Page 59 of Coach
He leaned across the table with his index finger pointed like an angry nun, and said, “Elliot, you are functionally a dam and Mateo is the river of destiny. Get out of his way before I toss my beer and lick it off your ridiculously hard body.”
The bushy brows of the black-haired guy beside him bunched into one giant caterpillar, as he snapped, “Hey, you’re mine. No licking the monster.”
The blond smiled, batted his eyelashes, and patted his arm, “Babe, you can lick, too. It’ll be like an Elliot popsicle. So tasty!”
The nerd with the cards—Mike, if I remembered right from the fair—looked up. “There will be no licking ofmypopsicle!”
“Aww, popsicle pooper,” the blond said.
The mountain—Elliot—blinked, turned to Mateo, and finally stood with a groan like tectonic plates shifting.
I stopped a foot from the table. Elliot squared to face me. For a half second, I thought he might try to scare me off.
“Holy shit.” The blond’s voice shattered whatever was happening between us. “He’s bigger than you, El, and you’re freakin’ huge.”
The others mumbled their agreement, awe threading their grunts.
Mateo popped out from the booth with a flustered exhale, shoved Elliot with all his weight, dislodging him from our predator standoff, and looked up at me, smiling like he’d just been caught sneaking into an adult toy store by his favorite priest. His eyes darted to my chest, my face, my hands—then away again.
I stood there, hands hovering somewhere between my front pockets and my sides, frozen with the worst indecision tree of all time. Stevie had not prepared me for this moment.
My mind reeled.
Do I hug him?
Is a handshake weird? Too formal?
A kiss? Too much? Are kisses a thing we do now? Did we ever do kisses?
He reached out slightly.
So did I.
We both hesitated.
I stepped forward at the same time he shifted to the side.
And then—
“TONGUE! TONGUE! TONGUE!” The blond shrieked a chant like a frat boy possessed by the ghost of a Vegas showgirl. The others joined in, slamming the table in time with their words. Before I could think, tables around us filled with guys began doing the same.
The whole bar had turned to watch.
Mateo turned bright red. Even his ears glowed like Rudolph’s nose.
I tried to blink, to process, to not crawl under the table.
Mateo looked up at me, his eyes wide and pleading. It was strange. I swear I could hear a tiny voice whisper, “Please don’t bolt, please don’t hate this, please still like me.”
Something tugged at the corners of my mouth.
Not a full smile.
Just . . . the ghost of one.
“Should we do the European hello?” I asked, deadpan.
He groaned. “God, no, Mattyused tongue, and I’m still recovering my dignity.”
