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Sam brought me a couple of paper towels, which I used to keep myself from trailing blood all the way to the bathroom. Once I got inside and closed the door, I sat down on the toilet seat and covered my face with my hands, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
I hadn’t imagined meeting a man who intrigued me and then losing a toenail in a bloody accident right in front of him, but here we were.
* * *
Dom was like an energizer bunny,unpacking kitchen boxes while the rest of us took a break with some drinks in the living room, which was open to the kitchen.
“Glassware,” he said, reading the sticker I’d labeled a box with. “I’ll let you unpack that one.”
“Are you sure you guys don’t want pizza?” I asked.
“Yeah, we have to eat at this cookout we’re going to,” Ford said.
“I’ll have a couple pieces of pizza,” Dom said. “I’m wasting away over here.”
I needed to take a shower and unpack. But all I wanted was to sit here and keep talking to Ford. Every time he took a sip from his beer bottle, I wondered what it would taste like on his lips.
Thirsty kitty, party of one. Being single for more than a year had made me, well…hot and bothered. I didn’t like to admit it, but my battery-operated boyfriend just wasn’t the same as a real live man. With muscles. And dark scruff. And an intense gaze that made me glad I was wearing a padded bra beneath my tank.
“I’m ordering pizza,” I said, opening an app on my phone. “What do you guys like on your pizza?”
“Pile of mail,” Dom said absently, sifting through the boxes that he was still unpacking. “I’ll just leave”
“Pizza toppings?” I asked. “This is your opening for a sausage joke, Dom.”
“Eleanor Lawrence?” Dom stared at me, looking dumbfounded after reading my full name on a piece of mail.
“My friends call me Elle,” I said, scrolling through the topping choices on the pizza restaurant’s app.
“Eleanor Lawrence from theDenver Chronicle?” Ford asked, his serious tone making me look up.
“That’s right,” Sam said proudly. “You’re looking at the youngest columnist in theChronicle’shistory. My girl’s a word ninja.”
Ford’s expression was different now. The warmth was gone from his gaze. Why had everything suddenly changed?
“We should go,” he said, standing up.
Dom was already halfway to my front door. Sam and I exchanged a confused look. I’d thought the four of us were becoming friends who would hang out after today. Now Ford and Dom couldn’t get out of here fast enough.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Both men had their backs to me. Dom turned his face toward Ford, waiting to see if he was going to say anything. Finally, Ford turned around, his brows lowered and his jaw set in a tense line.
“If we had known who you are…” He shook his head. “And if you’d known who we are…” He cleared his throat.
I gave Sam awhat the helllook and she shook her head, as clueless as I was.
“We both play for the Colorado Coyotes,” Ford said.
My heart raced as his words sank in.Shit.Shit, shit, shit.
“Guess two overgrown frat boys helped you move in,” Dom said coldly.
I’d written several columns about the Coyotes. I was strongly opposed to construction of a new professional hockey arena in Denver. Actually, I was strongly opposed to professional hockey in general. And football, due to the overwhelming evidence that both sports caused brain trauma. In one particularly fiery column, I’d called the athletes who played pro hockey “overgrown frat boys who get paid an obnoxious amount of money to play a game for a living.”
“I didn’t know,” I said, at a loss. “I wouldn’t have taken your help if I had known.”
Not because I didn’t need the help, or because I didn’t appreciate it, but because it wouldn’t have been right.
