Page 6 of Sweeper
“How’s my favorite rock star?” she asks as the girl’s long legs dangle around her petite frame.
“Daphney, Daddy is going to be late again, and I’ll have to be a tree.” She scowls at her father, and I must admit, I feel bad for the guy. Rocky doesn’t look like a girl who forgives easily.
“No, you won’t.” Hayden glances down at his phone again. “But we must leave now, or you could end up as a bush. Daphney, this is Zander. Zander, this is my sister, Daphney.”
“Oh, we’ve met,” Daphney says with a bright smile on me that shows a bit too many teeth. “We go way back. Isn’t that right, Zander?”
My brows furrow as I attempt to find a suitable response.
“All the way back to the duck?” Daphney offers, and my eyes widen with horror.
“What duck?” Hayden asks, and all the spit in my mouth dries up when I realize she’s going to call me out in front of her brother for hitting on her.
“I want a duck!” Rocky peals.
After clearing my throat, I open my mouth to come up with something, anything that can save my ass from this horribly awkward encounter without informing my landlord that I’m a fucking douchebag who hit on his sister by asking to sample her duck.
Daphney laughs and turns to her brother. “Just a little inside joke in regard to the menu. You know footballers and their weird diets.”
Hayden frowns at me like I’m a headcase and then shakes it off. “Okay then. So, are you good, Daphney? You’ve got this all handled?”
Daphney nods. “All good. You two go on.”
Hayden shoots me one more quizzical look as he swoops the little girl into his arms. “Santino Rossi, the football club lawyer, has your lease agreement, Zander, so he’ll be popping by sometime.”
“Okay,” I reply, nervously gripping the back of my neck that’s now covered in sweat.
Hayden turns to leave and then pauses to call back, “Welcome to Bethnal Green, and good luck this season!”
“Thank you.” I force a smile and slowly turn to Daphney as my shoulders feel permanently stuck under my ears. She’s pulling a large set of keys out of her back pocket as I state, “You’re making me sweat over here.”
“I noticed.” She laughs, and it’s wild that my body can shift from humiliated to horny in two seconds flat with that husky and sexy sound.
“Listen…about earlier,” I start, going for broke.
“No need to mansplain.” Daphney smirks as she walks over to my luggage. “Let’s just get you to your flat,Soccer Boy.”
“I wasn’t going to mansplain.” Was I?
I ponder that thought as we lug my suitcases across the side street toward the building. My head snaps up when it dawns on me that she called me Soccer Boy, which is obviously a nickname. It’s a condescending one, to be sure, but a nickname nonetheless. That small fact gives me a tiny glimmer of hope that I haven’t totally ruined my chances with this chick.
She pauses on the corner and points. “The Bethnal Green station is just a five-minute walk that way. You can get an Oyster card there.”
“I can’t do oysters. Too slimy.”
She turns and blinks back at me. “It’s the tube card.”
“Oh.” I swallow a knot in my throat.I have a degree in mathematics. I’m not this stupid, I swear.
“And bus stops are all along the main road here. There’s a Tesco about a ten-minute walk that way.”
I cringe as I look in the direction she’s pointing. “Is Tesco like a grocery store?”
“It’s a supermarket.” She huffs out a laugh. “Did you do any research on the area before you moved here?”
“Just soccer…um…football research,” I reply, turning my hat backward nervously. Jude and I did a crash course on European football, but I didn’t think to ask him about basic British-isms. “But it’s fine. I’ll use cabs to get me around.”
“Cabs are going to be a nightmare when you need to get a lot of groceries.”
