Page 28 of The Tiger in the Sack

Anyway. Interrogation officially closed.

Did I pass?

…

You passed.

I would like to hear that again.

Greedy.

Once more please.

PASSED, Cat Daddy. Stop fishing.

Friday at 6?

Friday at 6. I’ll be on the curb in front of the Rhinehaus.

Don’t make me wait. I have an underdeveloped tolerance for being stood up.

I will not stand you up. I will be early. I will be SO early.

Don’t be too early. I need time to do my hair.

For a helmet?

For ME, Cat Daddy.

…

…

Don’t read into that.

I am reading into that.

I leaned against the lockers. The slight buzz of the cheap fluorescents buzzed and Fox was now openly laughing, his hand over his face, and I was — I had to be honest with myself, I was giddy.

A woman I did not know had decided, after ninety-six hours of considered silence, that the first real thing she was going to say to me was to drag me to the locker room in the practice facility by my phone and make me defend basically all my life choices.

“She’s got jokes,” Fox said. “You’re smiling.”

I nodded and said, “She’s fucking funny as shit.”

Most women I talked to, dated, fucked were too busy either being impressed by my credentials, or were trying to impress me to be funny.

“You are dead, Kingman.” He slapped me on the shoulder in an I’m-happy-for-you kind of way. “You are dead.”

“Definitely. And what a way to go.”

I hadn’t had this much fun flirting in… ever. This anonymous thing was the way to go. Even if I did feel bad that I knew who she was, but she didn’t have a clue who I was.

I’d tell her eventually.

I would.

But not right now because Coach Roper sauntered into the locker room with a coffee in one hand and a cookie in the other. He didn’t look even a little bit surprised we were still here and not out on the field running those laps.