“Murphy?” Ares growls.
I add my signature to the guy’s chin, because it’s the only space that’s left. Sticks in his scraggly beard, but we all have our crosses to bear.
Zeus and Ares take a few selfies for everyone else at the table, and then we’re all squishing in together.
“You want your froofy drinks?” Zeus hollers after them as they join the ranks of the standing-room-only crowd at the bar.
“Oh. My. God.” Aunt Hilda’s fanning herself, muttering the words over and over.
“You want—” I start, but Muffy practically leaps on me, shouting, “No!”
But it’s too late.
Aunt Hilda’s whipping out her knockers and offering them to Zeus. “Give an old lady a thrill, you big glorious lumberjack.”
Zeus looks at Joey, a dark-haired, librarian-faced, wiry woman half his size, who shrugs. “Go for it. Might as well practice for retirement in a few months when that’s all you get offered.”
“Joey,” Gracie hisses, but everyone else is cracking up.
Joey lets a rare full smile blossom, and okay, yeah, I guess I get what Berger sees in her.
“You ready to go?” I ask Kami.
“Nuh-uh, Murphy,” Zeus says as he signs Aunt Spanky-spanky’s hooters. “We have to do body shots to celebrate you getting your mojo back.”
Felicity sneaks behind everyone else to give me a hug. “Proud of you, you obnoxious pain in the ass,” she says. “That’s the Nick I expect to see when Indianapolis gets here. Kami, whatever you did to him last night, keep doing it. And do not give me details.”
“You can give me the details,” Aunt Spanky-spanky offers.
“Stop it,” Kami hisses to me.
I lift a brow, because she looks pissed. “What?”
“I know what you’re calling her in your head, and I do not want that mental image.”
I swipe away a smile. Felicity slips an ice cube down my back, and I yelp, because fuck, where did she get that from?
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, thank god, but I agree with Kami. Stop it.”
I slide an arm around Kami, because dammit, she feels good. “What happened to awesome game, Nick?” I ask them both with a cheeky grin.
“Some of us have to keep you humble,” Felicity replies.
She keeps circling the table, hugging Kami’s mom—I should probably learn her name at some point—and then squatting between Maren and Alina to whisper with them about the game. Muffy asks if it’s true that I only shave one armpit because it makes for a better hold on my stick, and suddenly all the guys and I are one-upping each other with utter nonsense about our favorite superstitions.
“Berger’s game day socks are rainbow toe socks,” Frey offers.
No one asks which Berger, because Zeus jumps in immediately. “Prince Happypants here has to turn in a circle three times, click his heels together, and say there’s no kingdom like mine until we all carry him into the shower.”
“I only eat the left half of apples on game days,” I confess, which makes Kami snort her beer.
“How do you know which half is the left half?” Muffy demands. “Can’t you just turn it around?”
“Fuck, no. That ruins the magic. You see that shot I caught in the second period? If I’d turned my apple around, I would’ve missed.”
“You are utterly ridiculous,” Felicity tells me with a grin.
“I want to watch him eat only the left half of an apple,” Alina says.
“I want to record him only eating the left side of an apple, and then play it back to him, and watch his brain explode,” Muffy says.
“Oh, no, honey, you can’t do that,” Aunt Spanky-spanky says. “We need his brain intact for the wedding.”
“What wedding?” Alina asks.
Muffy’s giving her mother the shut the fuck up or I’ll cut you sign. Kami’s suddenly pushing her chair back.
“Restroom?” Maren asks her.
“Kami’s wedding to Nick,” Aunt Spanky-spanky announces, and my entire body freezes like I’ve been Zambonied into a rink. “She told us last year at Thanksgiving that she’d have a ring by—erp!”
“Oh my god, Mom, don’t swallow such a big bite of pretzel next time!” Muffy yells, grabbing her mother from behind and doing a terrible Heimlich.
“I haven’t seen Sugarbear yet today,” Kami suddenly shrieks. She backs up and collides with a server, who looks at our table, does a double-take, and apologizes to Kami. “And work! I have to be at work in the morning.”
“Hilda,” her mother says to Aunt Bomb-Dropper, “shut up.”
“Great game,” Kami says weakly. “Gotta run.”
“Go after her,” Felicity hisses at me while Maren kicks my shin under the table.
I scoot my chair back, and the same server is there, but this time, she doesn’t save the drinks.
Nope, this time, they rain down on my neck and shoulders, ice and liquor and beer coating my jacket.
“Sorry,” I stutter while she does the same.
A phone camera flashes. “Nice pose, Murphy,” Zeus says. “Got it. And that picture’s going up everywhere. I’m even gonna make a new Instagram account. Nick Murphy Wearing Food And Drinks. Ma’am, you put those drinks on my bill. Pay you triple if you can get him again.”
I flip him off, but I owe him a beer or twelve.
Because I’m suddenly in motion, chasing Kami out of the bar.
I burst out of the bar just after her, and I realize she’s stuck downtown when she stops abruptly and looks up and down the street, like she’s trying to remember where she put her car.
“Hey.”
Her shoulders go tense under that cute ivory vest thing she’s wearing, and the long sleeves of her maroon shirt under it seem to tense too.
“I completely forgot to check and make sure Sugarbear has enough grain to get her through the weekend,” she babbles.
“So let’s go check. Your car here?”
She finally looks at me, but she’s way more shy and hesitant than I’ve ever seen her. “No.”
“Mine’s around the corner.”
I offer her a hand, and relief shudders through me when she finally takes it. “It was the eggnog,” she says quietly. “It was spiked, and I apparently have a low tolerance for bourbon. I didn’t actually—I mean I might, but I—we don’t have to talk about—never mind.”
“Hey, we all have our weaknesses. Yours just happens to be bad taste in men.”
She doesn’t smile. “I don’t have bad taste in men. But I was stupid to think I knew you better than anyone else. I still don’t know if I know the real you, but I can’t stop—you’re always—it’s just you. I can’t resist you.”
“Kami—” I try, because there’s this desperate, sad loneliness creeping into her voice that’s making everything about me just hurt, like my body’s being twisted and crushed in some kind of vise.
I don’t want her to hurt.
And I especially don’t want her to hurt because of me.
“I just had this romanticized version of you that you’re something more than hockey, whisky, sex, pranks, and hockey. That I could see something nobody else could. That I was…ugh. I’m not making this any better.”
And now I’m feeling pretty fucking naked.
But I’m also feeling something akin to relief.
Because I don’t really know who I am past hockey, whisky, sex, pranks, and hockey either, but I know I’m something. And she believes in me too.
I take her face in my hands and block her from the street with my body. “You always make everything better.”
Her eyes widen slightly, but there’s still that crease in her brow putting a charley horse in my chest.
“It’s what best friends do,” I add in a rough whisper, because I’ve never had a best friend before. A month ago, I would’ve told you a hockey stick was my best friend. A month ago, I was a moron. “And you’re the best fucking friend I’ve ever had.”
Her eyes shimmer in the darkness. “Do you mean like the best friend you’ve ever fucked, or the best damn friend, but even better because fuck is a degree above damn?”
“Yes.” Fuck, this is hard. Felicity’s right. I’ve always been a selfish ass. And she always adds with good intentions, because she’s my sister so she has to think I’m more than just hockey, whisky, sex, pranks, and hockey too, but am I?
I want to be.
For Kami.
“I’ve got some pretty stiff competition to be yours,” I add, “but I’m doing my best.”
“Why?”
Because she’s sweet. Because she makes me laugh. Because she’s my good luck charm on the ice.
Because I don’t deserve her, but I’m a selfish bastard who wants her anyway.
“Nobody else has ever believed in me like you do.”
“The entire city believes in you.”
“Not for hockey.” Fuck, who am I? I shake my head. “And a month ago, that was okay. But I—Christ, Kami, I don’t know why you’d even want me. You’re right. I’m a selfish bastard who only cares about hockey.”
That finally earns me a smile.
Fuck, that smile. What is it about her smile?
“That’s not true,” she tells me. “You care about your cow too.”
And now I’m cracking up even though I feel like a total shit and smell even worse. “C’mon,” I tell her. “Let’s go see our cow. And get me a shower.”
“Is that an—ohmygod. Nick. I didn’t—you’re—what happened?” She touches my jacket, then yanks her hand back and tries to shake it off.
“Wake-up call,” I tell her with a grin. “You coming or not?”
It’s late.