by Zoe Lee
That made Dunk’s bad mood disappear and he hauled Bess up into a bear hug, then tugged her back into the bar and over to her friends.
He slung an arm around her neck and grinned his biggest grin while Bess introduced him and the women to each other. When he winked at them, they giggled. He drawled, “It’s good to meet y’all. Now, do y’all know about the time Bess streaked across campus after she lost a bet to me?”
“McCoy!” Bess gasped in outrage.
“What, are you not wild anymore?” he asked innocently.
“How about you hold onto this beer instead of my girlfriend?” Rash grumbled good-naturedly as he joined the group.
Dunk let go of Bess dutifully and accepted the beer.
“So,” one of the women asked, “are you going to tell us about Bess’s wild streaking bet?”
“McCoy,” Rash groaned.
“Don’t get annoyed just because I got her out of her clothes before you did,” Dunk joked, winking at Bess while her friends giggled. “So there we were in Lexington, Kentucky. It was the first practice of Rash’s and my sophomore year and like any underage idiots, we’d had a party the night before to celebrate. It was like ninety-five degrees, so humid our sweat was sweating. We did a billion suicides and Coach George tells us to take a lap. I get a quarter mile in and just when I think I’m about to puke—”
“I puked!” Bess interrupted gleefully. “Right over the railing of the first row of the bleachers, right onto McCoy!”
Rash died, clutching his stomach in one hand and Bess in the other, while the women laughed and patted Bess sympathetically.
Dunk took a drink and went on, “Well, she puked on my helmet and my jersey, my cleats. I was so shocked and grossed out, I forgot I had been about to puke myself. I went over to the water table and dumped an entire thing of water over myself. Man, it felt so good, all that ice water.”
“Coach George was so pissed he made Dunk strip down to his jockstrap and run like ten extra laps,” Bess said, snickering helplessly.
“Were the cheerleaders around?” one of the women asked.
“Oh yeah,” Rash confirmed.
“Poor Dunk!” another woman exclaimed, wide-eyed in horror.
“Don’t feel bad, darlin’,” Dunk began, using the endearment out of reflex, but then acid filled his mouth because he hadn’t used that since Daisy, when he’d meant it, meant it so much.
While he fumbled to recover his composure, Rash barked out a laugh. “If Coach wanted to embarrass McCoy, it backfired.”
Bess nodded earnestly. “Those cheerleaders saw him running—the cup protecting anything from flopping—and he’s almost naked… Y’all ever seen a college-level athlete naked? Or shirtless, like working out?”
The women shook their heads, eyes glued to Dunk’s torso.
Bess obliged, tugging up Dunk’s shirt to show off his vee and abs.
He reached reflexively for her wrist, which of course bunched up every muscle in his torso, showing off his dedication and strength.
The women bit back sighs and moans.
Dunk pushed Bess’s hand away and his shirt slid down over his belt.
“Looks like if you ever get sick of coaching and teaching, you could have a very lucrative future in stripping,” Rash teased.
“Oh my God, you’re a coach and a teacher now?” one of the women moaned. “That’s like, totally unfair. And you don’t live here?”
“I told you,” Bess smirked at him.
“I’m here visiting Rash, and then I’m going on a road trip with my friend to drive her car from San Jose to Virginia, where we live.”
The conversation shifted easily to road trips—how many they’d done, who they’d gone with, where they’d stopped, the crazy things they’d done and the amazing things they’d eaten. Dunk had traveled for football, camped in the Smokies, and driven to the Virginia coast to fish, but he hadn’t done any of that in probably five years. And driving eight hours with six people to go fishing in Newport Beach was very different than this upcoming road trip from San Francisco to Maybelle with Chase.
They stayed for a few more hours, Dunk and Rash moving to sit at the bar after a while to leave the girls to themselves. By the time it was midnight, Dunk was exhausted since he was still on east coast time, and they went back to Rash’s to crash.
Chapter 20
Dunk
The next morning, they took a long run through North Beach, then spent the rest of the day exploring San Francisco. Dunk was glad to see how happy Rash was, how well his job was going and all of the cool things he liked to do. But by the time they got back to Rashs’s and settled in to watch a baseball game on his truly enormous TV, Dunk was exhausted again. The city was so full of people, everything crunched together, that even though it was full of energy and excitement, it was too much for him.
Because of that, they spent their last day hiking in Muir Woods north of the city. Dunk had never seen anything like the giant redwoods; being such a big, tall man, he never really felt small or weak in comparison to anything around him. There was something peaceful about it, though, and Dunk found himself in a good, deep conversation with Rash about their jobs, their friends, the way they felt about being in their thirties.
It was there, while they were sitting with their backs against a redwood, munching on trail mix, that Rash commented, “I think it’s awesome that you’re coaching. As soon as you told me about it, I thought, yeah, man, that’s a perfect fit for Dunk. But… dude, a gym teacher?”
Dunk grunted, tossing a handful of nuts and raisins into his mouth.
Rash leveled him with a look. “I’m serious. You weren’t like the rest of us, coasting through some major we couldn’t even remember half the time just so that we could play. I know you aced all your classes after you got hurt and did that internship with the women’s athletic physio doc.”
“It was part of the offer to coach,” he said defensively.
Then he frowned, realizing that he shouldn’t feel defensive about his job if he truly enjoyed it. There were plenty of things that people made fun of him for and he never got defensive about any of that, really.
“I guess,” he said slowly, “I haven’t reconsidered it. I hadn’t been doing it for that long when I moved home and it helped out when my mom had all those medical bills. And after that, it was just… habit, maybe.”
“Complacency,” Rash said, making a face. “It’ll kill you, dude.”
“Thanks,” Dunk said sarcastically.
Rash wiped his hands on his shorts and stood up. “We should head back so we miss as much of rush hour as we can. But you should think about looking for something else. Isn’t there some fancy hospital in Maybelle?”
“Yeah,” Dunk said absently, his mind already turning over the idea. He’d never really meant to stay a gym teacher, but it had been an easy, solid offer when he was twenty-two. There were other coaches who weren’t teachers, like Aden, who coached baseball and softball. But somehow it had never crossed his mind to change up that part of his life.
But these days, he had a lot of free time on his hands now that he wasn’t dating Daisy, and maybe a new job—a new challenge—was just what he needed to finish bouncing back from the breakup.
By the time Rash was driving him down to San Jose, where he was meeting Chase at her friend’s house to pick up her car, Dunk was more relaxed than he’d been in a long time. He hadn’t even noticed a tenseness—or maybe it was a discontent—underneath his everyday happy attitude before his talk with Rash in the woods. But this weekend had given him back some measure of that.
… Which promptly vanished the second Rash turned into a driveway and Dunk saw the wrong woman sitting on the hood of Chase’s Shelby GT.
“Shit,” Dunk hissed, jerking back against the seat.
“What, dude?” Rash asked in alarm as he slowed to a stop.
Daisy Rhys climbed slowly down from the Shelby.
“That’s… that’s Daisy,” Dunk croaked.
/>
“Shiiiiit,” Rash agreed.
Dunk slowly unbuckled, pushed open the car door and stepped out, feeling like he was carrying a two-hundred pound backpack.
God, she’s so gorgeous, Dunk couldn’t help but think.
She was in shorts, her beautiful thighs and strong calves bare, and a dark pink shirt that clung to her big breasts, one strap hanging over her carved bicep. That bouncy, silky mane was wrapped loosely around itself on top of her head, and green sunglasses hid her deep, empathetic eyes.
“Um, hi,” she said, tapping an envelope against her thigh.
“Where… where’s Chase?” Dunk squeezed out, then cleared his throat.
Strictly speaking, he’d seen Daisy a couple of weeks ago at most, but seeing her inside the bakery when he ran by wasn’t the same as this.
“She, ah, isn’t coming?” Daisy offered lamely.
“What!” Dunk shouted.
“Dude,” Rash breathed from behind him.
“Yeah. Her friend gave me the car keys and this letter. It says that she had a work emergency so she can’t come, but she’ll so, so owe us one if we do the drive together and bring her baby home.” She paused, then added unnecessarily, “Together. Just… just us.”
Rash gripped Dunk’s shoulder in solidarity, silently offered to do whatever Dunk needed, and breathed, “Dude, your friend set you up.”
Beneath the indignation was definitely some awe at Chase’s ballsiness and manipulativeness. Dunk couldn’t help but agree.
His mind whirled while he scrubbed his hands through his hair, studying Daisy, who was pretending to admire the Shelby as if there wasn’t a hiss-whisper conversation happening three feet away from her.
“Yeah,” Dunk said. “I should’ve known. Chase was cagey about this idea. And I kind of… Well, let’s just say I set her up a while back, to help her and my best friend Aden get their heads out of their asses.”
Rash’s concerned gaze shifted to amusement. “Payback, huh?”
Dunk walked over to Daisy, steeling himself against her scent, and hunched over like a linebacker so that he could twist his head and meet her downcast eyes. “Daisy? You want my friend to take you to the airport?”
“This is crazy,” Daisy blurted out, flinging her arms out.
He uncurled to his full height, then hooked his thumbs in his back pockets. “So,” he said cheerfully, “I have a sixty-hour Nineties playlist and you know I have a truly terrible singing voice. You sure you can handle it? If you strangle me, it’ll be a hell of a boring drive home after.”
Her chin jutted and a cheery smirk touched her lips, and he knew he’d said the right thing. She did have three older brothers and a competitive streak after all. She wouldn’t be able to back down from his teasing words and the challenging look in his eyes. “I’m taking the first driving shift,” she announced, twirling the keys, daring him to say a thing about it.
“That’s cool with me. City driving freaks me out,” he mock-whispered conspiratorially. “Just let me grab my duffel and tell my friend what’s up.”
He went over to Rash, who asked, “Are you sure about this, dude?”
“Six days cross-country with my ex-girlfriend? Piece of cake,” Dunk boasted, then snapped his fingers as an idea occurred to him. “There’ll be so many ways to get back at Chase—and probably all of my other friends who I’m sure are in on this. Passive-aggressive Facebook posts!”
Rash laughed and hugged Dunk. “Okay, dude, good luck with that.”
Dunk ducked back into the car for his duffel and then told Rash, “Thanks for the amazing visit. I appreciate you putting me up.”
“Anytime, dude. We’ll, uh, we’ll see you for the wedding, right? I mean, once I propose and Bessie says yes and all that sappy stuff?”
Dunk beamed and hugged Rash again. “Yes,” he yelled in excitement.
“Catch you soon, Coach,” Rash said as he got into his car.
Dunk waved as he backed out of the driveway.
He slid on his sunglasses and took his iPod and connector cable out of his duffel before putting it in the backseat. Then he slung a leg over the door of the Shelby and climbed in, testing out the leg room.
Daisy held up a thing that looked like an old handheld Sega and said, “Chase left us a GPS. I checked out a couple routes. It looks like we can go a little north, through like Wyoming and Nebraska and Indiana, or a little south, through Arizona and Oklahoma and Tennessee.”
“I’ve been looking at routes for, like, three weeks,” Dunk told her earnestly. “I sent Chase a hundred texts. I’ll summarize: Let’s spend an extra day so that we can take Route 66. We’ll hit more cities on it.”
Daisy chuckled softly and adjusted the rearview mirror. “I have two conditions,” she replied. “One, we can’t take it all the way to Chicago; I didn’t take that much time off work. Two, I’m not stopping at every kitschy place for fifteen hundred miles, Dunk. So choose wisely.”
“Daisy Rhys! It’s like you think I have no self-control!” he exclaimed.
“Hm,” was all she said as she turned on the car and they both paused to appreciate the powerful, smooth purr of the Shelby’s engine.
“Way before that—like right now—can we go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium?” he pleaded, making his most exaggerated puppy dog face at her. “They have a whole exhibit of jellyfish, Daisy! Eensy weensy jellyfish!”
She struggled to hold back a smile, he could tell by the way the faint dimple in her right cheek flashed in and out of existence. But she gave up and laughed, shaking her head almost fondly, and conceded, “Alright. Who doesn’t love aquariums? Put it in the GPS and let’s go.”
Dunk fiddled with the unfamiliar GPS until a soothing, accent-free woman directed Daisy to turn left.
“Our first direction,” Dunk breathed in exaggerated reverence. “And it’s a left turn, my favorite of all turns. It’s a sign. This is awesome.”
“Screw the GPS, this car is awesome,” Daisy countered, grinning like a madwoman as she drove very carefully through the busy town.
Since he knew she wasn’t used to driving in big cities either, let alone handling such a fabulous, expensive car, he didn’t start music yet and stayed quiet while the GPS led them out of San Jose south on the 101.
Which meant Dunk had nothing to distract him from the situation.
It was late August now, almost three months since he had broken up with Daisy, who he’d dated for about three months. They said it took half again the length of a relationship to get over it. Their breakup hadn’t involved cheating or some other horrible, scarring thing. There hadn’t been poisonous words or actions that couldn’t be forgiven or taken back.
So he should be over it.
Especially since his life was so good right now. He was on vacation, he got to ride in and drive a Shelby GT, and once they were out of the crowded Bay Area, if he took a very deep breath and let it sit on the back of his tongue, he could almost taste the salt from the Pacific Ocean.
Dunk wasn’t a man who believed in regret.
Mistakes were useful, if painful, and he’d always done his very best to go with the new course his mistakes had set him on, gone with the flow. He certainly didn’t regret a minute he’d spent with Daisy. So, no, he felt no regret as they wound towards Monterey, but he was very aware of how much better this moment would be if they were still together.
But he also wasn’t a man who wallowed, so he allowed himself the thirty minutes to Monterey to imagine how it could be. How it could be if he could reach out and play with the curls that were slipping free of Daisy’s knot of hair in the wind. If he could know that they were going to spend that night and the next five tangled up together in motel beds, love and sex drenching the air around them and the sheets beneath them.
And then, when Daisy parked at the aquarium, Dunk shook it off.
He got out of the car, helped Daisy pull up the roof and secure it, and then they got into line to buy tickets. It was the longest they’d ever b
een near each other without talking, unless they were sleeping.
“Did you know that my favorite animal is the sea turtle?”
“It’s because of Finding Nemo, isn’t it?” Daisy teased without missing a beat.
“Righteous! Righteous!” Dunk cried loudly, quoting the sea turtle in the movie, making some of the kids around him giggle in recognition.
Once they were inside, Dunk honed in on the food options and felt his stomach gurgle. “I think I need some food, or I might try to turn some of these fish into sushi,” Dunk said to Daisy out of the corner of his mouth, as if the fish could overhear and be offended.
Daisy snorted and they went into the cafe and scarfed some burgers.
When they were done, Dunk grabbed Daisy’s hand and pulled her into the nearest exhibit, not noticing the gesture until her fingers spasmed around his before she slid them free.
He debated apologizing, but then he gasped at the animals around him, the faux pas forgotten. “This is amazing,” he breathed.
“Look!” Daisy cried, slipping through the crowd to stand right in front of one of the thick glass panes to get as close as possible to the fish.
They darted from one tank to the next quickly, then stood side by side for long minutes at each in awe, studying the fish, the rays, the jellyfish, the sea turtles, and all of the other creatures they’d never seen before. Dunk had been to the zoo in Richmond, but this was incredible. He read all of the facts listed alongside the tanks and Daisy bobbed her head and giggled with the little kids crowding around them, pointing and bouncing.
When they found the room with the touch tanks, Dunk practically body checked some other adults out of the way to get close enough. He reached beneath the water to gently touch the starfish and skimmed his fingers over the weird, slimy muscle of a sting ray’s wings.
They stayed until Dunk started to feel guilty for taking up space when there were tons of kids dancing and skittering back and forth trying to reach too, and then they found the Giant Pacific Octopuses.