She pushed me to start Muff Matchers when I started telling her about my idea, offered investment money to help me get it off the ground, and she’s never asked a single thing of me in return.
Until now.
And all she’s asking is for something a friend would do, so naturally, I can’t refuse.
You don’t leave your friends hanging in times of need, and if I’m who she needs for support during her dad’s funeral, in Richmond, with all of his colleagues and current and former students from Blackwell, where he was the dean, then I’ll be there.
What’s the step after puking?
I might have to do that.
“Muffy, I know you like partying, but if it’s going to leave you green in the gills every morning, maybe you should cut back to two or three nights a week instead of five or six,” Mom says.
“Especially since she won’t let you go along,” William says to her.
“Right?”
They both roll their eyes.
If Mom knows I’m not partying, but instead working as a night manager at a fast-food fish restaurant, she’s doing a good job of keeping up appearances.
And if Tyler Jaeger rats me out to my cousin, he’s dead.
My job at Cod Pieces isn’t exactly what it looks like.
Unfortunately, Tyler Jaeger is exactly what he looks like.
A spoiled hockey player who’ll flirt only long enough to get what he wants, then get out as quick as he got in.
And I mean that in every way possible.
“Don’t step in the oatmeal,” I tell Mom and William. I grab my phone, tuck it into my bra, and remember I haven’t yet put on a bra when my phone clatters through my shirt and lands on my cat in the oatmeal.
Rufus streaks off like a demon, bouncing off the walls and leaving clumps of oatmeal everywhere.
So maybe I’ll be playing kazoo at the light-rail stops to pay for the cleaning I owe Mom in her house now.
And a new phone case.
This one will be caked with oatmeal in all of its cracks until my phone’s dying day, and that assumes its dying day isn’t today, which is a distinct possibility considering there’s probably oatmeal creeping up the plug-in jack.
At least I can’t answer Veda’s text. Positive side, right?
Not immediately, anyway.
And that’s good.
It means I have time to come up with a plan.
Not much time—the funeral’s on Monday, with a viewing Sunday night—but some.
Maybe I can fake appendicitis. Or an accident that leaves me in a full-body cast. Or my own death. With my contact list, surely I can find someone who knows how to get me new identification and can hook me up with a ride to a tropical island where I can sleep on the beach and pay for food by bussing tables at a greasy spoon.
Or maybe I need to finally face my past and do for Veda what she’s always done for me, which is to be there when needed.
But first, I need a shower and to head out to work.
My clients won’t match themselves, and if I don’t meet a few new men, I won’t either.
4
Tyler
Practice is a bitch.
Klein doesn’t look like he’s hurting at all for all the shit he drank last night, but my fried fish and chips are sitting in my gut like I’m as old as my brother, who’s retired from the Marines and about old enough for a mid-life crisis, instead of a well-oiled machine of hockey greatness with the false sense of immortality that those of us not yet thirty are blessed with on a normal day.
Rooster’s skating laps around all of us.
Duncan Lavoie, our team captain and one of the oldest guys on the team, is at the top of his game, despite giving me I know you stayed out past curfew glares every time we pass each other on the ice.
He was fun my rookie year. But then the old captain retired, Lavoie took over as the team leader, and now he’s Mr. Wet Blanket.
He needs some quality time at the bunny bar.
The married dudes on the team are all doing their married dude thing, hanging out together and talking shit about whose kids and wives are the best.
Meanwhile, I woke up in the middle of a dream that Muffy was giving me a hand job, even though her hands were fried fish pieces, and I had the closest thing to morning wood that I’ve had since—
Fuck.
Since Muffy and I hooked up.
This is why you don’t hook up with chicks you’re actually friends with, idiot, my junk reminds me.
I tell it to shut up. Muffy and I aren’t friends.
We merely know how to be friendly when we’re around each other.
After practice, I’m throwing things into my locker, debating going to lunch with Klein and Rooster, when Lavoie sits down next to me.
He’s in a towel and nothing else, which is pretty normal for the dressing room, but he shouldn’t be giving me that look if he’s not in full pads.
It’s the look of I know something’s bothering you, and if you don’t work it out, your game’s gonna go the way of your dick.
My shoulders bunch. I’ll take the shithead out if he says anything wrong right now.
“Wanna talk?”
My molars crack and my dick snorts with bitter laughter. No, we don’t want to talk.
He leans forward, casually draping an arm over his thigh. “Your game’s about as fine as it usually is, and I saw your whole family on the news yesterday and they looked happy, so I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess this asshole attitude is about a woman.”
First, still don’t want to talk.
Second—what was my family on the news for? “Maybe I miss my sisters.”
“You wanted to be on a yacht with all four of them, plus your sister-in-law, serenading all the passing boats with your favorite disco songs?”
Hell. West marrying a billionaire party girl heiress with a heart of gold in Miami is both the best and worst thing to ever happen to my family.
Lavoie’s grinning. “I can’t keep your sisters straight, but one of them flashed the Coast Guard.”
“Did not need that mental image.”
Rooster pauses next to us. “She single?”
“They’re all married, asshat, and even if they weren’t, you’d only be going near them over my dead body.”
“Uh-oh. Cranky Jaeggy’s back.” Klein sits on my other side. “Ares know you got the thorny side of a rose up your ass?”
“Go easy on him, partner.” Rooster, also in nothing but a towel, props a leg up on the bench, letting his junk hang out. “Had a rough go of it getting overwhelmed with two willing ladies last night.”
“Did not.” Jesus. I’m a six-year-old again.
“Is this about Muffy?” Klein asks.
“What the hell?”
He shrugs. “You had a boner for her for most of last season, then the two of you got all cozy that time she showed up at the bunny bar, and now none of us have seen her since.”
“Is Muffy the one with the hot mom?” Rooster asks.
Lavoie shoves him. “That’s disgusting. Put your junk away.”
“Dude. Get your eyes checked.” Klein’s making a face like he wants to puke.
I can’t make my own face stop twisting in horror. “I really hope you’re thinking about a bunny.”