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A shiver of awareness skittered across her skin. “What do you want?”
He didn’t hesitate. “To take you back to my place and fuck you senseless.”
“That might be kinda hard,” she said, trying her best to hold onto that detached this-is-just-for-fun casual tone when inside she was like a volcano about to explode. “I have a lot of sense.”
He smiled. No, he didn’t curl his lips or make a one-sided grin. Cal honest-to-God, genuinely smiled—and that’s what nearly sent her brain into buffering mode again because the man had a sexy fucking smile that promised all the right wrong things.
“Challenge accepted.” He grabbed a pen from the mason jar full of them sitting on the bar and scrawled something on the cardboard beer coaster before sliding it across to her. “So you know where to find me later if you want to find out just how up to the task I am.”
Then, without another word, he turned and walked out of the bar without looking back. It didn’t matter. They both knew when and where he was going to see her again.
Chapter Four
Cal looked around his apartment and came to one conclusion: it gave off recently divorced dad vibes.
He hadn’t given a fuck about that when he’d left for beers with Blackburn and his wife, but that was before he’d walked into the Flying Sow Pub and lost his fucking mind. Wherever it was, he highly doubted he’d find it in the mess he called an apartment.
There were boxes stacked along one of the beige walls in the living room. In the kitchen, all he had were the ingredients to make spaghetti and PB&Js. Hopefully not for the same meal, but he wasn’t going to promise that.
The cupboards held exactly two plates, two bowls, and two glasses. The drawer by the dishwasher was home to four forks, zero spoons, and one steak knife that had already been there when he moved in (yes, he’d washed it). The island was bare except for a stack of mismatched napkins from takeout orders he’d had delivered.
The only furniture in the living room was a folding chair, the TV, and his PlayStation. At least his mattress wasn’t on the floor in the bedroom, but fuckin’ A, what in the hell had he been thinking giving Astrid his address?
The answer was he hadn’t been thinking.
And now if she showed up, she was either going to assume he had never outgrown the frat stage or he was a serial killer. Honestly, he wasn’t sure which would be worse.
Too late now to second-guess the first period now, numbnuts.
He grabbed one of the plastic grocery bags he’d squashed into another plastic grocery bag hanging on a hook in the otherwise mostly empty pantry and started stuffing it with the Vito’s takeaway bag, a receipt that was almost as tall as he was from the pharmacy on the corner—he’d literally only bought toothpaste—and about a million empty protein shake bottles that hadn’t made their way into the trash.
He was a fucking slob.
Tomorrow, he’d get his shit together. Get some furniture from IKEA and spend the next forty-eight hours cursing while trying to follow the supposedly simple sixteen-step instructions. It didn’t matter that he could rebuild an engine, install new brakes, and even figure out why a car was making that hmmm-hurr-hmmm sound, but Swedish furniture accompanied only by picture directions fucked him over every time.
Shit, if he was this much of a mess on the ice when dealing with that Tig Jones kid, he wasn’t going to last the week. Then again, maybe that’s why he still hadn’t unpacked. The only thing worse than getting a second chance at his dream of being in the pros—even if he wasn’t playing—was the fear that this time it wouldn’t be a random accident taking it all away from him but his own incompetence.
Cry about it some more, Matsen. Maybe you can distract Astrid from your shit-ass apartment by crying on her shoulder.
Maybe she wouldn’t show up.
Really, what was the chance she would? She was the hot bartender with the kind of ass men sailed across the oceans for, and he was the guy who’d fucked up the one thing in life he’d ever been good at.
Whine a little more, man.
His phone vibrated on the counter. He picked it up and swiped across the home screen with the text notification on it.
BLACKBURN: Fallon wants to know if you made it home.
MATSEN: Nah. Got kidnapped by Girl Scouts.
BLACKBURN: Hope you got some Thin Mints out of it. Fallon wants you to come over for dinner on Wednesday.
And to think that at one time Blackburn had been known as the guy who led the league in stupid penalties, hence his former moniker as the most hated man in Harbor City.
A nice person would probably say these texts were evidence of emotional growth and maturity. For Cal, it was an opportunity to give his friend shit.
MATSEN: Should I give your wife my number so she can talk to me directly?
