6 Days to Get Lucky

by L E Franks

  Except FatBoy. He was back.

  Darrell was unrepentant. “Guys like you don’t have ‘mothers’—you’ve got sob stories to pad your fake bios. Eddie.”

  FatBoy snagged Lorcan by the arm, tugging gently to get him moving. He’d mostly succeeded when Lorcan lurched away to deliver his parting shot.

  “That was low even for you, and you would know low, wouldn’t you?”

  Darrell recoiled, and I grabbed his glass before he could throw it like a lemon twist at Lorcan’s head.

  “Ouch. Dude. A little harsh.”

  Three pairs of eyes just stared at me.

  In times of stress, sometimes I occasionally find myself channeling a Southern California surfer boy. I’m not proud of this and apparently neither was Darrell or Lorcan. FatBoy just thought I was a goof and gave me a tiny smile behind their backs, smothering it quickly.

  “I’m done with this little bonding exercise,” Darrell spit out, gesturing between us. “And I certainly won’t be drinking at any place that serves filthy lying bigots intent on setting back the course of progress for Little People a hundred years!”

  The last was shouted at Lorcan’s swaggering back, which sported the full- frontal view of the mooning cartoon Leprechaun, showing particular dexterity in flipping us off.

  Nothing could rouse Rockstar Lorcan in full strut.

  I wasn’t sure the shirt was even legal in the South, but that was the least of our problems. I had a feeling of dread rise from the pit of my stomach.

  FatBoy let Lorcan move ahead and gave me his version of 'the look’, the one that checked to see if I needed the bouncer version of 'clean up on aisle four.’

  I shook my head in the negative and shooed him on his way. I almost felt sorry that he got stuck with Lorcan until I turned back to Darrell.

  It was probably due to the pseudo-full-moon-insanity I was worried about earlier, but against my normally stellar judgment, I poured him another Grey Goose rocks with two twists.

  “Care to explain that little passion play?”

  “Ya know, for a bartender, you’re a crappy listener. And can you get a thesaurus, for fucks sake? I’m getting tired of your third grade vocabulary…”

  “Okay—care to explain that Lilliputian passion play?”

  I considered the alliteration and silently ran the sentence over my tongue a few times until Darrell’s half-hearted huff pulled me back to the action. I watched him fish out both lemon peels only to line them up neatly on his napkin.

  Shit.

  “So why the bad blood with Viking-guy?”

  Darrell didn’t bother to look at me and I was surprised that he even answered. “We’re old friends back in ChiTown.”

  “They don’t really call it that, do they?”

  “Who knows? I was just born and raised there. Not like anyone ever talked to me.”

  I could taste the bitterness of his words on my own tongue and left him to it.

  I’d been a bartender long enough to know that there wasn’t enough booze or words in the world to fix a crushed soul.

  Chapter Six

  Saturday March 16

  I awoke in a tangle of sweaty sheets, my duvet kicked off the end of my bed. Only thin uneven threads remained of my dream, for which I was grateful, the faint but graphic impression of Lorcan with his hands all over FatBoy was nightmarish enough.

  I missed waking to the memory of dream-FatBoy sliding his tongue around my—

  I flopped an arm out straight, hitting my wristbone on the edge of the table. The little shock of pain racing up my elbow helped my burgeoning awareness along. I groped, eyes closed, feeling for my phone to confirm I wasn’t awake for no damn reason, which I did with the tip of my pinky, right before pushing it off the side.

  I held my breath and listened for the ‘thump’ or ‘ping’ that would determine if I needed to make a side trip to the mall to buy a new screen. The thud reassuringly solid, I shifted ever so slightly to swing my arm in a shallow arc, as if the repetitions would either cause the limb to lengthen or the phone to levitate from sheer persistence.

  If I were still asleep, it wouldn’t matter what my phone said.

  I liked that.

  I pulled my arm back, carefully shifting it under my body like a duck tucking a wing, and let myself drift.

  Five seconds later, I was belly-crawling under the bed.

  Naked.

  Which reminded me I needed to vacuum.

  I grabbed the phone and rolled over onto the missing duvet, my body splayed out like a smoked duck in the window of a Chinese grocery. Not that there were many of those where I’d landed. Tennessee is a beautiful state, but it’s no NYC or LA or Seattle, all places I’d spent a week or month slinging beers and surfing couches between semesters. I never thought I’d end up here, brushing dust bunnies off my dick.

  My naked reverie skittered to a halt with the knocking coming from my front door.

  FatBoy?

  I could only hope. There was plenty of time to get busy before work and I was already undressed for the occasion.

  I let the fantasy run for another second, encouraging my erection with thoughts of dream blowjobs and a slow yank of my hand until the hesitant knocking became pounding.

  I’ll be lucky if it isn’t an arrest warrant for old parking tickets.

  Snagging my boxer briefs, I pulled them on, hopping from foot to foot down the hall and across my loft like some lunatic wading bird stumbling into a nest of fire ants.

  By the time I reached the door, I had my ass suitably covered, if only just that, and was turning the knob before my big brain had a chance to kick it into gear.

  In my heart, I was holding out for FatBoy.

  It was his face I was longing to see.

  Maybe that explained the underwear model pose I’d adopted—a long hard lean against the doorjamb, my junk covered in tight gray cotton carefully arrayed for viewing instead of pulling on my jeans like any normal person. So when I nearly shrieked like a little girl at her first slasher film, it wasn’t unexpected.

  Not given how my luck was running these days.

  Standing there, ogling me like I was a plate of sausages and he was a meat eater at a convention of vegans, was Corwyn. In all his hurling glory.

  I felt my body crumple a little, as if relaxing my shoulders and abs would distract from all the naked skin I had on display.

  At least Corwyn didn’t laugh or point out that my face had gone up in flame.

  He was kitted out in a green and white shirt, the colors separated vertically like they weren’t sure to which side they belonged, Ireland blazoned across the chest.

  I tried not to notice his hard biceps straining the cuffs of his sleeves or where his black shorts hit his thighs, and especially I tried not to notice that almost everything I liked in the male form was currently available for viewing.

  I failed.

  And as I failed, I realized that any second Corwyn’s eyes would drop from mine and I would never, ever get him out of my loft—or out of my bed. And that really was the very last thing I wanted.

  I slammed the door in his face and made a run for it.

  * * * * *

  By the time I’d taken a shower and dressed, Corwyn had made himself at home on my couch. He’d found the twenty-four hour sports news channel and was eating something out of a Chinese food container from who knew when. I was about to warn him off, but really, a bout of ptomaine poisoning would do him some good, and maybe teach him a lesson about stalking. Which reminded me…

  “How in the hell did you find me?” I tried to put some heat into it. It wasn’t cool just showing up like that, but maybe it was a cultural thing—following bartenders home in Ireland being part of the social norm—but I couldn’t. Corwyn was all relaxed, not trying to get in my face, just happily content with stealing my cable and cleaning out my fridge.

  I’d invited worse guests into my home, though technically I could add trespassing to his list of felonious behaviors si
nce I distinctly remembered leaving him on the other side of my door.

  “Ah, your sweet Natalie—what a love. I called the bar lookin’ to leave ya a message and she gave me your number…” He pulled out his phone. In case, I wanted him to prove it? “Then she said you were lousy about pluggin’ it in after a late night, how you were hard to reach—”

  “For Her! Hard to reach, for her. She calls me at all hours with these nutty requests to wear this color, or that thing. She’s insane…”

  Corwyn shook his head a little, like I was the one with the problem, not Natalie, and continued. “And since I’m on a bit of a schedule, she said it’d be better to just come by and pick you up here, then she gave me your address. Ready?” He raised a brow—another man with fine motor control of his face—and looked at me expectantly, like I knew what the fuck he was talking about. I shrugged.

  “Last night at the bar, ya said you’d love to see us play sometime. Well, this is sometime. Today’s the exhibition match at your uni. Come on—get yer shoes, I have to be on the pitch in half an hour.”

  “You know, Corwyn, when people say stuff like that, it’s usually insincere and with a vague future date to be determined and never acted on, implied… otherwise someone might accuse one of stalking.”

  “Not where I come from. And you weren’t being vague.” He stood then, tossing the remote on the couch. He gathered up his mess and walked around my puffed up indignation to dump his trash under the sink.

  Seriously?

  “How do you know where my trash is?” I demanded from my spot on the floor. I was digging under the couch for my left running shoe, which reminded me I should probably put housework back on the list for Sunday.

  Corwyn didn’t bother to answer. He just walked to the door, pausing to pick up my leather jacket where I’d dumped it in the beeline I made for bed.

  I grabbed my keys and my clothes for Natalie’s St. Patrick’s Day nightmare and followed him down to his rental car. Now that I was up, the idea of watching a hurling match instead, sounded like much more fun than beating Natalie over the head with her shamrocks.

  * * * * *

  Apparently, today’s hurling match was against the Middle Tennessee State University Wolfhounds—part of the growing number of colleges and universities sprouting hurling clubs across the country.

  Hurling in America had grown from a sport tucked in the emigrant baggage of the tired and huddled masses coming from Ireland, kept alive through back alley games between Irish social clubs until its first major boost as an organized sport during the 'American Invasion’: fifty Irish hurlers touring the North and Southeast in the 1880s, sharing their love of the game.

  I got all that by reading one of the pamphlets weighted down by a hurley next to a signup sheet to 'join the team’. I sipped my coffee and made a silent bet as to how long the card table would stand, wobbling under the earnest elbow pressure of eager and dewy-eyed college students.

  When it didn’t collapse, I lost interest, wandering over to where Corwyn and his team were gathering. I stood to the side, gazing at what appeared to be a giant horse field marked off with orange safety cones and two white poles with a soccer net stuck between placed at either end.

  Rory jogged over. “Nick! You came!” In his uniform and wearing the green and black socks pulled up to his knees, Rory looked like a giant child. If you ditched any point of reference, like me, he could pass for twelve—maybe thirteen.

  Socially he was still just a puppy, but standing this close to him, close enough to run a finger across a set of shoulders that would rival FatBoy’s, I realized he was all man, and one that both sexes would drool over. As it had been since the first time he stepped in my bar, my gaydar flickered in and out around him. The only thing I could be certain of was Rory’s own uncertainty.

  “Shanghaied is more like it. Corwyn didn’t give me much room to protest.”

  “Yeah, it’s why he’s captain at home, too. No one gets away with anything when he’s around.”

  “So what’s with the field? I thought you’d play in a nice football stadium with seats and… ya know… seats?” I gestured at the groups of college students sprawled on the grass or wrapped in blankets against the lingering chill of the morning. Beyond the few folding chairs sprinkled on the sidelines where each team gathered, it was hurling al fresco.

  “You’re actually going to play on this?” I asked Liam as he threw his massive tree branch of an arm across my shoulders nearly driving me to my knees. “It looks like there are gopher holes and rocks…”

  “Right?” Rory chortled, looking like the prospect of breaking an ankle upped his enjoyment quotient by 50 percent.

  “Don’t worry, lad, we won’t hurt ’em too bad. Look at those children. We’ll be done in time for breakfast.”

  “I thought you’d be done by then anyway? Doesn’t this game have a clock, or does it go on for years like Cricket?”

  Liam smacked me on the side of my head, and my ear rang. “You don’t know much about sport, do you?”

  “I know how to get blood out of a T-shirt, but that’s about it.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind. Ah—” He jerked like a dog hearing an inaudible whistle. “Time to go. Come, Rory!”

  They sprinted off to join a handful of players forming on the field—Liam was easy to identify from his position in front of the goal, but the rest of them all moved too damn fast once the game got underway, both teams running constantly up and down the field.

  The first ten minutes were spent trading points, knocking the silotar through the uprights at such a blazing speed I quit watching the ball and focused on the referee waving a flag for every point. The Wolfhounds were hanging tough, but they weren’t able to get around Liam’s size and power.

  They were nearing the end of the first thirty-minute period when my pocket vibrated. FatBoy.

  FB: where are you?

  FB: Ur not answering your door.

  Fuck me.

  N: Hurling

  FB: ???

  FB: where?

  N: MTSU

  FB: Why

  Good question. Time stretched as I couldn’t think of a reply.

  Finally…

  FB: see you in 10

  Great.

  I turned my attention back to the game, which still reminded me of an out of control dog park, Corwyn running by, bouncing the ball on the flat of his hurley like it was no big deal.

  The co-eds had abandoned their little table and were jumping up and down, chasing their team along the sidelines, and I realized that I was pretty much it for the Irish. Which made the thought of sneaking away with FatBoy as soon as he showed up a little mean.

  I could live with mean if it meant dragging him into the nearest bed—or under a convenient bush.

  This need to claim some part of him was becoming a persistent itch, hovering precisely between the pleasure you get from scratching and the subsequent pain and irritation of shredded flesh.

  Not that I expect either pain or shredded flesh from FatBoy, but the idea of consummating this relationship had taken on an outsized importance to the pleasure of just being with him and I wasn’t sure how I felt about either notion.

  Fortunately, a crash midfield was a great distraction. By the time it had been sorted, with the puck called against Ireland for the foul and a trainer from the Irish team coming to the rescue of a Wolfhound with a bloody gash on his shin, I caught sight of FatBoy striding toward me, cups in hand.

  Bless him.

  I loved my coffee, and the second FatBoy had presented me with my first good cup of the day, nothing else mattered.

  “Hey.” I felt my smile grow as I sipped, letting the dark roast and FatBoy’s bump of the shoulder chase away my unhappy thoughts. We stood quietly together for another few moments.

  “What’s the score?” he asked, after a minute scrutinizing the field.

  “No idea.”

  I stared at a couple of the guys gathered on the sidelines waiting to pl
ay, and enjoyed the almost-spring sunshine soaking into my back.

  “You know, with those helmets, they kind of remind me of something…”

  The Irish team wore either red or black helmets, all flattened on the sides and squared off at the top. They bore an uncanny and unfortunate resemblance to a game I lusted after as a child.

  FatBoy turned and smirked at me. “Rock’em Sock’em Robots?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I killed at that!”

  “I would have killed for that!”

  “Maybe for Christmas.” FatBoy’s smile was a full-on promise that we’d be together by then.

  I smiled back and pretended to watch the second half of the game while studying him out of the corner of me eye. It was another new look for him—his navy blue T-shirt tucked into low-riding jeans. Everything looked soft and comfortable and made me want to stroke him, though I could do without the UT hat pulled over his sunglasses, hiding his face from me.

  I wasn’t the only one to notice FatBoy. The girls working recruitment for the Wolfhounds at the table behind us called him out.

  “Hey, gorgeous. You look like you know your way around a stick!”

  FatBoy turned, taking an extra wide step away from me as he did. “I might,” he replied, “though I haven’t seen the hind quarter of my college days for quite some time.”

  A curly haired co-ed giggled. “You alum? MT has a great alumni program. We see them all over the campus…” Her flirting was almost painful.

  “Nah, UT all the way.” He pointed to his cap, flirting back, and I wanted to kick him. If this was payback for letting Corwyn kidnap me—I was distracted from my threat making by the ridiculous mating ritual being performed in front of me.

  “Oh! A Vol. That’s cool, we’re all friends here…” She seemed to consider her options for a moment. I could see the little wheels in her brain spinning furiously, looking for a way to cut FatBoy out of the flock and into her clutches. I recognized it from my own almost constant machinations. I was ready for her pitch when it came. “Hey! I have something you can volunteer for—”