Sparks the Matchmaker (Aaron Sparks Series)

by Elkins, Russell

“Oh yeah. The swing set. I guess it’s not meant for people my size.”

  ***

  Working a shift without Joy by his side was boring enough, but taking away their ability to leave the apartment made it even that much worse. Between some odorous loads of laundry and Greg doing reps on his weight set, there wasn’t much else to keep either of them busy.

  “I think I’ll call my sister,” Greg said. He was having trouble, though, dialing his sister’s number with his massive fingers. He had used the phone numerous times before without incident, but now he couldn’t get his enormous digits to push only one button at a time. After the second attempt, Greg slammed it down on the table, cracking the plastic. That’s when everything turned upside down.

  Ollie finally saw Greg’s short fuse firsthand, and it terrified him. “You okay, man?” he asked. “I think I’m supposed to give you some space if you start to get upset.”

  “Shut up! Get out of here!” Greg yelled as he slammed the telephone down on the table one more time, breaking it into pieces. He sat forward on his haunches threateningly, tensed for the strike.

  Well, that was the wrong thing to say… not that there was any kind of right thing to say. The damage had already been done. The phone had defied Greg by positioning its numbers too close together. There was no fixing things now.

  Ollie realized he hadn’t planned ahead very well. In the future he’d make his usual seat the one closest to the front door, and he would wait until he was near it before asking if Greg needed some time alone. That would be in the future. Presently, and rather unfortunately, he found himself sitting in a cave too close to an angry grizzly bear, and the distance between him and the only exit yawned impossibly wide.

  Ollie stood slowly, hoping slow deliberate movements would be less dangerous than a sudden sprint to safety.

  Greg stood more quickly.

  Ollie turned and hurried toward the door. Greg moved quickly, especially for a guy who was supposed to stay off his feet. Ollie felt sure he was going to beat Greg to the door, but he didn’t know how long it would take him to get it open. He could already taste the freedom and safety of the outdoors, but the door—!

  Ollie was able to open the front door, but Greg had him before he could flee through it to safety. Greg wrapped his massive arms around him as he tackled him, causing them both to stumble into the corner. They managed to stay on their feet, but then with a mighty grunt, Greg lifted Ollie up off the ground. As long as I don’t hear any of my bones crunching, I’ll be okay! Another loud grunt, and Ollie was thrown out the door, landing on the concrete like a sack of potatoes.

  For a long moment, Greg stood over Ollie, staring down at him. He didn’t dare try to get up or move, ready to protect himself by kicking up at Greg if he needed to. I can’t remember the last time anybody picked me up, let alone threw me.

  Greg turned around, stomped back into his apartment, and slammed the door. It was over.

  Before he could give it another thought, Ollie scrambled back to his feet and darted twenty feet away from the front door before turning around to reassess the situation. “Get out of here!” Greg yelled from inside his apartment. “Don’t come back!”

  There was a bright side: at least he hadn’t hit him. Sparks had been wrong. So far, anyway.

  ***

  Ollie waited just out of Greg’s sight for the next five minutes, watching and listening and breathing hard. He’d been in a few scuffles in his lifetime— including the one a few days earlier at the ballpark— but he’d never seen the kind of rage in a man’s eyes that he had seen just then; it was as if Greg was going to actually tear him apart.

  There had been no way around it, though. He’d had no way of knowing Greg was going to have trouble with the phone. He had been reasonably cheerful thirty seconds earlier.

  Ollie waited, nervous that Greg the grizzly bear was going to come crashing out his front door breathing fire, incinerating everything in his path. But he never made a sound.

  Ollie considered his options.

  The worst was to go gingerly back into Greg’s lair after just five minutes of calm. No, that’s a bad idea.

  He could go wait in the car for the next half hour or forty-five minutes, and while that might be better, it would be boring.

  Or I could go hang out with Lynn and Marie… Yeah. That was a good option; it just made sense.

  ***

  Both Lynn and Marie could cheer Ollie up, even though only five minutes earlier he had nearly lost his life. He stayed only half an hour, but that gave him thirty minutes of smiles and laughter.

  Maybe Greg got fed up because I’m both bored and boring. He couldn’t help being bored and boring, though, at least with the kind of day they’d had.

  Lynn probably could have guessed pretty closely what had just happened to Ollie by the expression on his face, but he told her all the details anyway.

  “You can’t beat yourself up about it,” Lynn said.

  “I know. That’s Greg’s job,” Ollie laughed.

  “I’m serious,” Lynn said. “He’ll just snap. Sometimes you can’t avoid it. All you can do is get out of his way.”

  After a while, Ollie walked back to Greg’s place. It was time to get back to work, and his responsibilities couldn’t be avoided.

  He was still nervous about what he’d find there. He couldn’t help feeling like he’d failed at something. He felt somehow it was his fault Greg had flipped out, even though he knew it was impossible to completely keep Greg occupied and busy at all hours.

  “Greg?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Ollie.”

  Greg looked at him hesitantly, but stepped closer.

  Ollie’s hand still rested on the doorknob. As he felt those potentially terrible eyes scanning him, it took everything he had not to tuck his tail and run. Is he still mad at me, or does he really not remember who I am? There’s one sure way to tell.

  “Pooky?” Ollie said, still deciding between fight and flight.

  Greg’s eyes lit up in excitement, like he’d just been reunited with a long lost friend. “Pooky!”

  “I was gonna ask how you were doin’, but I can see you’re doing just fine.”

  “‘Course I am, why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Oh, I dunno. I just didn’t know if you were still—” Ollie stopped himself from finishing his own sentence. If Greg didn’t remember his emotional hurricane, nothing good could come from reminding him about it. “…Uh, if you were still wanting to go over to visit Marie’s apartment.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “You know her… big girl across the way. Thick glasses.”

  “Why would I want to visit her?”

  “I dunno. She’s your friend.”

  “I bet you just want to go over there because there’s a hot girl working with her today.”

  Busted. “Hey, if you don’t want to go over there, that’s fine. I just thought you’d like to go do something fun, rather than sit around the house watching TV.”

  “I’m hungry. Maybe after dinner.”

  Ollie took a few steps toward the kitchen and pointed at the empty bowl that had contained ravioli in the not too distant past. “You just ate.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m not still hungry. Besides, don’t you have a girlfriend? Isn’t that girl with the curly brown hair your girlfriend? She doesn’t work over there.”

  Ollie’s mind immediately switched over to defense. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Besides, how is it you can remember something like that, but you don’t even know who I am when I walk through your door?”

  “Beats me. Sometimes I remember things, sometimes I don’t.”

  It was a lost cause trying to convince Greg. He wasn’t going to go.

  The big bear nuked a TV dinner, quickly got it into his belly, and resumed
hibernation on the sofa while Ollie coasted to the end of the shift watching another ballgame.

  Even after the shift and the ballgame had ended, Ollie sat there quietly debating whether or not to spend a little more time with Lynn and Marie or just go home. His debate went as far as walking over to Marie’s front door and lifting his hand as if he were going to knock, but he shoved his hand back into his warm pocket and made his way to his car. Playing with fire. I’d better figure out what’s up with Joy before I go hanging out with other girls.

  What a rotten situation to be in. This would be so much easier if Lynn were ugly. But Ollie had to shake his head at himself for thinking such a horrible thought.

  That night, stewing in his thoughts, he knew what he wanted to do. He’d go over to Joy’s place in the morning so early that she couldn’t possibly be gone. It was all he could think of doing, but even that plan came up empty.

  “Sorry, Ollie,” Joy’s roommate said, standing in the doorway in her pajamas. “She left town.”

  “What?” Ollie couldn’t believe it. “Any idea where she went? Or when she’ll be back?”

  “I think she went to Colorado again.”

  Déjà vu. He’d seen this before, but he was on the other side of the situation then. Last time she went to Colorado she was looking to ditch “that guy.” Hopefully this trip to Colorado didn’t mean she went with Scott. “Did she go alone?”

  Joy’s roommate clearly didn’t want to have to answer that question.

  But he knew the answer just by the expression on her face.

  “I don’t think so. I think she went with Scott.”

  Chapter 24

  Again, Ollie stuck his nose into a textbook to pass the morning. Just like when he was with Anne, his female situation had proven better for his study habits than for romance, which frustrated him. His Saturday was dragging on and he still had half a dozen hours to go before his evening shift.

  Greg turned out to be even worse than before. And with so much of his mind preoccupied with the ins and outs of his love life, Ollie regularly found himself with his guard down. The night before had spooked him into being extra nervous about being attacked, but he couldn’t find a mental balance between his love life and his own physical wellbeing. Every dull moment in Greg’s apartment made Ollie’s mind shift to Joy, Lynn, and periodically to Anne. But any sudden movement or loud noise would snap him out of his trance to realize he’d let his guard down. In the end he was frazzled by the back and forth.

  Then it happened.

  Ollie had gone into the kitchen to help Greg choose something to eat. While shifting cans around in the cupboard to look at the different labels, one slipped out of his hand, bounced off the counter and rolled across the floor. Before he even bothered to bend down to pick it up, Greg finally fulfilled Sparks’ prediction. He slugged him in the back of the head.

  Glad that the punch only staggered him and didn’t send him face down on the floor like he’d experienced on the ball field, Ollie cupped his right hand onto the throbbing spot on the back of his head and bolted toward the front door. Greg was right behind him, still swinging his lunchbox-sized fists, but clumsily missing and stumbling along the way. Halfway through the process of opening the front door, Greg caught up to him and stumbled into his back, sandwiching Ollie between his barrel chest and the edge of the door.

  Both men flopped onto the ground, Ollie barely squeezing just outside the door, Greg falling backward into the apartment. Ollie was quick to get back to his feet, sprinting twenty feet toward freedom before Greg had a chance to sit up.

  “Yeah, you’d better run, coward! Don’t come back!” Greg yelled, kicking the door shut to punctuate his threat.

  Ollie stood frozen, staring at Greg’s front door. His brain had been jolted out of deep introspection, out of daydreaming about girls, into impulsive survival instincts. He was stunned.

  The worst part of all was that there was no reason to think the throbbing bump on the back of his head would be the only one he would ever receive. Next time could be even worse. Is this really worth it?

  He walked gingerly past Greg’s nemesis— the swing set— and sat on the curb, defeated. There was only one person he wanted at that moment, but she wasn’t close by tonight.

  After watching lots of cars speed by, and eventually deciding the night was too cold to sit there any longer, Ollie made his way back to Greg’s apartment. It had been less than ten minutes since Mount St. Greg had erupted, but after peeking through the living room window he could see that Greg was sitting as peacefully as ever at his table. He was shoveling ravioli into his mouth.

  That was Ollie’s cue to split: Greg was back to normal. His shift would be over before Greg’s cooling down time would expire, and he’d already given him his meds. Falling asleep was the only thing left on the to-do list, and Greg could practically manage that standing up.

  ***

  Conversing silently once again with the clock in the orange glow of his space heater, Ollie couldn’t help thinking about Lynn. Joy popped in and out of his thoughts too, but Lynn just had something about her he couldn’t shake from his mind. He felt a twinge of guilt when he realized he looked forward to seeing Lynn again more than he did Joy. Uh oh. What’s Sparks going to think? The guilt he felt was mostly because he still felt like he owed it to Sparks to follow his plan. They had made an agreement. Sparks isn’t here, though. Neither is Joy, for that matter.

  It wasn’t like he’d be cheating on Joy if he spent time with someone else. They weren’t exclusive or anything. They hadn’t even kissed yet. Plus she had the gall to leave town without telling him beforehand— and with Scott, nonetheless. That alone meant he had the right and the freedom to spend time wherever and with whomever he wanted. Joy wasn’t likely to be home for at least another day, and he wasn’t going to sit around all day with a textbook again, wishing he had something better to do. Tomorrow. I’m doing what I want to do.

  ***

  Ollie spent the entire morning and into the early afternoon cowering from his decision, but once he mustered up the courage, he drove to Lynn’s place. By the time he reached her doorstep he was so full of bravado that he knocked loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear.

  “Hey! What a fun surprise,” Lynn said, sharing her bright smile with him like she always did.

  “I was just wondering if you wanted to watch a ball game with me,” Ollie said. “Or something else. It doesn’t have to be a ball game if you don’t want. It could be a movie or—“

  “You know it. When?”

  “Well, kinda right now.”

  “Well, I… hold on a sec.”

  Lynn bounced back into her apartment, leaving Ollie solo on her doorstep. It wasn’t until then that he realized just how crowded her place was. Some sort of party was going on inside.

  “Let’s do this,” Lynn said, sliding her right arm into a puffy sky blue winter coat.

  “You sure? I mean, seems like you’re kind of in the middle of something.”

  “Eh, none of them are people I won’t see again.” She started walking briskly toward Ollie’s car. “Besides, this game is way more important than any of them. Who’s playing again?”

  Ollie stutter-stepped to get ahead of her in time to reach the passenger door before she could. Then he ran around and jumped into the driver’s seat before answering her. “A red team and a blue team.”

  “Sounds good to me. Purple is one of my favorite colors.”

  “Purple?”

  “Yeah. Purple. That’s what you get when you mix red and blue. Purple.”

  “You can’t root for purple, though. You have to pick a side.”

  “No, I don’t. I can root for whomever I want. That’s the great thing about this country… and its pastime too. Freedom to root for purple if you want to.” Lynn smiled that amazing smile. Even when she was in midsenten
ce it never left her face. “Who you rootin’ for?”

  “Red Sox. I just hate the Yankees.”

  “So… you’re not really rooting for the red team, you’re just rooting against the blue team.”

  “Yeah, pretty much. I’m not really a Red Sox fan either.”

  “All right, then. Two people rooting for purple.”

  “Purple it is.”

  ***

  Ollie’s only goal was to spend the day doing what he wanted to do without worrying about what Sparks might think about it. Inviting Lynn over for the game was as far as his planning had gone. He had no intention to go further than just hanging out and watching the game together, but in the sixth inning he crossed the Rubicon... by accident (of course).

  He had started the ballgame with the remote control sitting at his side, but Lynn had no interest in sitting on the opposite end of the sofa from him, so she had moved it and taken its place. Spotting the remote and wanting to check in on a different ballgame, he reached across her to grab it. She mistook his gesture for something else and quickly snatched his hand out of the air, like a lynx after a low flying bird. His hand had been intercepted; she wasn’t about to let it go. He looked down at their intertwined hands and studied the situation, then back at her glowing smile.

  He didn’t need to pull his hand back. And he didn’t need the remote after all. Besides, Joy had left him alone, and on a weekend, too. Joy kept brushing him off, she was not responsive anymore.

  Plus he was enjoying it, this game of capture the hand.

  Guilt briefly flared when Joy’s face flashed through his mind, but it was replaced by satisfaction when Sparks’ did. Ollie would sit back and enjoy the ride. I might even go an extra day before inviting Sparks over again. He didn’t want to pull his hand back. Lynn could continue to borrow it; he didn’t need it at the time. In fact, for the first time since he’d met her, he found he was just letting himself go… and that hadn’t happened in a very long time. As she pressed her cheek to his chest, he couldn’t have been any more relaxed. This is comfortable.