponytail, she’d left her hair loose in bouncy curls around her shoulders. “That your picking-out-our-wedding-centerpieces outfit?”
She responded by giving him the finger. Nice. “TJ says VIPs from FlashTag are coming this weekend and we’re supposed to show them around. I thought I should line up some outings.”
He liked to be more chill about these things, go wherever the mood led them. “Uh, yeah, sure. But save room for spontaneity.”
“What does that mean?”
He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and fiddled with Google until he foundMerriam-Webster. “‘The condition of being spontaneous; spontaneous behavior or action.’”
She gave him a stony glare. “I know the definition, Win. I’ll go ahead and plan stuff.” She started to walk away and he called her back.
“You want to hang out tonight? Maybe go to Old Glory.”
She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Am I like your sponsor now? You know, as long as I’m with you, you won’t fall off the wagon and have sex.”
He chuckled, giving her sweater another look-see. “Works for me. We can walk over after work.” Without giving her a chance to turn him down, he filled his arms with personal floatation devices and made his way to the back door.
She was better company than his boring self, which was all he had these days now that his brothers had shacked up with the loves of their lives. Normally, he would’ve taken off, gone camping or traveling. The surf was good this time of year in the Mentawai Islands. But it was GA’s second busiest season next to winter when the extreme skiers arrived. And with this FlashTag deal looming over them, he had to stick around.
He’d promised himself he wouldn’t screw this up. In the past, his follow-through hadn’t been the greatest. TJ liked to say that everything came too easy to Win but that’s not the way he saw it. Sure, superficial opportunities, like women who wanted sex and arm candy, presented themselves more often than they did for a lot of other guys. But that shit wasn’t real life. Real life had actually been harder for Win than most people knew, including his brothers. A learning disability had made the scholastic part of school intolerable so Win had tried to make up for it by being good at sports. And being the “popular kid” had helped get around the embarrassment of barely being able to read.
And then making the Olympic team happened. But the rigorous training schedule didn’t work well with Win’s chill schedule and he dropped out, which he’d never stopped hearing the end of. The truth was he hadn’t felt right about getting the spot after TJ scored too low to make the team. The Olympics had been his brother’s dream, not his. Win had despised the cutthroat competitive nature of being on the circuit. It sucked the joy out of skiing, a pastime that in a lot of ways had saved Win. You didn’t have to read or write to perform a perfect aerial.
* * *
At seven o’clock he met Darcy at Old Glory. She’d snagged two places at the bar and was still wearing her white pixie pants so he figured she’d stayed at GA late as she often did. He had gone home after rafting to shower the river off him and change into jeans. The place, covered from ceiling to floor in American flags, wasn’t especially crowded since it was a Tuesday night. He filled a basket with peanuts from one of the oak barrels scattered around the restaurant before taking his place next to Darcy.
Boden gave him a head nod, then ambled over to take his drink order. “You want a dinner menu?”
Win slid the menu down to Darcy. “You interested in eating?”
Boden looked between them. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you two were here together.”
“It’s a work thing,” Darcy said.
Win couldn’t tell whether she was embarrassed to be seen with him or if Boden had assumed Win was there alone. Or not with Darcy.
“We’ll share an order of chicken wings and sliders,” Win said. “And a Sierra Nevada for me and whatever Darcy wants.”
She got a Coke and when Boden left to put in their orders she said, “I thought you were starting your diet today.”
“You think I need one?” He ran his hands down his chest in a cheesy porn flick way and she choked on her soda.
“You know you don’t. How does it feel to be a perfect specimen of manhood?”
He huffed out a breath. “The truth, it’s getting tiresome. What do you got there?” He nudged his head at the tablet sitting next to her on the bar.
“I thought we could make a few lists for this weekend.”
He groaned. The last thing he wanted to do after a long day of work was more work. “Don’t you just ever have fun? Come on, I’ll teach you how to make a perfect bank shot.” He hopped off the stool and tugged her arm.
“Our food’s coming. And I’m not good at pool.”
“How do you know if you don’t try?” That’s what the tutor used to tell him when he’d struggled with words and letters moving on the page and didn’t want to learn to read.
“I just know,” she said. “Why all of sudden am I your new playmate? It’s not like we have anything in common, oh, except for the fact that you’ve sworn off sex and I’m clearly unappealing to you.”
“Stop with that already, would you? If I didn’t know better I’d think you had bad self-esteem.” He snapped a peanut shell in half and popped the nuts in his mouth. “Ever since I told you about Britney, you’ve intrigued me.”
