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“I know this guy. You’re Jake Turner. Amirite?” He turns to his idiot friend who’s standing way to close to our table for our comfort. “The hockey player. the one that killed the other guy––Bresler.”
“Yo, I loved Bresler,” Dumb says, expression stricken. “Damn, this is the guy that killed him?”
Listening to these two so cavalierly speak of Mike Bresler and Jake makes my blood boil. “Excuse me?” I say to both of them. “If you’re done, can you move please.”
“Whatever,” one of then claps back.
“What did you say?”
“Don’t,” I hear in a soft rasp.
I glance sideways, mainly to assess Jake’s mood––I’ve never known a man to have as many moods as this one does at any given moment––and find him totally chill. It’s almost peculiar. “Why not?”
“Because you don’t bring a squirt toy to a gun fight.” He tips his chin at his arm resting on the table. My gaze follows his lead, and when it lands on his bicep, he flexes.
Oh please. I’m ready to flatten his overinflated ego with a well-deserved quip when I glance up. Only one small problem––I lose the power of speech. Whatever I was about to say drains out of my head because for the first time ever, Jake Turner, Scrooge of the Adirondacks, smiles. And it’s not one of his evil little smirks. Or one of his teasing ones. It’s the genuine article, the real deal. And the stunning part? This rare breed of smile reveals two perfectly matched dimples.
Somebody get the oxygen.
“Bresler was ten times the player you’ll ever be, Turner.” The guy’s voice is louder this time around, his speech more slurred. I see this going badly.
“You’re a loser, man!”
“Okay, that’s it––” I can’t contain myself anymore. I’m not prone to violence or temper tantrums, but listening to someone disparage him is doing strange things to me. A sense of protectiveness I never knew I was capable of pushes me to act, the feeling not a pleasant one or one I can ignore. “Punk ass kids…”
I get to my feet, the stool scraping loudly against the wood floor, and feel a big hand gently clasps my arm. We’ve had our ups and downs since meeting on that fateful night almost three months ago. I’ve gone from gratitude, to dislike, to physical attraction, to…to frankly really liking him. But this…this feels different. This feels bigger than all those other stages combined.
While I examine the strong tan fingers wrapped around my arm, he tugs me closer. I’m close enough that I can see the scar across his top lip and three rogue freckles on his left cheekbone. Close enough that my heart starts racing as I watch his heavy-lidded gaze focus on my lips.
“Leave it be,” he quietly tells me.
For a second, I get lost in the moment. The band hasn’t started playing again and the volume in the bar has dialed down enough that it sounds like he and I are alone in the room.
“Someone needs to defend you if you aren’t going to do it yourself.”
His lashes lower as his eyes roam my face. “You wanna defend me, Carebear?”
“Somebody has to…and don’t call me that.” There’s less than zero conviction in my voice, but I’m not ready to admit that I like it. That I like the way he says it. That I love the sound of my nickname in that deep, rough rasp.
It feels like defeat in a way. In fact, I sound embarrassingly breathy and I do not get breathy. And yet I do in the presence of an ex-hockey player with a penchant for frowns and primary colors.
“Yeah, listen to your bitch, Turner,” declares the steroid abuser.
The smile drops and the dimples disappear. And the disappointment I feel at the loss of them is reason enough to give these two yahoos a beatdown.
Jake stands, and acting quickly, I lunge for his arm. Suddenly, I’m an accessory, dangling off of him. I’m 5’6” and he’s 6’2” and he’s literally wearing me.
“What did you say?” he murmurs at Dumb and Dumber.
“Turner, Turner! Leave it. Come on. I need to get home. How about you walk me? C’mon.” He takes a step forward and the two idiots square up. Everyone else around us, finally taking notice of the kerfuffle, make room for the imminent barroom brawl. “I said leave it––this guy is a winter weather advisory.”
That gets his attention. He stops and looks down at me, his lips quirking. “A what?”
“A winter weather advisory––one to three inches.”
The dimples are back, his face slowly stretching into an ear to ear smile, white teeth showing and everything. One thing is clear, however. Smiling obviously does not come naturally to him because it looks like he doesn’t know what to make of it.
“Come on…” he says to me a moment later, placing me back on my feet. “Let’s get out of here.”
