I don’t know when he got so close to me, but he lowers himself to my ear and groans. It’s pretty hot actually. “I had a bottle of wine on an empty stomach.”
I shrug. “Me too.”
“Fine,” he says, turning away. The absence of him leaves a layer of cold where his body just was. “I drink wine like a girl. Does that make you happy?”
I nod rapidly.
“What I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry if I came off too strongly last night. I woke up and I was naked and you were gone. I was afraid I scared you. I can’t remember what was real or just my dream—”
I throw the clean bone into the trashcan. “I wasn’t scared.”
LIES LIES LIES. I wasn’t scared of him. I’m not. I’m scared of this feeling in my gut that won’t go away. I don’t even know him, not the way you’re supposed to know someone before they make you feel like your insides will burn, like my heart is rebooting from previous mechanical failures.
“Wait—you dreamt about me?”
He leans back, scratching his head. “Uhh—”
“You were fine,” I say, putting a stop to the awkwardness before it gets out of hand. I can’t go down this road. “You probably took your clothes off in your sleep. You were dressed when I left.”
He arches an eyebrow for a second. “Alright.”
“We’re good. Our truce still stands. The truth is, I need your help for all of this. I don’t know what I was thinking, telling Stella I could do this.”
It’s the first time I’ve admitted it aloud.
He nudges my shoulder again. “I got you.”
For a moment, he’s back. It’s the James that’s there when we’re alone together. The tension in his shoulders eases, as well as his smile.
The back door opens, letting in that chilly after-the-rain air. Nunzio runs a hand across his buzzed hair. He’s got on a white tank top that stretches across his broad chest and a tattoo with the name Lydia in script under his collarbone. He grins when he sees James take three steps away from me.
“Whatcha been doing?” he says.
“Don’t start,” James says.
“I’m just asking a question.” Nunzio wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.
“I’m out of here.” I start making a break out of the kitchen.
“You’re not going to the game?” Nunzio asks. His chef’s coat long gone.
“Game?” I ask.
James unbuttons the front of his chef’s coat, and I’m a little disappointed that he’s wearing a t-shirt underneath. “Mrs. Mark Teixeria over here wouldn’t be into it.”
“Who the hell is that?” I ask, only to receive pained groans from the guys.
Truth is, I hate baseball. It is the slowest sport on the planet. I’d rather watch drama queen soccer players fake injuries or hockey players beat the shit out of each other. The only reason I was wearing a baseball cap is because I stole it from my roommate as payback for her eating all of my food. Plus I hadn’t washed my hair in days. The baseball cap was my version of those medieval cones women wore to trap the smell because they couldn’t wash their hair every day. At least, that was my take away from high school World History.
“Your mom left us tickets,” Nunzio says.
Funny that my mom didn’t mention anything to me. But I’m not hurt. I’m used to Stella forgetting about me every now and then. “Oh. Right.”
The boys get really awkward, because they know I’m just trying to save face.
Nunzio flexes his bicep. “I have to bail though. I’m making dinner for a ten and a half.”
James shrugs.
“A ten and a half?” I say. “Do I even want to know what that is?”
“She’s beyond the scale. She’s a supermodel, but she eats like a pig. It’s awesome.” Nunzio starts walking out of the kitchen and we follow. “So Lucky, you should take my ticket. Once you get past the third beer, you’ll start having a good time.”
“That’s what my first boyfriend said to me on prom night,” I say. It’s a lie, but boys like that joke. It’s like I’m one of them. James doesn’t look like he approves so much.
“Yoooo, you’re a trip. You’re nothing like your moms.” Nunzio grabs my face and kisses each cheek. He slaps James’s hand in the way guys have of feeling super manly from a single handshake, then slaps James’s shoulder. “Please, do everything I would do.”
“Go feed your model,” James says, pushing him down the hall towards the offices.
“Good luck,” I yell as he grabs his duffle bag and heads out the door.
“I don’t need luck,” he winks. At least someone here doesn’t.
Chapter 16
Fenway is more of a church to Boston than some of the actual churches in Boston. When Felicity realized I hadn’t been invited to the game, she put on her best owl-eyed-expression and said, “Ohmigod, I thought Stella told you!”
Truthfully, I shouldn’t be hurt. It’s a safe assumption to think that a mother and a daughter exchange more than pleasantries in public. These safe-assumers don’t know Stella and me very well. But at the end of the day, I got my ticket.
The busboy and line cooks, who seem to only call each other by their last names—Alfredo, Chang, Sully, Martinez—chug their beers in the row in front of me.
Felicity cranes her neck, a red cap fit snugly around her corkscrew curls. Slowly and steadily, the stadium fills up with Boston’s finest. Young college boys who’re looking to score beer with their shoddy fake IDs, large families who start their young early in the art of screaming at a diamond field. I’ve only ever been to one Mets game, so I don’t know what’s supposed to be a good seat at a baseball game. The guy I went with was such a fanatic that when we weren’t talking about baseball or having sex, he didn’t have two cents to give on anything. It wasn’t a Fever Pitch moment, but I’m not worse for the wear. So to speak.
“This is so exciting,” Felicity says.
I’m in a Felicity and James sandwich. James chuckles. “Is this your first game?”
“Yep! My brother’s little league doesn’t count, I suppose.”
“It counts,” I say. “It’s the same thing except here you get to drink beer and the guys are cuter.”
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those girls,” James says.
“What girls?”
“The girls that only watch sports because of the cute guys.”
I lean back in my seat. How is it ten degrees colder inside the stadium than out? “I can be any kind of girl I feel like.”
“Yes, you can.” He takes off his jacket and hands it to me without explaining why. I take it, mumbling a quiet thanks.
I’m swimming in the soft leather and I have to forcibly stop myself from bringing the sleeves to my nose and inhaling.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Bradley’s name pops up in my text messages.
Bradley: What are you doing after work?
Me: Don’t laugh. I’m at the Sox/Braves game.
Bradley: What the hell? How is that working? I’m in my dad’s company box. Come up.
I can feel James’s eyes on me as I text.
Me: Can’t. With restaurant staff.
Bradley: Laaaaaaaame. What seats are you at?
“What’s the deal with that guy?” James asks. “Is he your Boston boy toy?”
I text him our location then instantly give James the evil eye. “My Boston boy toy?”
James smirks and claps at something that’s happening on the field. “Just saying. I see him around a lot. More now that you’re back.”
“He’s my best friend.”
James cocks an eyebrow that says, yeah right.
“Guys and girls can’t be friends?”
“Not when the girl looks like you.”
I sit back down on my seat. I don’t know how to take that. Before I can think too much on it, a handful of popcorn kernels showers over our section. Behind us is a large group of extremely drunk frat boys. Sure, I don’t know if they’re frat boys, but they feel li
ke frat boys, and I have a huge aversion to them because every time I’ve gone to a house party, I feel like I’m being corralled into the next available room to get fucked by an unfortunate whiskey dick.
“Lucky, leave your friends at home,” James says, glancing back at the frat crowd.
“Ha, ha, very funny.”
“Come on.” He blows his breath into his hands. “They’re your people.”
“Why do you think you’ve got me all figured out?” I hate that he says stuff like that. I hate that one second he seems to get me so well, and the next he totally misses the mark. Guys are stupid.
I look down at my empty beer. Felicity’s got a full foamstache going as she listens to Martinez explain to her why the left field wall is called the Green Monster.
“I need another beer.” I get up and scoot my way down the aisle. “Do you guys want anything else?”
The boys list off beers, pretzels, pizza, and more beer.
James smiles and cranes his head back. When he smiles his green eyes crinkle at the corner. “Want some help, Lucy?”
I purse my lips to keep myself from grinning. It’s not that I like when he calls me that. I don’t. But maybe it’s growing on me. “I got it.”
I rush through the new influx of people wearing red and white. It’s still drizzling, but that doesn’t stop people from throwing on a Red Sox poncho and getting a little wet. We parked a few blocks south and walked the rest of the way. Even if you’re walking and don’t know you’re way around the area, all you have to do is follow the trails of people. It’s like ants returning to their colony.
The stadium air is strong with cold frothy beer and warm salty pretzels. There are so many stands, pretty much all serving the same food, that the wait time is a fraction of Yankee Stadium’s. I order six pretzels, nachos and cheese, a personal pie, and four beers. When I realize I can’t carry all of this, I want to smack myself. Dear Lucky, why you so stubborn?
“Now do you want some help?”
I can feel James standing directly behind me.
“Only if you say my real name.” The pretzels are wedged between the beers and the nacho cheese is starting to dribble onto my wrist.
“Lucky,” he says. “Lucky.”
I’d like to think that this, James Hughes saying my name, has no effect on me. I pride myself on being the kind of girl that isn’t easily swayed by a pretty face. It’s not just his sea-green eyes that look clearer under the bright white stadium lights, or my name on his lips—it’s that he followed me here to help.
I let him take the nachos and pretzels tray.
“You’ve got a little something,” he says.
I immediately go to my face, but he takes my hand and turns it, exposing the inside of my wrist where a fat drop of warm cheese spilled from the tray.
“You can’t take me anywhere,” I say, completely glued to the floor.
He doesn’t disagree. He brings my wrist to his mouth. His tongue is warm on my cold skin. Heat takes over my cheeks, my chest, and spreads down, down, down.
“There’s no sense in wasting good cheese,” he says.
“You’re gross.” I battle the burst of adrenaline in my veins.
“You’re delicious.” He clears his throat. “I meant the cheese.”
I’ve never felt so attracted to someone in my life.
Then I remind myself that he’s my mother’s pet project. I remind myself that I’m leaving as soon as the restaurant is open. I remind myself that all guys are the same, and even if yes, James Hughes decides that I’m just as pretty as the other girls that line up to be in his bed, at the end of the day, what’ll I be left with?
“You didn’t get anything for yourself?” he asks. “Not that you would want any of this crap when you just had a five star tasting.”
“Actually,” I say, stopping at a long line. “I was about to get a hot dog.”
He smiles, that sweet dimple puncturing his cheek. “Come on, then.”
One of my favorite smells in the world is meat on the grill. It fills my head with pleasant memories of when my dad would fire up the grill and make dinner. My mom would yell at him that he’d make her fat, but she always finished her burgers in record time.
“You space out a lot, you know.”
James takes the empty space in front of us as the line gets shorter.
“I don’t think of it as spacing out. I think of it as sensory recollection.”
He whistles. “Okay Harvard, dumb it down for me.”
“I never went to Harvard.”
He looks shocked. “Holy shit, there’s a college you didn’t drop out of?”
“So you’re a chef because you failed Clown College, is that it?”
He fakes an injury to his chest, which causes a bright yellow cheesy nacho to fall to the ground.
“Man down,” I say. “You’d better lick it off the floor. No sense in wasting good cheese.”
He turns his face to the side, but I can see his face flush. I like this side of James. The side of him that isn’t holding up the line at a coffee shop to get a number, the side of him that isn’t territorial about his kitchen. Why can’t this James be around all the time?
The guy at the sausage stand nods at me. “What’re ya havin’?”
“I’ll take a foot long Italian sausage with peppers,” I say.
“Damn girl,” James whispers behind me.
Sausage Guy uses his tongs to flip over the links of meat. Black charred marks dash across the plump red meat. “For you?”
“I’ll have the same.”
I turn around and smirk at him. “Copycat.”
“I happen to love Fenway dogs.” Dah-gs.
“Hey!” The sausage guy says, straightening up. “Aren’t you that guy from that cooking show?”
I watch James’s face go from easy-sexy-comfort to just plain shocked. While he doesn’t exactly have a way with words, James’s isn’t what I’d call shy. I guess being caught off guard and being recognized on a hot dog line really put a shock into him. “D—Uh—Yeah, that’s me.”
“I thought I recognized you, man. I’m Tom, nice to meet you. That’s fuckin’ awesome, bro. Ten thousand dollars.” He sets up a tray with two warm buns and slaps our sausages right on top. “You really brought it home, you know. My girlfriend’s like ‘Only people from New York win.’ Fuckin’, do you think I have a shot? I’d get my own food truck and just, boom, drive all across the country. What’d you do with your cash?”
James’s shock on his expression-o-meter keeps getting higher and higher. His perfect, plump lips are parted and his bright green eyes are wide, like he’s sorting through his thoughts before he can form a coherent sentence.
Because James looks all kinds of uncomfortable holding up the line, which I guess is a habit of his, I decide to take matters into my own hands.
“James is the Executive Chef at a new restaurant opening up by the Waterfront.”
“Get out!” Tom adjusts his ball cap.
A flash appears out of nowhere. Cheers blast from inside the stadium. Someone behind us shouts, “Hey, hurry it up, will ya?”
“It’s called The Star,” I tell Tom, handing him some cash. “We open on the 28th!”
Now that I’ve got beer, pretzels, and two giant sausages stacked right on top of the other, I make a break for the condiment stand.
“Well, that was wicked weird,” he says, taking one of the beers and drinking half of it in one long gulp.
I try not to laugh, but it’s hard.
He licks fluffy white foam from his upper lip and that does something delicious to my insides. “What’s so funny?”
“Here I am thinking I’m the one who’s anti-social, and you literally just stood there while that guy fawned over you.”
He frowns, the dip in the middle of his forehead more and more pronounced. “I never said I was social or anti-social.”
“You were stunned, my friend.”
He purses his lips and keeps chug
ging the beer. I pump a healthy helping of mustard and ketchup on the sausages.
“So how does it feel to be famous?” I poke him in his stomach. If someone did that to me, it would be like poking memory foam. My soft belly would bounce right back. But when I do it to James, all I find is hard, hard muscle.
James smiles that perfectly dazzling smile that makes my head all kinds of confused. “Actually, I love being that guy from that cooking show. It gives me a sense of accomplishment.
“You could be ‘Aren’t you that guy from those wanted posters?’ Or ‘Aren’t you that guy from the STD commercials?’ I’m just trying to be a friend here.”
Saying the words before I can have a good chance to weigh their meaning, I find myself taking one of the other beers and drinking it the same way James does. It’s like, ‘Hey! Did you put your foot in your mouth? Have a brewski!’
“You want to be friends?”
I meet his stark green eyes from above my cup. I find that the larger a cup is, the better it is to hide the blush of shame that comes with speaking my mind. I shrug, lowering my beer so he can hear me. “Sure, you’re okay. Even though you said before you can’t be friends with someone who looks like me.”
“That’s not what I said at all.” He scratches the back of his head. I know an indecisive look when I see one. I’m the Queen of Indecisive Land.
“You’ve got—” He leans down, and with every inch that he gets closer to my face, my heart hammers in my chest. I lick the cold from my lips. Then his thumb, his beautiful, calloused thumb, brushes across my upper lip. “Beerstache.”
I want to dip my face in all of the beers just so he will do that again. “James—”
He turns around, cradling our baseball feast, and looks at me. People wearing red and white zoom past him, completely unaware of the gorgeous statue they’re walking past. But I’m aware. I see him. James Hughes. I have his attention. His sea-green eyes are waiting for me to say something, but my lips are still burning from his touch. No matter what I say, there is no way a man like this wants anything to do with a girl like me. I sigh, and lick my lips again. We’re missing the game, a loud cheer is followed by the fake-out groan of a false hope, but he isn’t rushing me. He’s just waiting for me to speak.
Luck on the Line Page 9