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One
“I think you should all strip,” Lilly Ferguson said with a firm nod.
Rick Ryder raised his eyebrows at his friend. “Lil, you’ve gotten kinky in your old age.” They say if you live long enough you see everything, and hell, here he was at only twenty-eight, witnessing their most uptight female friend asking to see their junk at four in the afternoon.
She rolled her eyes at him. Which was reassuring.
Sullivan O’Toole looked unnerved from his position behind the bar. “What are you talking about, Lilly?”
“Hear me out.” Lilly was on a worn stool at Tap That, Sullivan’s bar in their hometown of Beaver Bend, Minnesota.
Lil was between Rick and their other decade-long friend, Axl, who was still in uniform, having just gotten off duty at the Beaver Bend police department, and who looked more like Rick felt—amused.
“What is there to hear?” Sullivan asked. “Damn, Lil, you just asked us to take off our clothes. Do we need to download a dating app for you?”
She threw a swizzle stick at him. “Not for personal reasons! Ew. Get your ego in check. I mean for a charity strip event. Like a Magic-Mike-style routine. We can call you the Tap That Dancers. You, Rick, Axl, Jesse, and Brandon. I’ll choreograph the routine and we’ll make a ton of money for breast cancer research.” Lilly smiled, looking pleased with herself as she tucked her dark hair behind her ear.
Stripping for charity. Much more in character than Lilly getting up close and personal with them. Rick gave her a grin, because he thought it could be a fun way to distract Sullivan from his heavy grief over the loss of his wife the year before to cancer. These guys were his best friends from way back when he had been known as “Little Dickie,” before his massive growth spurt and dedication to the gym. These were the buddies who had defended him when he had been the smallest guy on their intramural hockey team and had spent more time getting body checked into the wall than using his stick. Literally and figuratively.
He’d do anything to help any one of them, and right now, Sullivan needed a whole hell of a lot of help. He had been drowning in guilt and grief in the ten months since Kendra had died. “I’m in. I’ll dance all night for a good cause. Especially if I can wear a banana hammock. What man doesn’t want to strut on stage in some tight-ass underwear?”
He said it solely for a reaction and he got one.
Sullivan snorted. “Me. No. I’m not doing it, Lil. Forget it. I’m a father. It’s just fucking inappropriate.”
“Finn is not going to be at the show,” Lilly said dryly. “He’s fourteen months old. You’ll have plenty of time to embarrass him in a decade, but right now he is not going to care. Trust me.”
Their buddy just rolled his eyes. “Still not doing it.”
“I’ll do it.” Axl shrugged, taking his patrolman’s hat off and tossing it on the bar top. “I’d like to think we could pull in some cash making fools out of ourselves.”
“You’re a cop,” Sullivan said, pointing out the obvious. “That’s way too embarrassing. Have you lost your damn mind?”
Axl was even-tempered to the extreme. If he thought it was a good idea, Rick trusted that it was. “Have you seen the viral videos cops do now? I’m cool with anything for charity.”
“Whatever, dude.” Sullivan shook his head. “You’re all idiots.”
“When do you want to do this?” Rick asked Lilly. He’d never admit it, but he was into the whole idea. It would probably draw women in from neighboring towns and he was not a guy to turn down being objectified. He’d worked hard to have abs and he’d show them all damn day long.
“I was thinking August eighteenth-ish.”
Damn. That was two days after the one year anniversary of Kendra’s untimely and tragic death. The day of the funeral.
Sullivan’s nostrils flared. “Fuck that. No.” He made a move like he was going to leave his own bar.
Axl held his hand up. “Whoa. Calm down. So what, you’re just going to stay at home and get wasted by yourself that whole week?” Axl asked throwing it out there. “Dude, no. Let’s do something ridiculous and raise some money. Kendra would have liked that.”
Rick knew Axl had pushed a hot button and he waited for their friend to explode. But surprisingly, even though Sullivan’s jaw worked he just reached for a bottle of whiskey and started pouring shots. “Fine. You want to make asses out of yourselves, go for it. But I’m not doing it. I have to watch the bar anyway.”
Lilly eyed him, worry clearly etched on her face. Rick knew, without a doubt, that Lilly was in love with Sullivan and had been for years. She was watching him drink heavily and Rick knew it was breaking her heart. But she was smart enough not to go there with Sullivan. He wasn’t ready for anyone to care about him.
She turned to Rick. “Do you think Brandon and Jesse will do it?”
Rick nodded. “Are you kidding? As long as you can work around Jesse’s schedule, he’ll be in. He loves the limelight.” Jesse was playing pro hockey, the only one of their group of friends to really pursue the sport. For the rest of them, it had just been fun. Rick had always been more into working with his hands than going hard core on the ice, even after he grew a foot and a half and gained sixty pounds of hard-packed muscle. Brandon was living in Chicago, working in finance and was a partier, living the single life to the hilt. “Brandon is always up for a good time.”
Sullivan threw back his drink, wincing at the burn. “This isn’t a good time. No one should be celebrating cancer. This is stupid.”
Rick and Axl both said nothing, knowing it would be Lilly who could get through to him. Lilly reached over the counter and rested her hand over top of Sullivan’s. He glanced down at it like her touch offended him.
“Sullivan. Listen to me. No one is celebrating cancer or death. We want to celebrate Kendra’s life. It’s been a horrible year for you, for her parents. For me, her best friend. I just want people to remember her before the cancer. She was sweet and fun and cheerful and she would love this. She really would.” She rubbed his hand. “Do you trust me?”
