Page 32 of I'm Your Guy
“You mean Goldilocks?” I take the seat next to his.
“That’s the one. I’m not her.”
“Not a fan of porridge?”
He flashes me a grin so quick I almost miss it. “Sure am. But I don’t have a strong feeling about these chairs. They’re both comfortable enough. The tables are both great, too. You think either one would fit into the dining area?”
I let out a gasp of mock indignation. “You think I’d show you a table that didn’t?”
“Calm down. I’m just asking. Which one do you like best?”
“This one.” I pat the top of the table where we’re sitting. “The iron base is hip. Very single guy. Very butch. If I went home with a guy and he had this table? I’d think—this dude is lit.”
He lets out a bark of surprised laughter. “Then it’s an easy choice. Get this one.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
We both look up, and I’m briefly confused, because the woman who’s interrupting us isn’t wearing a name tag. She’s just a stranger in sweatpants.
Wait—the sweatpants are blue. Cougar blue. I don’t know which marketing dude chose that color, but there are better shades in the Pantone deck. It’s too loud.
But I digress.
“I’m just…wow,” the woman says breathlessly. “I never expected to see you in Crate and Barrel!”
“That makes two of us,” Tommaso says under his breath.
“Would you mind signing for me?” She presses her hands together and bats her eyes. “It would make my whole year.”
“Uh, sure.” Tom rises from his dining chair and pats his pockets, coming up with a Sharpie. Which can only mean that this happens to him a lot. He looks oddly embarrassed, though. “You have, um, a piece of paper?”
I’m just about to offer him my clipboard when the woman pops one of her feet onto a dining chair and angles her leg toward DiCosta. “Oh no. Sign right here. These are my special game night sweats.”
Tommaso’s ears turn pink, and I don’t know why I’m so tickled by this. He uncaps the pen, leans down, and quickly scrawls something near her ankle.
“Omigod, thank you so much! Selfie?”
My favorite hockey player proceeds to take the most awkward photograph in the history of photographs, while I struggle not to laugh.
The woman thanks him profusely and then gallops away.
“That was amusing,” I say after she’s out of earshot. “I guess your reputation isn’t that tattered.”
He runs a sheepish hand through his hair. “Depends. I do well with certain demographics.”
I double over laughing.
* * *
After I can breathe again, I make Tom look at some rugs in a carpet store down the street. But he keeps checking his watch, and I can tell I’m losing him.
“Go on, then,” I finally say. “Go do whatever it is that you do to a bunch of other hockey players in Nashville. Good luck tonight.”
“Game is actually tomorrow,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We fly in the night before.”
Considering how tired he looks, I think that’s probably for the best. I send him off, and then spend another hour wrangling the furniture store’s delivery department into giving us special treatment.
Which they do, because I am awesome at my job. Sometimes. When I remember to behave like a professional.
