Page 54 of Hard Hitter
“Too tired,” he lied. If Ari wanted privacy, he’d do his best. “Hey—college boy. I got a question.”
“Shoot.”
“What do you do if the girl you’re meant to be with won’t date you?”
Leo laughed and put down his fork. “Well, if you’re me, you date people you really don’t like for five or six years until she comes around.”
“Huh.” It was nice to remember that even College Boy didn’t always have his shit together. But it didn’t help withhis problem. “Who has a better answer?” he demanded of the table.
“Well,” Beacon said, pushing sausages around on his plate, “you can get her pregnant when you’re both eighteen and clueless.”
“Oh, man,” Castro said under his breath.
Beacon’s luck was widely acknowledged to be the worst on the team. He’d had an unhappy marriage to his high school sweetheart, thenalmostgot divorced because both he and his wife were in love with other people. Before the paperwork went through, his poor wife was diagnosed with a really awful cancer that spent a long year killing her. Now, at thirty-two, he was a widower and a single father to a grieving thirteen-year-old daughter.
And one wondered why O’Doul had stayed single his whole life.
“Cap’n,whywon’t this girl date you?” Beringer asked. “You’re not my type or anything, but I’ll bet the ladies see a rich guy who’s nottoougly. The world is full of women who’d make time in their schedule for you.”
He snorted. “Thanks, B. My face isn’t the problem. She just got out of a relationship that ended badly. Doesn’t wanna go back there.”
“That’s cool, though,” Castro argued. “You can just be her rebound guy. Plenty of sex, no commitment. Sounds good to me.”
“Nah,” O’Doul argued. “I want more.”
“But why?” Castro wanted to know. “In Canada we have this saying—you don’t need your own rink if you can get ice time for free.”
O’Doul took a deep drink of his coffee and wondered if anyone on his team knew a single thing about women.
“So, she just got out of a bad scene,” Leo Trevi said thoughtfully. “Maybe her ex had some bad habits. Maybe he didn’t treat her very well.”
You have no idea.
“...I think the solution might be to turn on the romancetaps full blast, man. You have to woo her so she sees how different you are from the other loser.”
“Like... with candlelight and shit?” he asked.
“Maybe jewelry,” Castro suggested. “Chicks like bling.”
“Not all of them,” Leo pointed out. “My girl doesn’t like jewelry, because it gets in her way when she feels like punishing me on the tennis court.”
O’Doul considered and then immediately rejected the jewelry idea. Ari didn’t wear anything flashy. She sometimes wore a simple silver chain around her neck. He’d often caught himself admiring the way it sat against her slender throat.
But bling it was not.
“Okay, listen.” He slapped the table. “Jimbo!”
The younger man looked up from his pancakes. “Whaddaya need?”
“Get out the parking tickets. Every player gets one.”
“What? Why?” Castro griped.
“Everyone here owes me an idea. You all have five minutes to write down the best way to romance a woman. If your idea is decent, you don’t owe anything to the kitty. If your idea is shit, it’s a twenty dollar fine.”
There were several groans. Beacon took out his wallet, peeled off a twenty and tossed it over to Jimbo. “Let’s just save time.” But everyone else took a ticket from Jimbo as he passed them out.
“Doulie,” Castro complained. “We don’t know this chick. How are we supposed to guess what she likes?”
