Page 32 of Two for Holding
“Right.”Jax drew out theifor a long time.He caught Tom’s eye and made a baffled face for a split second, and Tom had to take a long sip of his beer to avoid laughing.“So, Chloe?”
Breezy beamed.“Yeah, her great-great-grandmother’s from Messina, which is almost in Calabria.She lives in Quebec most of the time, but we could do long distance or something.”
Jax turned his attention to Luca, who was on his second beer already.“You have these kinds of problems too?”
Luca looked him dead in the eye.“I’m from Rome.We have joined the twenty-first century, unlike Montreal.”
Jax collapsed into helpless laughter.
Tom glanced over at Breezy’s offended face and laughed as well.
Luca clapped Breezy on the shoulder.“Come on, Casanova.I will buy you a drink and teach you how to talk to women not picked out by your parents.”
They moseyed off to the bar just as Howie and Mooney returned with a platter of shot glasses and a handful of darts, respectively.Tom could think of a million ways in which that could go wrong, starting with any of the servers realizing they were underage and ending with a trip to the emergency room.He was about to say as much when Jax laid a hand on his knee under the table.
“I got this,” he muttered.
A week ago, Tom might have pulled his leg away.Now, he kept it in place.It was easier on his hip anyway.
“All right, boys,” Jax said cheerily.“Loser takes a shot?”
“Are you challenging me?”Howie puffed his chest out.
“Sure am.”
Jax lost spectacularly to Howie.One of his darts bounced off the framed picture of Babe Ruth two feet above the dartboard.He picked up the shot glass with good grace, toasted Howie, and squinted at the bar.“Wow, check out the girl Luca’s talking to!”
While their backs were turned, Jax dumped the shot in a potted plant.
The girl with Luca was gorgeous.She wore leggings and had her hair pulled away from her face in a half bun.Though she had a stack of textbooks with her at the bar, she seemed utterly engrossed in the conversation instead of her studies.Breezy stood beside them, looking as if he’d unlock the secrets of the universe if he listened close enough.
Jax threw the game against Mooney as well and, afterward, pretended to be so tipsy he absolutely had to go and dance on the little, makeshift floor in the middle of the bar.Mooney and Howie were young enough to be excited at the prospect, and while they flailed about somewhat more rhythmically than he expected, Tom took the opportunity to introduce a few more shots to the local plant life.
He wasn’t quite quick enough.Breezy slid into place across from him and downed two of the remaining shots in quick succession.
“I will never be able to do what he does,” he said mournfully.
“What, chat up a girl?”
“Chat up that kind of girl.”
Tom made a questioning noise.
“She’s writing a term paper about Fellini’s use of shadow and light.Luca’s seen, like, all of Fellini’s movies apparently.”Breezy stared down at the table.Tom twisted the platter until only empties sat in front of him.“I thought Fellini was a brand of freezer pizza.”
“I wouldn’t have done any better.”
Breezy glanced up from under his thick curls.“Really?”
“Yeah.”Tom hazarded a smile.“All I know is hockey.If I meet someone—a girl—who wants to talk about anything else, I’m screwed.”
“Is that why you never pick up?”
Tom went hot and then cold all over.
“Because I thought you had some tragic backstory, and a girl back home broke your heart so bad you could never love again until you won the Stanley Cup.”
“Um.”
