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It’s Mason. I see he’s called three times. Also, it’s four in the afternoon. Oops.
The phone goes to voicemail. A text bleeps at me.
Answer your phone, dick, or I’m coming over to your house and kicking your door down.
I scowl.
If I have to kick your door down, I’m also going to kick your ass, the next text says.
With a sigh, I call back.
“What?” I growl. “I mean, hi. What do you want?”
“Did you actually just wake up?”
I clear my throat. “No.” My voice is scratchy and rough.
“Liar.”
“Whatever,” I grumble.
“Jeez, man. Don’t do this to yourself. It’s hard for me to watch.” I know what Mason means. He had a real problem with drinking and partying and nearly got kicked off the team, even though he was the team MVP and the one who drives the majority of our merchandising sales. In fact, he met Rowan because she was his publicist, assigned to babysit him and clean up his image.
I smile at the thought. He and Rowan were stuck together. She had him totally under his thumb, and he hated it at first, but he also complained about her nonstop in a way that let us all know he had totally surrendered his manhood to her. It just took him a while to figure it out.
“Hello?” he barks into the phone. “Are you awake? Do I need to send an ambulance?”
“I’m fine. Give me a minute. What do you expect when you wake me up at the crack of four?”
“I expect you to be here in an hour, because my wife’s throwing a team-morale-boosting party and mobster movie night, if you remember.”
“Is she?”
“Yes, you moron. You said you’d come, and if you don’t come, I’m going to be pissed. She put a lot of work into this.”
I heave a sigh. Movie theme nights are our team’s bonding thing. They’re always hosted by Mason and Rowan, who started the tradition. We’ve had heist movie nights, zombie movie nights, sports movie nights...
“Okay, fine. I’ll be there in an hour, but only because your wife makes kick-ass hors d’oeuvres.”
I hang up and stagger off to the shower to scrub myself down. I can’t go to their house smelling like a toxic waste dump. Then, I dry-swallow two aspirin and chug a black coffee.
I squint at myself in the mirror, debate leaving my week-old stubble as is, and decide against it, so I do a quick shave. Then I pull on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and head out. I’m not in the mood for this, but it’s probably better for me than hitting up another dive bar and waking up with my skull trying to separate itself from my body.
I take an Uber uptown. Mason and Rowan live in a very nice Upper West Side apartment. They’ve gone all out decorating for tonight’s party. There are chalk body outlines on the floor. There are a map of Italy and a bunch of gangster movie posters on their walls. They’ve strung police crime-scene tape on the furniture. Fake bullet holes and fake blood stains surround the gangster movie posters. I mean, I hope they’re fake. Italian food, of course, with mountains of cannolis on the buffet table, with a sign with the classic quote from the first Godfather movie. I am handed a fedora as soon as I walk in the door and reluctantly put it on. Everyone else is wearing them, including Rowan and Mason. Mason is dressed in a pin-striped zoot suit, and Rowan is dressed like a flapper with a white beaded dress and her hair styled in those fancy 1920s waves, wearing a headband with a white feather. She’s got a thigh holster with a fake gun.
She hugs me hello.
I glance over at my teammates, who are mingling, some watching the movie, some with dates, and they’re all dressed for the theme too. Gangster’s molls and snappy suits everywhere. There are about twenty people here, and I’m massively underdressed. I think I remember Mason saying something about a required dress code, but my head was kind of fuzzy at the time.
“T-shirt and jeans?” Mason looks at me narrow-eyed. “It’s like you’re not even trying.”
“No, no, I actually thought this through. I’m the getaway driver,” I tell him. “Or the lookout. That’s why I’m dressed casual. I’m trying to blend in with my surroundings. It’s method acting.”
“Sad,” Mason says, at the same time that Rowan says, “Lame.” They grin at each other and high-five.
Awesome. Just what I need right now, an in-your-face happy couple who are so on the same wavelength that they finish each other’s sentences.
Knox Harper, our right wing, wanders by, his arm around the waist of a tall, slender redhead, and punches me in the arm.
