Page 37 of The Prince and the Puck
“And this is Derek. Master of the obvious,” I told her.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m Derek.” The idiot looked at me over Lizzy’s head, his eyebrows shooting up.
“I know Derek,” she said.
I didn’t have time to answer because Arndt was there next, moving behind the bar to stand in front of us. “Hello Deck. Hello date of Deck.”
“You know Lizzy,” I reminded him.
“Nope, I don’t. Because Lizzy works for the team, so you couldn’t be dating her without breaking some rules,” he pointed out. “So this must be someone else. We’ll call her… Tizzy.”
“That’s insane,” Lizzy said.
“But not against the rules,” Arndt quipped. “What can I get you, Tiz?”
Lizzy sighed and asked for a scotch, neat. A couple of the guys whistled their appreciation for her order.
“Deck?” My teammate asked.
“He likes pink wine,” Lizzy said quickly, eliciting a laugh from the guys who were eavesdropping.
“I’ll take a beer,” I suggested. “It’s a little early for pink wine.”
Arndt produced a beer for me and then gave me a meaningful look, shaking his head.
It was true, dating Lizzy could get me in trouble. But I found that compared to the warm certainty I felt when I thought about her, I wasn’t too worried about the rest. Besides, I was on Coach’s good side now.
For the most part, the team was well behaved, asking questions about her work and thanking her for what she was doing, trying to get the team a little more exposure. The other women at the party were welcoming too, and at one point, Lizzy went to play ping pong with a group of ladies across the patio.
“You’re playing with fire, huh?” Panther Aspen pulled up a chair next to me. “Is it worth the burn?” His words were laced with suggestion, and they made me want to sock him in the mouth.
“None of your business, you know?” I sipped my beer.
“Coach know about this?”
“No, and he doesn’t need to,” I suggested.
“Hard secret to keep, man.” He was right, but I wasn’t going to waste time worrying.
“I’m just trying to help her get a decent story here,” I told him. “Get close enough to us to really capture the spirit of the team in her PR efforts.”
“So you fucking her is a public service?”
“No, that’s not what I meant…” I shook my head, unwilling to engage in whatever little game Panther was trying to pull me into. It was a relief when John Samuels slid into the seat on my other side.
“Hey, how’s it going?” His warm smile always did something to ease whatever tensions I’d been feeling. John was a truly good guy.
“Things are good,” I told him. “Just a little bit of crazy going on at home, and a lot of pressure this season here.”
He nodded. “I get the pressure. You know, you don’t talk about home much.”
I met his eyes. Sometimes over the past couple years, I’d wanted to tell somebody the truth. Especially John. I just had a feeling he’d understand, that he might even have some good advice for me. But I couldn’t do that. “Yeah, my childhood was… different.”
“Different how?”
Shit. Why didn’t I just blow this off? “Like… I was just carrying a lot of expectations as a kid. Family stuff. And then I ended up getting raised by an uncle kind of far away from my parents.”
John’s smile dropped. “That sounds rough, Deck.”
