The Short Game (2 page)

“Hey,” she called, and I turned back around. “I never got your name.”

“Jimmy.”

“Thanks, Jimmy. I’m Tracy.”

I know, I thought, but didn’t say it. “It’s nice to meet you, Tracy. You make sure you do important things with that ten dollars, you hear?”

The second the words had left my mouth she shot up to standing and held up the index finger on one hand. “I have a great idea for how to use the money.”

“Yeah?” I couldn’t help but smile. She looked so excited.

“Have you ever played shuffleboard?”

“You mean, like the old person game?”

She giggled. “No, not that kind of shuffleboard. Like, the kind in bars.”

“I don’t think so?”

“Perfect. I’m off in ten minutes. You want to grab a couple happy hour drinks with me? My treat.”

“Are you even old enough to get into bars?”

“Twenty-one as of last month. Why—aren’t you?”

“I’m twenty-three,” I said with a chuckle. “But I don’t think I could.” Immediately her face crumpled. I don’t think even the wolfhounds had ever managed to make their faces look that pathetic. “I mean, I don’t think I could…let you pay. For the drinks. I was the one who took your money in the first place. I should buy you a drink to make it up to you.”

“Really?” she asked, her face lit up with hope. It was astounding how quickly she could shift her expression from happy to sad and back again.
 

“Yeah, really.” What was I saying? Going out with this girl was a terrible idea. Either I’d have a bad time, in which case what was the point? Or I’d have a great time, which would be even worse in the long run. I needed to make up some excuse to get out of it before anything started.

“Great,” she said. “Meet you outside in,” she turned to look at the clock on the wall behind her, “eight minutes.”

“Yeah, sure,” I agreed without a hint of hesitation.
 

I knew I was making a mistake, but she held me captivated. There was something too sexy about a girl in a tee shirt, jeans, and a hardware store apron. The girls in the Village liked to wear eye-catching dresses that showed a lot of skin, so you’d think a girl dressed so plain-Jane would be boring. But truth was, there was something more suggestive about a white tee shirt than a low-cut top. It made me wonder what might be under it and whether Tracy might ever let me find out.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

I HELD THE door open for Tracy, and we entered a surprisingly well lit bar. We were about twenty miles from the Village, and with most of the clan back out on the road, I wasn’t too worried about running into anyone. Even so, I pointed Tracy to an open booth closer to the back.
 

We sat, and a waiter came by and left us some laminated menus. As if on cue, my stomach growled.
 

“Hungry?” Tracy asked, smiling at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I forgot to eat lunch today.”
 

“Well, why don’t we order some food then?” She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands, looking at me expectantly. It was like she sat at home practicing how to look adorable. “You wouldn’t want to drink on an empty stomach and give me an opening to take advantage of you, now would you?”
 

“Certainly wouldn’t want that.” I winked.
 

We ordered a couple of beers, and I looked over the long bacon-themed menu. Bacon cheese fries, bacon wrapped-jalapeno tater tots, bacon tzatziki dip, bacon desserts. I had no idea bacon was so versatile. “This menu is very…bacony,” I said.
 

“Yeah, isn’t it great?” She beamed. “Unless you’re a vegetarian,” she amended, giving me the kind of wary look someone might give a stray dog they weren’t sure whether to pet or shoo off. “I guess I never really asked you that. Are you?”

“Nope. Not a vegetarian.”

She let out a huge sigh. “Amen for that. Never trust a vegetarian,” she said. “The double bacon cheeseburger is amazing. Better than any other burger on the planet.”

“That’s a bold statement,” I said.

“You won’t think so once you try it. I drive over here at least once a week to get one after work.”

I looked her up and down. She looked about five foot nothing, and everything about her was tiny, from her slender wrists to her narrow hips. “Where exactly do you put it?”

“Put what?”

“The burgers?”

“Oh, just you wait. People always underestimate my ability to pack it away, but you’ll see. I bet I can eat more than you.”

“We’ll see about that.” Maggie always complained about how much food Shay and I went through. There was no way this tiny thing was going to out-eat me.

We each ordered double bacon cheeseburgers with fries, and when our food came a few minutes later, I stared at mine with anticipated indigestion. Each patty had to be at least a quarter of a pound if not more. Thank God I was hungry.

“Mmm,” I moaned involuntarily as I took my first bite.

“Good, huh?” She shoved a fry into her mouth. “I told you. This place is amazing.”

We ate in silence, each focusing on our burgers, but by the time I was about halfway through with mine, I knew it wasn’t going well. Tracy was ahead of me and my stomach was already telling me that a quarter pound of meat was plenty, thank you. Still, I soldiered on, determined to at least finish the thing.
 

Tracy looked up at me through lowered lashes every few minutes, smiling behind her ever-shrinking burger. She was a strange combination of bold and bashful that had an intoxicating effect on me.
 

With two bites to go, I knew I was done. Or rather, I should’ve been. Tracy had already polished off her burger and was working on some fries. I forced the last bites into my mouth, sure I was going to regret it later, but feeling satisfied that at least she hadn’t shown me up.

“What did you think?” she asked.

“It was great,” I said, trying to repress a belch I felt festering in my throat.

“Ready for dessert?”

“Are
you
ready for dessert?” I shot back.

“I could be persuaded. They make a mean bacon pecan pie.”

This girl was ridiculous. “Maybe in a little while. Didn’t you say something about shuffleboard?” I asked, trying to deflect the conversation away from more food.

“Yeah! You ready to play?”

I honestly didn’t know if I was, what with the burger baby I was carrying, but what else was I going to do? I walked up to the bar and ordered us a couple more beers, then followed her over to the far wall where an indoor shuffleboard table made its home. It was a long, wooden board with gutters around each edge. Its top was sprinkled with some sort of powder, and there were red and blue pucks littering its face. Tracy collected the pucks and brought them over to one side.

“You want to be red or blue?”

“Does it make a difference?” I asked.

“Not really.”

“Well, blue then.”

“You know the rules?”

“Why don’t you refresh my recollection?” I’d seen these boards in bars before and they always looked fun, but I’d never actually gotten around to playing.

“Basically, you just wanna get your puck as far down the board as possible without it falling off,” she explained.

I shrugged. Sounded simple enough. “Ladies first,” I said, stepping aside to offer her the spot at the end of the table.

“Why don’t we do a practice round since you’ve never played before?”

“I never said that.”

“So you saying you have?”

“I never said that either.”

“You’re impossible.” She nudged my arm with hers, sending shivers through me.
 

“That’s what they tell me,” I said, flashing her a playful grin.
 

She adjusted her shirt, re-covering the little bit of her midriff that had begun to show, but revealing more cleavage in the process. She leaned over the board. Standing next to her, the view left little to the imagination. She had to be doing this on purpose. At her height, she barely needed to lean at all, but she was practically bent over the table cueing up her shot. I swear the girl was fucking with me.

And I didn’t mind a bit.

We both shot all of our pucks one after the other. One of her reds hung precariously off the end of the table but managed not to fall off.

“That’s sex points for me,” she said, then jabbed her finger into my shoulder with a wicked smile. “And none for you.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Sex points?”

“
Six
! Six points. You have a dirty mind, Jimmy,” she tried to look disapproving, but the corners of her mouth twitched and her cheeks flushed red. “What’s your last name anyway?”

“Reilly,” I said without thinking. I should’ve given her a fake one but between the beer and the flirting my brain was addled.

“Jimmy Reilly. I like it. It fits you.”

“I certainly hope so, since it’s the only name I’ve got.” Aside from all the ones on the stack of fake IDs in my glove box, anyway.
 

We moved down to the other end of the table and started shooting a new round. I noticed two guys, both wearing pastel polo shirts and slack-jawed expressions, watching us. I wasn’t sure if they were eyeing Tracy or the shuffleboard table, but either way I didn’t like it.

After draining the last of their pitcher one nudged the other and they both walked over.
 

“Hey,” the one in the LSU hat said.

Tracy smiled in greeting, but I ignored them, hoping they’d go away.
 

“Can we cut in?” the other one said, this one in nothing but dirty jeans and a stained wife beater.

“We’re sort of in the middle of a game,” I said, collecting the blue pucks on my side of the table.

“Yeah, well, we’d like to join you,” LSU Hat said.

“Sorry, it’s a two person game,” I replied. I glanced over at Tracy who was grinning up at me. Was she enjoying this?

“We could play teams,” Wife Beater chimed in.

“Sorry,” I repeated, sliding one of my pucks, not even sure if it was my turn.

“It’s not nice to hog the table,” Wife Beater said.

“Maybe we oughta go,” I said, lowering my voice so only Tracy could hear me. Spending time with a country girl was bad enough, but I didn’t need to get into a scrape with these assholes too.

“Sure,” Tracy said, a hint of a smile still on her lips. She put the puck in her hand back on the table and linked her arm around mine.

“Dirty gypsy,” LSU Hat said under his breath. I heard him clearly but wasn’t going to say anything. Getting into a fistfight in the Village was one thing—Travelers would never call the cops on one of their own no matter how pissed off they were—but getting into a bar fight this close to home? Pop Sheedy would have my neck. And that would be a bowl of cherries compared to what Maggie would do.

“What did you say?” Tracy said, her eyes narrowing.

“Leave it. Let’s just go.” Oh God. Why did I go out with this girl? There was a reason Travelers had a rule against fraternizing with buffers, and this was precisely it.

“No. I want him to repeat what he said. Out loud.” She turned to look at them. “Like a man.” She was more than a head shorter than the guy, but when she raised herself to her full height I had to admit there was something almost intimidating about her.

“I called him a dirty gypsy,” LSU Hat repeated.
 

“Didn’t your mama teach you better manners than that?” Tracy demanded, pushing herself up on her toes to get in his face. “You’re one of the Breaux boys, aren’t you?”

“Umm, yeah,” LSU Hat stuttered. “Do I know you?”

“No, but I know your mama. She’s a nice lady. Comes into the hardware store every few months. I don’t think she’d take too kindly to hearing that her son was drunk and picking on a girl at the bar.”

“We don’t have any beef with you,” Wife Beater said.

“You’re damn right you don’t.” Tracy turned to me. “Let’s go, Jimmy. We have better things to do with our time.”

I was so shocked by the entire exchange I just blinked at her. Without waiting for a response, Tracy turned on her heel and stomped toward the door. I followed close behind her, like Yeats or Beckett trotting after Maggie.

We got out to my truck, and I paused by the passenger door. “Thanks for that,” I said.

“Oh, no problem. These local boys think they’re big and bad, but mention their mamas and they’ll shut up quicker than a broken bear trap.”

I understood the impulse. I grinned at her, amazed once again by what a fierce creature she was despite the small packaging. “You’re quite the little spitfire, you know that?”

“Spitfire?” She scrunched up her nose. “What kind of name is that?”

“You don’t like spitfire?”
 

She shook her head.
 

“Okay.” I looked up and tapped my bottom lip, putting on a show of coming up with the perfect name. “You scared the crap out them boys getting in their face like that. I’d say that makes you a real bruiser.”

“Bruiser?” Tracy chuckled. “You know? I like that.”

“Bruiser it is then.” I put up my fists and threw a slow punch that missed her face by a full foot.
 

She laughed again, swatting my hand away, and a piece of her golden hair fell across her face. By instinct, my fingers uncurled themselves and I reached out to tuck it back behind her ear. The second I realized what I’d done, I shoved my hands into my pockets to make sure that they kept to themselves from then on.
 

“About the, umm, gypsy thing…” I started, not knowing how I was going to end my sentence.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said seriously

“No, really. I—”

“I said, don’t worry about it,” she said, a little sharply, but soon her playful tone returned. “Actually, if you want to repay me for saving your ass, there’s one thing you could do.”

As much as I knew I should find a way to politely decline and be on my way, I also knew no matter what Tracy asked, I was going to say yes.

C
HAPTER
F
OUR

THIS WAS THE last place I thought I’d end up. Lying on the floor of Tracy’s trailer, my head underneath her sink.