Page 7 of Striker

My confidence and groin are both bruised as I collect myself off the dirt of the baseball diamond. Minor bruises — you don’t go through boot camp with a bunch of hyper-masculine idiotic eighteen-year-old boys without learning how to take a blow to the crotch — but still, bruises.

Dani and Morgan leave immediately. Smokey and I leave once the pain in my crotch dulls enough that riding a bike and having the engine vibrate between my legs won’t feel like taking a thousand tiny hammer blows to my cock. He leaves me with a reminder: “You owe me, Owen. I can’t let her go to this thing without someone to watch her, so you need to get her to agree.”

I don’t break my word; to my country, to my club, to my family. When I make a promise, I fucking keep it.

It only takes a look to remind Smokey of that fact.

Then we part in the parking lot of the softball fields, and I go home to nurse my crotch and a plan.

The lights are off in the living room when I pull into the driveway and there’s the flickering glow of the television filling the darkness. Grandma Eileen is seated on the sofa in front of the television, bathed in the electric light of some police serial. I enter quietly, slipping through the entrance hallway and passing the opening to the living room, hoping to get to the kitchen before she notices me.

“Oh, that Tom Selleck. That mustache. That bulging, boisterous, magnificent mustache. Those muscles. And at his age, too, oh my. He might’ve gained a few pounds, but he’s still got it. It might give him a coronary — he’s seventy-eight, even if he doesn’t look it — but a night with him, oh yes, what a way to go.”

“Grandma, I’m home,” I say out loud, completely giving up my plan to be quiet. Mainly because I need to say something before she narrates out the entire scenario of how she wants to die in bed with Tom Selleck.

This isn’t the first time this has happened.

And I still don’t know if she’s doing it because she can’t contain herself, or if she’s choosing not to contain herself in order to drive me out. Every time we discuss it — which is a fucking awkward thing to talk about, asking your grandma why she talks about a sordid sexual suicide with Tom Selleck — she plays coy and says she just can’t help herself and I can stay as long as I like, because she knows more than a little of what I went through. Not just because I told her about my time, but because my grandfather went through the shit as well.

But then, often that same night as we discuss it, that damn show comes on —fucking syndication— and if I leave the room, I get to hear new, graphic ways to use a man’s mustache.

It sure is an inspiration to keep my face just as clean-shaven as the Corps demanded. Every morning, and some nights, too, I’ve got that razor in hand.

“Owen, I didn’t know you were there. Are you limping?”

“Yeah, give me a second,” I answer, heading into the kitchen and grabbing a package of frozen peas from the freezer and then taking a seat on the sofa while I ice myself.

“Well, you can keep those peas for yourself from now on,” she says, raising a disapproving eyebrow at me.

“They’re still in the package. They’re fine.”

“I will not eat any peas warmed by your crotch, Owen. That is a line I will not cross.”

“As long as we’re talking about lines, grandma, why don’t we draw a firm one in front of dying via Tom Selleck-delivered orgasms?”

Her cheeks color and her mouths shut. My cheeks burn a bit, too, because why the fuck am I talking about orgasms and crotch peas with my grandmother?

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“Danielle Green happened. I asked her out, and her rejection was more firm than most people dole out.”

“Impossible. I can’t believe somebody doesn’t like you, dear.”

I roll my eyes. I’ve been shot at enough to know that’s not true.

“There are plenty of fucking people out there who don’t like me, grandma.”

“OK, yes, if you want the truth. I know what you’re up to and I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who hate your guts, Owen. You’re an O’Connell, and the O’Connell men have always provoked powerful reactions. They kicked your father out of six different schools for fighting, which meant your grandfather and I had to move around a lot, even more than normal for a military family. And your grandfather, Gerald, he was no Prince Charming either.” She shakes her head, pausing, then a slow smile spreads across her face. “Well, I should say most of the time he wasn’t. When he wanted to, oh, that man could charm the pants off a… well, a young college girl from Costa Oscura who never thought she’d be riding a…”

I interject to save myself from something I can never unhear.

“I know dad was an asshole. And I know Grandpa Jerry could be an asshole, too. But this is Dani we’re talking about. You remember how she felt about me?”

As much as it hurt my groin to have her reject me by blasting a baseball into my crotch, it hurt my pride, too. Now that my dignity’s on the line, I’m more determined than ever to get Dani to say yes.

“Oh, how could I not? That willowy young woman followed you and Dixon around like a little puppy dog, watching you with those wide eyes and chasing in your wake.”

“So why would she have said no?”

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