Page 54 of Coach
Inner Mateo #4 (Hopeful Fool): But maybe . . . maybe he’ll stay. Maybe he’ll laugh. Maybe he’ll like your friends. Maybe he’ll see you here, weird and awkward and very obviously sweating through your shirt, and decide you’re kind of wonderful.
“Need a towel?” Todd asked, glancing at my pits.
I groaned. “Please tell me this gets easier.”
“Coming out, dating, or trivia night?”
“All of it.”
He gave me a warm, gentle smile. “Eventually. But not before it gets a whole lot messier.”
Then he turned to yell at a bachelor party whose honoree was trying to climb onto the pool table. He looked about as drunk as I wanted to be in that moment.
I sipped again and looked at the door.
Only twenty-six minutes to go.
I had just convinced myself not to text Shane a panicked “don’t come, I have diarrhea” when the front door burst open like a musical number was about to begin.
“Matty’s here, sluts!” came a singsong shout loud enough to make Todd duck behind the espresso machine and the bachelor party cheer like Beyoncé had entered the building.
And there he was—Matty. Five-foot-nine of manicured eyebrows, designer jeans, platinum hair, and enough energy to power a small city. He spotted me instantly, shrieked like I was Madonna, and bolted across the room, arms wide.
“No—Matty, don’t—” I started, but it was too late.
I was engulfed in a cloud of cologne and fabulousness. He wrapped his arms around me like I’d just returned from war, then planted kisses on both cheeks with dramatic flair.
And then licked my left cheek.
“Did you just lick me?”
“It’s the European hello, darling,” he said, grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
“You’re not supposed to use tongue during the European hello. It’s quick pecks, that’s all.”
He waved a hand like I was being pedantic. “Omar licks me, why can’t I do unto others?”
Omar, who had followed behind at a much more reasonable pace, strolled up with a grin and a full-on “yes, I do” shrug.
“That’s different,” I said. “You’re together, and, from what we’ve been told, Omar’s tongue is a religious experience. Yours feels like a damp stampede.”
“You’re just a pouty pants,” Matty said, releasing me and flouncing onto the barstool beside mine. “Hi Todd! We’ll take two ‘Daddy Issues’ and a shot of tequila with emotionally unavailable men in it.”
Todd gave him a thumbs-up without turning around, though his shoulders shook.
Omar took the stool on my other side and raised an eyebrow. “So. Shane.”
Oh no.
Matty gasped. “Oh my God, yes. Shane. You invited Shane? To this? To meet us?”
“I did,” I said, sipping my beer like it was poison and salvation in one. Then I caught myself. “No! I didn’t invite him to meet you . . . I mean . . . I did . . . he will . . . but that wasn’t . . . fuck.”
“Set aside the ice-bath-shock of meeting our group, you decided to bring him to Jockstraps? For a second date?” Omar asked.
“Is he okay with homoerotic sports kitsch?” Mattyadded, glancing around at the framed jockstraps and theRocky Horrorsingalong playing over the speakers. On a whim, he reached back and pretended to cradle the not-very-well-hidden balls of the nearly naked baseball player in the frame behind him.
“He said yes.”
