Feta isn’t a real Greek letter.
I don’t always understand the bunnies, but I’m sure they know what they’re doing.
Connor Klein, our backup goaltender, and Rooster Applebottom, a defenseman the Thrusters acquired late last season from Oklahoma, are both breaking curfew too.
Rooster has a bunny on each arm at the bar, and Klein’s sucking face with a bottle of whiskey on a couch. He started tonight, which means he most likely won’t play again for a week or two unless something happens to Murphy, our first-string goalie.
“Jaegs! Whaddup, sucka?” Klein grins at me and salutes me with his bottle. “Coach’s gonn’ kick our ashes t’morrow.”
Yep.
Probably will.
“Worth it,” I grunt.
It’s the party line. Gotta use it, or they’ll figure out there’s something wrong with me.
Rooster and his bunnies amble over. “You can buy energy drinks, but you can’t buy memories.” He thrusts his hips, wiggles his brows and then jerks his head toward the stairwell to the apartment I just vacated. “You boys wanna watch and see how it’s done, you know where to find us.”
Rooster Applebottom is the teammate we love to hate. All ego. All athlete.
The first to pay for everyone’s meal and leave a three-hundred percent tip, and the first to throw himself in front of a puck to deflect it before it gets to Murphy or Klein at the net.
Also the first to announce he has the biggest dick of us all.
Coach knew what he was doing when he asked for that guy to fill some very big skates that retired at the end of last year.
One of the women giggles. The other’s eyes flare wide and she bites her lip.
“Don’t you worry, darlin’,” Rooster whispers to her loudly enough for all of us to hear. “I’m actually lockin’ the door so they can’t hear us talkin’ about all them musicals you want to tell me about.”
He tips his cowboy hat to us. “Evenin’, gentlemen. I’ll be skating circles around you in practice in another few hours.”
I look at Klein as Rooster and his dates head to the door.
His mouth’s hanging open, head tipped back, while he snores.
“Screw this.” I steal his whiskey bottle—he’ll thank me at practice tomorrow—and carry it to Cassadee and Athena, who are now entertaining some guys from the team we spanked tonight. “Make sure Klein gets home, yeah?”
“Anything for you, Tyler.” Athena blows me a kiss.
Cassadee winks.
At least, I think I got them straight.
And I’m getting out of here.
We all have to be at practice tomorrow morning—check that, this morning, as it’s shortly after midnight—but I don’t want to go home.
I don’t want to drink. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to screw.
I want—
Dammit.
I want a bucket of greasy fried fish and chips, because it’s what my big brother used to take me to get every time he came home on leave from the Marines and got annoyed at being hen-pecked by the four sisters between us.
My car’s cold, thanks to the early November weather, and no, I’m not telling you what kind of car I drive, because yes, it very much feels like compensation tonight.
It gets me where I want to go.
That’s all that matters.
That, and getting my ass to Cod Pieces before they close for the night.
Could I stay at the bunny bar and get fried fish and chips?
Yes.
Will I?
No fucking way.
I’m still stewing in my own misery when the bright neon sign with the armored cod and the storefront that looks like a medieval castle comes into view at the edge of a strip mall four miles the wrong direction from my downtown condo. I roll the window down, letting in a blast of chilly air and the scent of fries.
Just in time.
I holler my order over the sound of my engine, then pull around to the window to get my fish.
Debate calling my brother in Miami.
It’s one AM. He and his wife recently celebrated their kid’s first birthday, and I think they’re working on baby number two.
If I call him in the middle of the night to bitch about how I can’t get it up, he’ll probably hang up on me, then tell our sisters.
And Mom.
She’s a professional comedienne with her own popular Netflix special. There’s no damn way I’m bothering West in the middle of the night for this.
I’ll talk to the fried fish and call it even.
Has as much personality as West had before he married Daisy.
The window swings open. “That’ll be fourteen seventy-three, please.”
My car lurches forward before I remember to put it in park, and I gape up at the woman staring down at me. “Muffy?”
My brain is playing tricks on me.
It has to be.
Because there’s no way the curvy, clumsy, smart-mouthed goddess who’s haunting my dick is standing there wearing a Cod Pieces polo and hat.
But she is.
And I swear to god, her long brown braids are recoiling in horror as her whole face twists, her lip curling, her left eye squeezing shut, before she snaps herself together. “For the hundredth time today, I have no idea who this Muffy person is. My name is Octavia Louisa Beaverhousen.”
Fuck me.
There are two of them? She looks exactly like Muffy. I’m not seeing things, and I’m not projecting just because I want my dick to work again and the bunnies made me think about screwing Muffy in the walk-in fridge at the bunny bar.
“Fourteen seventy-three, please.” She turns away as she holds out a hand, twitching her fingers like she’s waiting for cash or a card.
And that’s when I see the tattoo.
Rufus.
Her cat’s name. It’s on her wrist.
Octavia Louisa Beaverhousen, my ass. This is Muffy.
“What the hell are you doing working here?” I hiss.
“Sir, please watch your language. This is a respectable fish kingdom, not a locker room.”
I slap my credit card into her hand and briefly wonder if I’ll ever see it again. “Does Kami know you’re working here?” Kami, our first-string goaltender’s wife, is Muffy’s cousin. They’re both staples around the arena, though Kami’s an utter angel, and Muffy is a matchmaking goddess of doom.
A sexy matchmaking goddess of doom who can quote Dr. Who as easily as she can quote Schitt’s Creek, and who has the most gorgeous heart-shaped ass that I can’t get out of my brain, but that ship sailed back at the start of the season, and I don’t look back.
Don’t we? my junk asks.
Is it wrong to junk-punch yourself?
We don’t look back. My fascination with Muffy was merely because she resisted me for so long, rightfully so since we have mutual friends, and not because we’re interested.
We don’t get interested.
We do one-night stands with women we never have to see again, or who won’t care when we move on to the next woman.
Women like Athena and Cassadee, who like sex for fun.
“Your cod pieces will be right up.” Muffy flings my card back at me and slams the drive-thru window shut.
Screw this.
I whip my car around the corner, park, and hop out to stroll into the dining room, which usually has a fun Ren Faire vibe but tonight feels like a dungeon.