Page 28 of Falling for Carla

“Really? I take it you’ve never heard of a little team called the San Francisco Giants?” I challenged.

“You mean the team that’s won more World Series’ than the second and third place teams combined? Oh, no, wait, that’s the Yankees,” she crowed, laughing.

I liked joking around with her, especially since she was distracted enough that she was eating pretty well. She took another slice and then reached for her water. She hesitated and then picked up my bottle of beer, her lips closing around the longneck and taking a drink. She grinned, “Hope you don’t mind,” she said. “Thank God it’s not some kind of IPA crap that tastes like dead leaves and sadness.”

I laughed. “I’m glad you approve of my beer choice. Maybe next time I’ll choke down an IPA so it doesn’t get stolen.”

“Well, I could’ve asked but you would’ve said no.”

“There’s beer in the fridge if you want one,” I said.

“I wanted yours,” she said, and I felt myself wanting to growl. The incredible turn on of seeing her with her lips around that bottle made me shift uncomfortably on the couch. “Besides,” she said lightly. “I thought you’d be too wrapped up in the suspense of your rerun baseball game to notice I stole a drink.”

“You don’t have to steal anything of mine,” I said, “you just have to ask.”

“What if I ask for something you don’t want to give?” she said, and I felt myself in dangerous territory.

“Then I’d refuse you and you wouldn’t get a chance to steal it.”

“What if you gave me the key already?” she asked.

The flirting was too heavy, veering into a near-irresistible urge to grab her face in both my hands and kiss her breathless. I picked up my beer and took a drink to cool myself off and get my head together. It was too bad I remembered at just that moment that her lips had touched this bottle, her mouth had been on it seconds ago. I set it down in what I hoped was a casual way.

“Not to change the subject,” I said, “but what was the first baseball game you went to?”

“None. Zero. We didn’t go to crowded public events. It’s too easy for someone to grab you or knife you and get away.”

“None? You lived in New York your whole life and never saw the Yankees play live?”

“That’s right. I watched them on TV.”

“That makes me sad. You, their biggest fan, sitting by the screen in your team jersey watching them play on TV,” I said.

“I didn’t have a jersey either. My father thought that licensed clothing, anything with brands or logos or characters on them, was tacky. He got mad one time when my mom had an Hermes belt because the buckle was an H, their symbol. She had to get rid of it.”

I didn’t remark on that kind of controlling behavior, how it was a red flag for abuse, how it might be argued that it was already abusive. I just listened.

“So how many Yankees jerseys do you have now?”

“None. I never got over the idea of it being conspicuous to walk around advertising for some team or company. I guess I’ll get one eventually, maybe even see a game in person if the Lombardis would stop trying to kill me one of these days,” she said, going for sarcasm and missing the target, coming across rather plaintive. I nudged her shoulder with mine.

“This too shall pass,” I said.

“Are you a grandma? Only grandmas say stuff like that,” she bumped my shoulder right back.

“I never had anyone call me a grandma before. There’s been women that have called me Daddy,” I said.

She rolled her eyes, “That was bad,” she said, “that’s some real, ‘I only hang out with guys’ energy.”

“Are you saying women wouldn’t appreciate my humor?” I teased.

“I’m saying that women appreciate humor, when there is some. That was cringe.”

“Cringe is a verb, not an adjective.”

“Maybe it was in the old days,” she teased.

“Ouch. Savage.”

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