Page 4 of Sweet Spot

Six. Women. And Lori would service him after dinner since I would need more hand holding. Gross. We were all just objects to this jackass who probably wouldn’t know a real man if he punched him in the face.

“I’ll see you at the gym,” Garrett said, clearly wrapping up his phone call so he could come manage my delicate and naive sensibilities over an expensive dinner. “I want to be benching an extra fifteen by next week.”

I laid on the horn as I lowered my passenger window, the piercing noise echoed extra hard off the solid concrete surrounding us. Garrett glared at me with a what the fuck expression on his face. A face I thought might be handsome just two days ago, but now all I saw was how deeply ugly he really was. Then his eyes rounded as he recognized me.

I gave him a sour smile and a little wave as I threw the car into reverse and escaped the parking garage.

My dash instantly lit up with an incoming call from Garrett. I declined the call and instead told it to dial my best friend, Mei.

“Do you need extraction?” she whispered. In the background I heard laughter, clinking plates, and music.

“Nope. Never even made it inside. Why are men terrible?” You’d think after a solid year and half of really bad first dates I’d give up on finding even one man who didn’t stink like rotting fish.

But alas, that romantic part of me believed there had to be some good guys out there. There just had to be. And I would find one. Probably.

“Meet us at Reds. You need to vent and I definitely need to hear this story first hand.” All my friends were out to celebrate Jeri MacNeil’s birthday. Jeri was my college roommate and the star of the Tampa Bay Tangerines soccer team. Somehow my two best friends from totally different parts of my life also became best friends. Our friend group was one of the strangest combinations of engineers and athletes and I loved it.

There was some shuffling and then Jeri’s slightly slurred voice came on the line. “Get your ass over here already. You know how much I love a juicy story.” I could picture Jeri clinging to Mei and holding a beer in the air.

I pointed my car towards the beach, heading to one of our favorite haunts, The Red Tourist on Treasure Island. Mei grew up a few blocks from the restaurant and her parents currently rented the house to Jeri and her teammates, Nan and Phoebe. Therefore, more often than not, we wound up at Reds. I liked it there because almost every member of the staff knew us. There was something comforting about walking into a restaurant and being greeted like you were one of the family.

Emily, the usual evening hostess on weekends, grinned when she saw me. “I was wondering where you were! They’re at your usual table,” she waved me back.

The Red Tourist wasn’t all that different from any other beach bar. The ambiance was “shipwreck chic” as Mei liked to call it. Wood floors and wall paneling, large, heavily lacquered wood tables with wood bench seating, a large central bar with TVs and liquor bottles in the middle, and signs dotted around the room with random facts about the ocean. There were also funny pictures of sunburned beachgoers with dire warnings about how fast you can burn your skin in the Florida sun.

A cheer went up when I appeared. Mei smiled and Jeri waved furiously. The group included a combination of Jeri’s teammates from the Tampa Bay Tangerines, and Mei’s coworkers from Spencer, Hamilton, and Associates Engineering. The table was covered in baskets of food and pitchers of beer. The air conditioning pumped overtime as spring had already settled into a very warm pattern, so I dug out my light sweater and slipped it over my bare shoulders before I sat down. The sweater also partially hid my fancy dress so I didn’t feel quite so overdressed.

“Happy birthday, Jeri!”

She beamed at me. “Now the celebration can really begin!” She had short blonde hair and bright blue eyes, freckles all over her cheeks from playing hours of soccer outdoors each day, and a very lean, athletic build.

As opposed to Mei who was soft and curvy with dark hair and eyes. I always thought of Mei as the very definition of femininity. While Jeri dressed like an athlete most of the time, Mei loved fashion and tonight was no exception. Her tailored blouse and designer jeans fit her like a glove. It was Friday, so everyone had come from work. I wasn’t nearly as overdressed as I feared when I walked in the door.

“Drink?” Mei asked.

I realized the waitress stood waiting for my order. I glanced at the pitchers and decided I needed something a little harder as a reward for my night so far. “Bourbon on the rocks.”

“Oh this story must be good.” Mei grinned.

The waitress turned away just as a man approached the bar. Something about him grabbed my attention. It most certainly couldn’t be his t-shirt or shorts. It definitely wasn’t the flip flops. His hair was a little long. It looked like it needed a trim. And his jaw was covered in two- or three-days’ growth. None of that was my style. Normally I dated men a little older than me because I was most attracted to men who knew what they wanted out of life. That typically translated to successful careers, put together appearances, and easy confidence.

This man definitely had charisma and an easy-going attitude. But maybe too easy-going. But there was something…

“Let her get a little bourbon in her first. I have a feeling this story is not a good one,” Jeri said.

“No, no. I can start. You’re never going to believe this. I barely believe it and it just happened to me.” The waitress set my favorite bourbon down in front of me and I took a small sip, letting the burn remind me that Garrett and all men like him were not worth my time. “So I pull into the parking garage…”

I set the stage for my story all while my gaze kept tracking back to the man at the bar. His hair was dark with a touch of early grey. He looked far too young for that much grey but it was there anyway. His eyes crinkled every time Mark, the bartender, made a joke. The man was fit, too. Broad shoulders that packed quite a bit of strength.

“And then the speakers from the car next to me start blasting a phone call.”

“Ugh,” Matt from the engineering group groaned. “I cannot stand cheap assed speaker systems. You should not be able to hear a phone call clear as day, and yet all these cars stock the cheapest speakers. It’s such an easy fix!” Matt was an electrical engineer and a music aficionado. He always had a lot of opinions on anything music related.

“Well, this time I was grateful to eavesdrop. The man in the car beside me was my date.”

The whole table gasped.

The man at the bar barked out a delicious laugh that made the hair on my arm stand up and something inside me flutter. Almost as if he knew I was looking at him, he turned and locked eyes with me. He smiled.

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