by K. Ryan
Slinger chose to ignore me, opting instead to hook a thumb my way. “This one says she would never think I worked at Wal-Mart.”
It took Finn a moment to catch on, but when he did, the edge of his lips quirked up in an amused grin. He used the back of the hand holding the tongs to rub his forehead and shrugged. “Oh right. So what?”
Now Slinger jabbed a pointed finger at Finn. “How dare you use my shame to impress a pretty girl, Finnegan!”
My eyes flew to Finn, mouthing, “Finnegan?”, but he just shook his head.
“Can someone please explain what’s happening here?” I spread my hands out in front of me.
“Sling thinks I’m Brett Favre because I—”
“Betrayed the team,” Slinger cut in abruptly as he sprung up from the couch, turning on his heel to head towards the hallway. “You know, when Favre said he was gonna retire for like, the 100th time, so then the Packers decide to move forward with Rodgers and then when Favre, big surprise, decides to come out of retirement yet again, the Packers have already moved on. So what does he do? He throws away years of hard-earned legacy to go play for the Vikings because he’s a bitter, betraying asshole. He might as well have driven a knife in my heart and twisted it around—just like your boy, Finn, here.”
With that, Slinger stomped down the hallway and disappeared behind a closed door.
“Wow,” I exhaled.
“I guess he showed me,” Finn laughed as he crossed the living room to put the plate on the kitchen table.
“I thought people were kinda cool with Brett Favre again these days, or at least, not cursing his name and burning his jersey anymore,” I wondered out loud.
“Let’s just say Sling knows how to hold a grudge,” Finn explained and gestured to the table. “You still hungry? We’ve got about 50 brats that gotta go somewhere so…”
Finn trailed off as Slinger reappeared in the living room, this time, having swapped the Jordy Nelson jersey he’d been wearing for a green Rodgers jersey instead. Judging by the fury creeping into Finn’s cheeks, I had a pretty good idea which jersey it was, too. And sure enough, Slinger flashed us the back just in case we weren’t sure—good ol’ number 12 with the name Matthews stitched onto the back.
“Where did you find that?” Finn growled, clenching those tongs a little too tightly.
“Oh, you know,” Slinger shrugged and dropped down into the reclining chair next to the TV. “Just somethin’ I found in your closet, collecting dust. Such a shame, too, because whoever gave this to you is a freaking genius.”
"Take it off,” Finn demanded hotly. “Now.”
Slinger just shook his head with a satisfied smirk.
“Is genius a euphemism for something?” I chimed in from the couch.
Finn’s lips curled up into a proud grin while Slinger blinked back at me like I’d just told him the Bears won the Super Bowl before throwing his head back into the chair with laughter.
“Whoa!” Slinger laughed and wiped his eyes. “Where did that come from? I like you. Did you hear that, Finn? I like her.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Finn called from the kitchen. “Heard you loud and clear, Sling.”
That was enough to deter whatever animosity lingered between the two of them and before long, Finn was seated next to me on the couch with a plate of food in one hand and a beer in the other. But the real fun, at least for me, began with the kick-off: both Finn and Slinger rose to their feet as the kicker punted the ball high in the air across the stadium and when a Packer player caught it to run some yards, they both threw their heads back and howled.
They were howling, I tell you.
Howling.
“What in God’s name…” I muttered, shaking my head. “Is that some kind of weird kick-off ritual or something?”
“It’s hardly weird, Emma,” Slinger told me from his chair. “You’re just jealous you didn’t get in on the action with us.”
“Yep. That’s it. Totally.”
Finn cast me an amused sideways glance as he took his seat on the couch again. He winked at me and then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands together anxiously. The offense was out on the field now and I had the sudden urge to elbow him right in the shoulder and say, “Look! Your man-crush is on TV!”
That probably wouldn’t go over well, so I opted to keep my mouth shut.
And forget the game. It was way more entertaining to watch my couch companion instead—Finn leaned forward just a hair as Rodgers called a play at the line, pointing to one receiver, then another, before finally hiking the ball. Finn’s entire body seemed to tense in anticipation, his eyes glued to the screen, none the wiser that I’d pretty much foregone the game entirely now.
My focus was on him. The way his eyes squinted in concentration, flicking from side to side as he watched the quarterback’s every movement with razor-sharp precision, and when Rodgers sent the ball sailing high over the heads of just about everyone else on the field, Finn sat up in mid-crouch with both hands rising in anticipation.
When the ball landed right into the hands of the wide receiver, who leapt into the end zone, Finn bounced up from the couch, hollering at the top of his lungs, “Whoo! Yes!”
Slinger hopped forward so they could high-five, but this wasn’t just any high-five. No, this was the high-five of two best friends who’d been watching this game and playing it together for years. Slinger held his hand up high, Finn met him all the way up to the top, they smacked hands, whooshed their hands down low to smack hands again, and then wiggled their fingers together—all the while swiveling their hips and singing, “I don’t wanna work...I just wanna bang on this drum all day!”
I blew out a stunned breath. I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh with them or cackle at their expense.
“You guys are weird,” I mumbled under my breath and took a long pull from my Matthews Brewing Co. beer bottle.
That beer nearly spilled all over Finn’s jersey when he jerked the bottle out of my hand and promptly set the bottle and my food on the end table so he could yank me off the couch and into his arms. He lifted me right off my feet in a tight bear-hug and when he set me back on solid ground, both hands closed around my cheeks so he could press a hard, elated kiss into my mouth.
“We scored, Em!”
Oh my God, we? Yep, he’d definitely said we.
“I know,” I laughed, acutely aware that his hands still lingered over my shoulders.
I liked this football-obsessed side of Finn. There was no pretense here. No putting on a show or trying to impress me. He’d invited me into his home to spend time with him and his best friend watching a game he obviously loved, completely uninhibited. Completely himself. In the middle of it all, I felt completely welcome, too. I wasn’t in the way. I wasn’t an afterthought. I wasn’t there just to make food and serve his friends. I was there to be part of it, to share in the thrill of watching the game with him, instead of just sitting next to him.
It was safe to say I’d never been kissed like that after a touchdown before.
Now, the hands burning holes through the jersey I was wearing skimmed down to my waist and pulled me against his chest. My heart thundered, my stomach warmed, and little tendrils of fire snaked around the side of my hips, resting right at Finn’s fingertips. I chewed on my bottom lip as Finn grinned down at me, his sky-blue eyes melting into pools of something I knew I wasn’t quite ready for.
A throat cleared behind us.
“Get a room,” Slinger coughed into his shoulder.
Finn’s hands flew up in the air, backing away from me and sinking down into the couch, but that grin never left his face. In fact, that grin was pretty much mirrored on Slinger’s face, too, albeit with a slightly smug variation.
So, by the time I situated myself back down on the couch, this time a few inches closer to Finn, the game was already on a commercial break. This must’ve been the opportunity Slinger was waiting for because the second that first commercial started, his brig
ht green eyes darted right to Finn.
“Emma,” Slinger called out, his fingertips wiggling together like a Bond villain, or better yet, Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. “My sweet, darling, gorgeous Emma…”
“You better be going somewhere with this, Sling,” Finn shot back and it was no accident that his arm curled around my shoulders at that exact moment.
Slinger completely ignored Finn and instead, leveled his mischievous gaze right on me. “Did Finn ever tell you about his bathroom escapades back in the day?”
My eyes snapped to Finn, who’d gone still next to me. Horror and mortification flicked across his face and suddenly, that arm around my shoulders unwound itself so he could scrub both hands across his face.
“Don’t do it,” Finn pleaded and shook his head at his roommate, who was practically salivating at his humiliation. “I’m begging you, Sling. I’ll do anything you want—I’ll do your laundry for a month, whatever you want. Just...don’t.”
“Bathroom escapades?” I rose my eyebrows playfully at Finn. “There are a lot of ways a girl could take that, you know.”
Immediately, Finn had his hands in the air. “It’s not what you think—”
“No,” Slinger interjected with a cackle. “It’s better. Soooo much better. And you,” he pointed at Finn, “you have this coming and you know it.”
“Oh shit,” Finn mumbled as he sunk down into the couch and lifted the collar of his jersey to cover the bottom half of his face.
“So,” Slinger wiggled his fingers together again with devilish glee. “Back in the day, when our little Finnie here was in college at good ol' UW-Milwaukee, all our friends would hit the bars downtown on Water Street. After bar close, we’d usually hit up some sort of late-night food joint to grab a bite before heading back to our house. So, one time, we’re sitting at a booth, eating our subs, when Finn comes back from the bathroom and says, ‘Guys, we gotta get outta here.’ And we’re sitting there like, ‘Why? We just got here.’ Finn’s still insisting, ‘I’m serious, guys. We gotta get out of here.’ And now I’m pissed because we just got our food and Finn’s still freaking out saying, ‘I don’t think you understand. We have to leave. Now.’ All of a sudden, we hear this chick yelling, ‘The bathroom’s flooded! What the hell!’ So I look over and sure enough, there’s water pooling out from underneath the door into the hallway. Finn is beet-red, nervous as shit, running his hands over his face, and going, ‘We gotta go, we gotta go’. So we left and it was only after we left that your boy finally admits he didn’t just flood the bathroom, but broke the damn toilet—on purpose!”
My hand slapped over my mouth to muffle my laugh, but my shoulders were already trembling uncontrollably. Finn, on the other hand, mumbled something inaudibly, sunk down into the couch even further, and covered his face with his hands.
“It takes some serious planning ahead of time to figure out how to do that shit when you’re wasted,” Slinger carried on, his evil grin widening by the second. “I mean, he had to have been doing some research, watching Youtube videos, I don’t know...something to figure out how to completely unhook and unscrew everything in the tank and get it to flood like that. So, for the next couple weeks, every time we ended up at a place like that after bar close, Finn’s running out of the bathroom, guilty as all hell, and going, “We gotta go, we gotta go!’”
“Oh no,” I laughed and leaned to the side until my head rested into Finn’s shoulder. “What in God’s name possessed you to do something like that?”
“It was fun at the time,” Finn mumbled.
“But why?” I shook my head, biting my lip at the image of Finn bent over a toilet in some bar, fiddling with all the knobs until the spray broke free.
“Ah,” he rubbed the back of his neck with a wince. “I’m pretty sure it started when some bartender pissed me off. I don’t even remember why I was so pissed in the first place, but I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’m gonna fuck with their toilet now.’”
I covered my mouth with my hand to muffle my laughter.
“And then you got addicted to the rush, the thrill of the crime,” Slinger swept his hands out dramatically. “His bathroom escapades finally came to an end the night we ended up at Miko’s. I was just sitting there, happily eating my monstrous gyro at three in the morning, when Finn skids back over to the table, completely drenched head to toe in water. All I need to see is the water streaming into the hallway and I knew what went down. The manager’s already out there with those caution cones, but the water just keeps right on coming. Then they’re waving people out of the restaurant and Finn’s sitting at our booth, soaked in water and sweat and redder than a tomato, going, ‘Guys, seriously. We have to go’. They had to close the restaurant for two days for repairs, too.”
“What?” I practically shrieked, clapping my hands on my thighs.
“Oh yeah,” Slinger nodded wickedly. “Two days. And the worst part about the whole thing was that I didn’t get to finish my gyro. After that, little Finnie knew it was time to retire from his devious, criminal ways and finally go straight.”
“I never got caught though,” Finn wagged a finger at Slinger.
Slinger shook his head, raising his beer bottle high in the air. “No, my friend, you did not and for that, I salute you.”
Finn followed suit and lifted his own beer up to toast him before wrapping his free arm around my shoulders again.
“To be fair,” Finn explained with a sheepish grin. “I was a drunk idiot with a fake ID. Drunk idiots with fake IDs think they can do anything, apparently.”
“And just look at you now,” Slinger nodded to us from his chair. “All grown up with skills and responsibility and shit. You know, Emma, your boy’s got a big presentation on Thursday with the guys at the Bluestone Lounge.”
“The Bluestone Lounge?” I shot Finn an impressed glance. Even I’d heard of that place before—Mara had been trying to convince me to go there with her pretty much since our first shift together at the café.
“Yep,” Slinger answered for him. “He’s gonna nail it, just like all the other ones before it. You know, Finn’s a regular Don Draper, well, without the womanizing and the smoking and the drinking and the self-loathing...anyway, Finn’s gonna give them the best damn presentation they’ve ever heard. It’ll be so good, they’ll be begging us to let them sell our beer at their place.”
“Just relax, Sling,” Finn chided and his eyes darted back to me. “No pressure, right?”
I smiled, shifting on the couch to face him. “He sounds pretty sure of you.”
“That’s right,” Slinger assured me, nodding to both of us. “His dad and his uncle already have a little celebration planned for Thursday night at the brewhouse because they know he’s gonna nail it, too. You should swing by if you’re not too busy and celebrate with us,” and now he was wiggling his eyebrows at me, “and if you, uh, have any female friends who would like to come along, feel free to invite them, you know?”
“I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself,” Finn called out, exasperation with just a hint of hesitation creeping into his voice, and he turned back to me with a shy smile, “If everything goes well, and that’s a big if, I would love to have you there on Thursday—if you want to.”
I didn’t even have to think twice about it and that only scared me a little bit. “I’m working the dinner shift, but I’m sure I’ll be able to switch with someone.”
Finn’s eyes widened. “No, Em, you don’t have to do that. It’s really not—”
“I want to be there,” I insisted and squeezed his hand. “I’ll make it happen. Don’t worry about it,” I glanced at Slinger, “And maybe my friend from work would want to come, too.”
Slinger’s eyes sparked with slightly scary anticipation—maybe asking Mara to come with wasn’t such a good idea if he was already looking like that. Not to mention the fact that I’d basically fibbed my ass off just now when I’d called Mara my friend. But, I couldn’t imagine myself actually showing u
p at the brewery on Thursday alone. I’d just feel uncomfortable and out of place, even though I’d been invited.
But the grin Finn flashed me told me everything I needed to know and sent all those worries right out the window. It was pretty simple: he wanted me there on Thursday just as much as he’d wanted me here today and that thought alone had me pressing myself even tighter into his shoulder. The last thing I wanted to do was send him mixed signals just days after telling him I needed to take this slow...but I just couldn’t help it. I just wanted to be as close to him as possible without embarrassing myself in front of his best friend and roommate.
The rest of the game pretty much went like this: Finn and Slinger jumping and hollering at the awesome plays and the not-so-awesome plays, more high-fiving, more food and beers, and more time spent being tucked underneath Finn’s shoulder.
So, after the Packers triumphed over the Seahawks and all the excess of leftovers were shelved away in their refrigerator, Finn led me out into the hallway with his hand carefully pressed into the small of my back. When we crossed the short distance between his door and mine, I gestured down to the blue and yellow jersey I was wearing.
“I still need to give this back to you.”
My fingers lifted the hem, but Finn’s hands ghosted over my shoulder to stop me, smoothing the soft material down.
“You can hang onto it for next Sunday. I don’t mind. It looks better on you anyway.”
As if my limbs had minds of their own, I found myself trailing both hands up his chest, slipping around his shoulders to curl up his neck, and finally, I tugged his lips to mine. His strong arms wrapped around my waist, pressing me into the door and flush against him at the same time. Our lips melded together, exploring and tasting, and somewhere along the way, my left thigh lifted just enough to hitch around his hip and let him in a little deeper.
He groaned into my lips and the hand melting into my thigh grazed higher, slipping up my jeans and curving around the base of my—