“Yeah, I know, right? And he was smoking hot,” Vihaan said. Only a faint hint of his Indian accent still laced his speech after nearly twenty years in America. “I wish Boston had a hot pro rugby team. Most of the players on the New England Freedom look like dads.” He lowered his voice to add for Lena’s ears only, “And not the -ILFy kind either.”
“How about a hockey player?” Max asked.
“Ewwwww!” Vihaan made a dramatic gagging sound as he steered the car toward the Columbia Rd Exit. “Listen to me, bhatije. Your mom and I will never, and I mean never date a hockey player. Please don’t ever suggest anything like that again!”
“Why not?” Max demanded, sounding offended on behalf of all possibly gay hockey players.
“Trust me, if you had gone to the same school we did, you wouldn’t even be having this conversation with us. Hockey players are the worst. The total worst. Right, Lena?
Right…
Lena shifted her eyes away. College had been such a weird era in her life. For the first time, she’d befriended another biracial black woman her age, mixed with something other than white. She’d taken on a new half-Korean best friend, named Dawn. And for a while there she and Vihaan, who’d gone on to live out and proud at Tufts had lost touch.
So while the college friend who never returned her calls or texts these days knew about that summer, Vihaan didn’t. And though he obviously knew about her dating and marrying his brother, she’d never quite gotten around to tell him about that break they’d taken before she moved to California or what and who happened during the months they spent apart.
“Look, it’s Keane! It’s Keane!”
Her lungs nearly collapsed at Max’s sudden announcement.
But then they filled again, when she followed the direction of her son’s pointing finger to a moving billboard, just off the exit.
Not her ex…. It was just a moving billboard, featuring a black-and-white ad that Keane had done for a famous shoe company.
Vihaan pulled up to a red light, and they all watched the commercial’s camera trail down from his handsome face to his naked torso. He had a beard now and a tattoos on his chest. A tree with no leaves and blackbirds.
Lena couldn’t tear her eyes away as the camera panned down the rest of his body, over a pair of black workout shorts, to his now most famous part. A custom prosthetic with a skate attached.
The words “WHAT’S STOPPING YOU?” appeared across the screen just as a hockey rink lit up behind him.
“He’s so bomb,” Max said breathlessly as the light turned green, and Vihaan drove them past the billboard. “I want to be just like him when I grow up. But not the leg.”
No, not the leg…
“His resilience in the face of great loss is admirable,” she agreed, falling back into therapist mode to find even one upside to seeing Keane big as day on a billboard. “I’m glad he inspires you.”
Lena didn’t dare look across the seat at her now former brother-in-law, but she could sense him calling her a liar inside his head. And even though she still had no plans to tell him about that what happened between her and Keane after high school, she knew he was right.
That summer with Keane had been a mistake.
But this one would go much differently. She had only three wishes for her summer in Boston. That she could transition her father out of his convenience store into the retirement he deserved. That she’d get exactly what she needed from her training apprenticeship at the Institute for Better Boys. And most of all…
That she’d make it through the entire summer without seeing the hockey player on that billboard.
Chapter Three
Spring Break, Eleven Years Ago
“Yo, look at Graham. He found a 3-pointer!” one of Keane’s teammates yelled over Fergie caterwauling from the Daytona Beach bar’s sound system about her better than yours glamorous life.
The last person Keane expected to find when he looked up to see who Graham had netted for their Spring Break Bang-Off was Lena Kumar. But there she stood, dressed in a yellow bikini. One that confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt every lewd thought he’d had in high school about what she’d been hiding under that uniform. Big hips, big tits, she’d finally let them out, and they were on full display.
Unfortunately, her big eyes were currently peeping up at Graham Diener, a mediocre second-string wing—though Keane had overheard him telling a girl he was a starter earlier that night. And Lena didn’t know the only reason Graham was talking to her was because she was fat and brown, which meant instead of the usual one point per girl, he’d start the Bang-Off with 3 points if he closed the deal.
Fuck if Keane would let that happen. He hadn’t laid an eye on Lena in four years, but a new possessiveness rushed through him when he saw her flirting with that piece of shit.
“No cock blocking, bro!”
Keane didn’t realize he’d started advancing in Graham’s and Lena’s direction until a hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.
It was Tim, the team captain and a fellow Bostonian. He’d been the one to put together the week-long Bang-Off rules, and he though he wasn’t descended from a Founding Father, he was rich enough to fund the $5000 pot.
5K Keane had been sure he would win until he saw Graham trying run his lame game to Lena.
“I know her,” Keane said. “I don’t want Graham flirting with her.”
“Know her. Like she’s an ex-girlfriend?” Tim sent a skeptical look in Lena’s direction. Probably because she didn’t fit the normal profile of a hockey player girlfriend. Which tended to lean more Carrie Underwood than brown and fluffy.
“No, I went to high school with her…” Keane admitted, his eyes still on Lena. Another girl had joined the conversation. She was shorter than Lena but also fluffy…and falling down drunk. Lena looked concerned as she settled her friend on a stool. But drunk girls didn’t qualify for play in the Bang-Off, so Graham was ignoring her and still trying to close the deal with Lena.
Keane had never seen the drunk girl before, but he found himself feeling grateful to her for cock-blocking Graham in his stead, since Tim probably wouldn’t accept “knowing her from high school” as an excuse to go over there.
As if to confirm his point, Tim declared, “The cock-blocking rule still applies. She’s not drunk and she’s a three-pointer, so that means Graham’s free to play.”
Of course, Keane’s other teammates nodded along, like referees making an interference call. For a competition that was supposed to be fun and games, they were taking this shit way serious.
Yeah, good thing the drunk friend showed up…
But then another second-stringer said, “Fuck, what’s he doing now?”
Keane looked back over his shoulder to see Lena was no longer with her drunk friend at the bar, but hitting Graham with her purse, shit spilling out of it, as he dragged her towards the beach bathroom.
The fuck?
It would have taken a stronger guy than Tim to hold him back at that point. Keane ripped his shoulder out of the captain’s grip and rushed over to them, like Graham was trying to light a lamp for the opposing team.
“Stop. Let her go, dumbass,” he said, getting in front of Graham.
Graham and Lena stared up at him. Lena looked like a ghost had appeared out of nowhere, but Graham just looked pissed.
“No fair, Keane, I saw her first!”
Keane nearly lost it when instead of letting her go, Graham curled his hand even tighter around Lena’s wrist. “End of your life coming down in five…”
“Bro, c’mon,” Graham whined. “Fights off the ice are an automatic three-game suspension.”
“Four…”
“You’re going to risk your draft chances on this shit?”
Truth be told, Keane could barely hear him. All he could see was that little fuck’s hand still touching Lena. “Three…”
“Fuck, Keane, c’mon. Cut me a break, it’s just pussy—”
“Two…”
Graham probably thought that was some kind of comeback, but Keane had already forgotten about him by the time he disappeared back into the crowd of spring breakers.
His eyes were glued to one thing and one thing only. “You all right, Lena?”
She stilled. Like a forest critter that had just been spotted by something that wanted to eat it.
Looking at her in that bikini, Keane couldn’t say she was wrong about that.
“I’m…I’m fine…um thanks?” she finally managed to say, appearing wary as hell to be talking to him after all this time.
“You’re welcome,” he answered, smirking at her questioning tone. She probably didn’t ever expect to be thanking him for anything after what went down their senior year.
But then he thought about what could have happened with Graham, if he hadn’t shown up. “You sure you’re okay? Real serious. I will beat that fuckhead into the ground if he has hurt you.”
She looked back at him with blank shock, and Keane could almost hear her smart girl mind trying to reconcile him of all people offering to defend her as she said, “I’m fine.”
Yeah, she was fine, he realized, continuing to stare down at her. Still. He’s never seen her hair out of the studious braid she kept it in back in high school. It was pretty down. Like a black cloud of curls framing her cute face. He didn’t let his eyes roam lower than that this time.
The swim trunks he’d worn to the bar wouldn’t provide much camouflage if he sprung a boner. And that was exactly what would happen if he let himself look at her body in a bikini again, without Graham here to distract him from all of that “yeah, you know you want this, Keane.” Still.
“What’s a goodie like you doing in Daytona anyway?” he asked, channeling all his irritation at not being able to ogle her the way he wanted to into the question.
She pulled a face. And Keane wonder if she was asking herself the same question after her run-in with Graham. “Trying to blow off some steam before finals. It was my friend’s idea to come here—”
She cut off, glancing over her shoulder. “Sorry, I’ve got to go. It was…” She shook her head as if searching but failing to come up with a word to describe their unexpected reunion. “I’ve got to go.”
“Wait, hold on—”
She disappeared into the beach crowd, before he could come up with something to convince her not to leave. To stay and keep talking to him.
He thought about running after her. It felt like he had so much he needed to say. But when he tried to find the words, he couldn’t think of any.
What could he say anyway? “Sorry for ruining what should have been the funniest part of your senior year by accusing you of being a psycho. But hey, ran interference for you with Graham, soooo…wanna fuck?”
Keane couldn’t say he’d met other girls like Lena at UBoss, but he’d scoped them out from afar. Always headed in some specific direction, never wandering around campus. They didn’t flirt. Never showed up at his frat house’s parties. Always had the right answer in class, because they actually studied that shit before the test. Somehow, Keane doubted she would jump at his offer of makeup sex.
A strange disappointment swept over him as he headed back in the direction of his boys.
Graham had already come back to the three tall tables they’d claimed for themselves. To tattle as it turned out. He was waving around what looked like one of those moleskin journals and complaining loudly to Tim about getting cock-blocked.
“What? You didn’t close the deal either?” Graham shouted over the Ludacris club thumper that had started playing when Keane got back to the tables.
“She was a friend from high school. That’s the only reason he interfered,” Tim answered, coming to Keane’s defense. Keane gave him a “good looking out” chin up. Sure, Tim had told him not to interfere, but when worse came to worse, starters stuck together.
“That shouldn’t count—hey, what are you doing?” he shouted, when Keane snatched the moleskin journal out of his hands.
Keane didn’t answer, just let Graham’s whiny-ass voice fade into the background as he checked to see if his suspicion about Graham not being the kind of guy capable of reflective thought panned out. It did.
This journal belongs to Salena Kumar. If found, please call…
There it was. The number he’d never been able to get in high school, written out in the neat handwriting Keane still remembered right on the front page.
And just like that, his heart started pounding again, with “More Than a Feeling” blasting in his head.
As it turned out, he didn’t post any points on the Spring Break Bang Off that night. Instead, he ended up texting Lena: “This is Keane. Shouldn’t have run off like fuckin Cinderella. Got your journal. You want it back, come meet me tomorrow. Lucky’s on Seabreeze. Noon.”
The journal turned out to be a diary. And Keane spent the hour before their noon meeting reading it, even though he was supposed to be doing inventory at that time. That was the deal he’d struck with the retired “uncle” who owned the bar, but never wanted to be bothered with any of the technical aspects of running a legitimate business. In exchange for his boring service, Keane could stay for free in the room above the bar and enjoy all the drinks he wanted to pour himself.
Keane needed the deal. He had stopped party dealing after a close call during freshman year. He’d been collared by a campus security officer and if not for his taking the offer of one of Keane’s front row Friends and Family tickets for the rest of his time at UBoss, he might have gotten kicked off the team.
Rule #2 still applied, so he’d said goodbye to the lucrative activity that almost got between him and the NHL and hello to college life on the barter system. Usually it didn’t matter. He lived in a frat where food always seemed to magically appear. However, the annual hockey team spring break trip had been a little trickier. The rest of the team paid top prices to stay at the Daytona Beach Benton Grand, but he was too poor to afford a 3-hundy a night room for a whole week.
So, he’d made up a story about his uncle making him stay at the bar to work. Family, right? Plus, it’s a fact of life that rich kids like nothing more on this earth than free shots, so everyone was happy with the arrangement. He shouldn’t be doing anything to jeopardize it.
But Lena’s diary was just too good to put down. In fact, a few pages in, he poured himself a bowl of peanuts and sat behind the bar to finish reading what had been written as a series of letters to her dead mother.
Apparently, Lena had gone on to Mount Holyoke, an all-girls school in Western Mass, and had spent her senior year in an actual real relationship with Band Nerd’s older brother. Some fuckhead named Rohan. But get this, Rohan had insisted on waiting until marriage to have sex. Several months into what sounded like a boring as fuck relationship, he’d asked her to come back to Boston for the weekend before Spring Break. She’d thought he was going to propose, and Keane noted she wrote a whole page about how happy her dad would be when she told him, and exactly zero words about whether she really wanted to marry dick she hadn’t test rode yet.
But as it turned out, that ass tool had called her down to Boston to break up with her. And he didn’t even come up with a good lie. He told her straight out his mom was too racist to accept a half-black Indian girl for her oldest son—especially now that she wasn’t speaking to the youngest one for coming out as gay. What in the entire fuck?
Lena was all angry and broken up about it for a couple of pages. And there was a lot of Dear Mama, how am I going to tell Dad Rohan dumped me? But if you asked Keane, she’d dodged a bullet. What kind of little bitch dumps a girl because his mommy doesn’t approve?
Keane flipped to the Sunday night entry from two days ago to see if she’d come to her senses.
Dear Mama,
I’ve decided to be more like you. Instead of crying over Rohan, I’m going to try living on the wild side. With that in mind, here’s my SHAKE IT OFF Spring Break Bucket List.
Keane scrolled his eyes down to what he’d figured would be the usual good girl break-up list. You know, get your nails done, have a spa day, eat a fuck ton of Ben and Jerry’s like you seen them other girls do in the movies. But no…
ditch my V-Card
Keane nearly choked on his bar nuts, definitely not the opener of a good girl break-up list. He then quickly scanned the rest of the list.
2. look into therapist programs
3. learn to Dance
4. kiss somebody in public
5. have sex not in a bed
6. do something wild
7. wear a bikini
8. smoke Weed
9. say yes to everything that scares me
10.
He briefly wondered why she left number ten blank, but then playfully filled it in for her. He probably would have read the entire diary a second time, if not for the alert from his uncle’s over the top security system—hey, you can take the mobster out of Southie….
She was here.
Little Miss Shake-It-Off was at the door. Ripe for the taking. By him.
And, okay, admittedly, if you’re looking to hook up with a girl you fucked over back in high school, holding her college journal hostage probably ain’t the best look. But it was all Keane had, and hey, it worked. She was here.
Keane went to the front door but waited for her to knock, so he wouldn’t look too pressed. However, when the knock never came, he was forced to open the door himself.
He found her standing there in a pretty yellow shift dress and flip flops, her good girl hands wrapped primly around her beach purse.
Fuck, she was cute. “You just gonna stand there all day?” he demanded, trying to cover up all the “More Than a Feeling” popping off inside his head.
She reacted with a startled look. Guess, she’d gotten unused to straight talk after four years at her all-girls school.
Keane: Her Ruthless Ex: 50 Loving States, Massachusetts Page 4