The Thing About My Rival (The Boston Commoners #1)

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

DREW

“And he really taped a line through the middle of the office? And up over the window ?” Joyce holds her belly with one hand and slaps the other on the pub table, jangling her bangles and rattling our glasses.

I nod and pick up my Guinness to save it from toppling over. “Yup. That’s how pathetic he is.”

“More like how much he likes you, you mean.” Winston rubs the white stubble that contrasts against his dark skin, then takes a sip of his Sam Adams.

This corner table at my aunt and uncle’s pub, The Blarney Stone, has become my regular evening haunt since I moved into the apartment above it. With them having retired to Florida, and Garrett, the manager, having his own home with his husband and kids, it was sitting empty. So they’ve lent it to me as a stopgap until I find somewhere more permanent. But right now my work situation seems too precarious to even start looking.

When I’d come down to say hi to Garrett the evening I moved in, he introduced me to this band of three local seniors who stop in every night at ten o’clock to set the world to rights. The Oldies, as they call themselves, welcomed me with open arms, and I instantly became their fourth wheel.

And that’s great because, although I grew up in Boston, I fell out of touch with my friends. But now I have new ones. All of them are in their seventies, and after just a week they already feel more like family than friends. Actually, they’re a hell of a lot better than my family.

“Oh, yeah,” Mona says, her gray bun bobbing as she nods. “Boys only do stuff like that when they like a girl. When my Dennis was first trying to get with me, he’d sneak my lunch from my backpack and hide it. Then I’d have five questions to figure out where it was.” Mona and her husband were high school sweethearts. He passed away eight years ago.

Joyce pats the back of her peroxide pixie cut. “Sounds more irritating than attractive.” She reaches for the bacon-flavored potato chips sitting in the center of the table—they share a bag every night. “If anyone got between me and my lunch, they’d be the last person I’d fall in love with.”

“Mona’s right.” Winston gives me a wise old owl look over the top of his wire-framed glasses. “I used to yank Nora O’Sullivan’s braids and run away all the time. But only because I liked her.” His gaze drifts off toward the old wooden bar with its rows of beer taps and shelves of Irish whiskey behind. “Wonder what she’s doing now?”

“So hurting girls and taking their lunch used to be thought of as adorable?” I ask

“Not by me,” Joyce says .

“I didn’t hurt Nora. I pulled her hair gently.” Winston looks thoughtful. “At least I hope I did.”

“And my Dennis was shy,” Mona says. “Teasing was his only love language.”

“Well, my situation is definitely not a case of being teased by an admirer,” I tell them. “It’s a case of someone trying to make my life such hell that I’ll quit and he’ll get what he wants.”

“So the new owners gave him the coach’s job? Even though your dad had already appointed you?” Mona asks.

“Yup. The previous guy walked out as soon as he heard that my dad was selling the club. And my dad panicked that the buyers might back out if they got wind of there being no head coach, so he scrambled to fill the role. Giving it to me was an easy quick fix for him.” I gaze into my drink, my stomach tightening. “I’m sure he’d never have given it to me for any other reason.”

“He was that desperate to sell?” Winston asks.

“Yup. Heart doctor’s orders to retire. But there’d been no takers because of how badly the team was performing. So when this bizarre mixture of the rich, the famous and the royal made an offer three weeks ago, he had to grab it with both hands.”

It might have felt like a last-minute consolation prize, but I had only seconds to decide. So I’d shoved the catastrophic disappointment of him not passing his own role on to me to one side, and accepted this as not only a way to keep the Commoners in my life, but also as a monumental achievement—the first female head coach of an MLS team.

“Anyway,” Joyce says, “Hugo totally wants to get in your pants.” She knocks back the remains of her gin and tonic and slams the coral lipstick-rimmed glass back down. “And I’ve seen his pictures. Phwoar .” She fans herself. “We’ve got a hot one. Why not have just a teensy bit of fun?”

I lift my glass to my mouth in the hope it might hide the heat flaring in my cheeks. “No way. We work together. Also, there’d be absolutely zero fun involved. Because he’s a total ass.”

“How could any man be an ass to you?” Mona clutches at her high-necked floral top as if she’s holding pearls. “He should be so lucky as to have a chance with such a smart and beautiful young woman.”

I put my drink down and draw a line in the condensation from the top to the bottom. “Thing is…”

Should I tell them? I’m as certain as I can be that I can trust them. But is this story best kept to myself? Probably. I am three-quarters of the way down my second Guinness, though, and fit to burst about this ludicrous situation, so fuck it. I could use some help processing it, and these guys have definitely lived lives and might have some good advice.

“Thing is…he did have a chance.”

They all stare at me and make a low ooo sound, like three pigeons sitting on a branch and cooing in unison.

Joyce rests her arms on the table and leans in, her grin devilish. “I like the sound of this story.”

I take a deep breath. “Okay. Well. There was this one time?—”

“Oh my God, you already did him?” Joyce slaps her hands on her mock shocked face and looks around the table. “She already did him!”

“I wouldn’t have put it like that exactly.”

“She did!” Mona almost knocks her sherry over in the excitement .

Winston nods slowly.

“Details.” Joyce taps my arm with her teal-polished fingertips. “ All the details.”

“I’m not proud of it.” And I’m not. Lord knows I’m not. It was definitely not my finest moment. “Six years ago I was working in France for the Dijon women’s team and?—”

“Like the mustard?” Mona asks.

“Of course like the mustard,” Winston says. “It’s where the mustard is from.” He turns to me. “Carry on, dear.”

“Well, it was a Euros year, and someone from work somehow got a bunch of us invited to the big end-of-tournament party in Paris.”

“Oh, I think I can see where this is going.” Winston holds up his glass and jiggles it.

“Yes. Lots of free booze. And loud music. And dim lighting.”

“Lethal cocktail,” Mona says, as if she’s spent her life in nightclubs. Which I’m fairly sure she hasn’t, since most of her stories revolve around raising kids and working behind the deli counter at Sapori’s.

“Yeah, well, I was dancing with my work friends, and a bunch of guys from the England team joined us.”

“Is he a good mover?” Joyce asks. “Because you know what they say—good mover on the dance floor, good mover in the bedroom.”

“That’s not a saying.” Winston pushes his glasses up his nose.

Mona nods at me to continue.

“Well, it was fun, you know. There we were, a bunch of nobodies, dancing with these household-name England players.”

“And one of them was very handsome,” Joyce says .

“More than one of them,” I tell her. “But Hugo looked at me, and it was…”

“Oh my God.” Mona sits up straight. “This is a story of love at first sight.” She places her hands right over her heart and gazes into the middle distance. “Two people meet. Have one night of passion. Don’t see each other again for six years. Then one day their paths cross again and they live happily ever after.”

“Except not,” I tell her.

“Come on.” Joyce taps my arm. “Details.”

“Well, when he looked at me, I went all kind of squishy inside.”

“Might have been the beer,” Winston says. “Those Europeans make it strong.”

“Possibly. Something had clearly messed with my capacity for good judgment. I mean, obviously I knew he pretty much slept his way through every issue of People magazine. But in that one moment it felt like?—”

“Love!” Mona says.

“You wanted to rip off his shorts,” Joyce says.

“Too much of this.” Winston taps the side of his glass.

“Definitely the last two. And I would never usually do anything like that.”

“Of course not. Exceptional circumstances,” Joyce says. “I mean, you have a chance with a man like that, you grab it with both hands.”

“And the chance,” Mona says, delighted with her dirty joke.

“I’ve taught you well, my friend.” Joyce high-fives her, then turns back to me. “Anyway, more details.”

“Well, it felt like it didn’t matter that he slept around. God knows why. It makes no sense to me now. Now, I wouldn’t touch him while wearing a full hazmat suit. But when he looked at me…” A sigh comes out of me that sounds so sappy I want to punch myself in the head.

God, I’m pathetic. I fell for the same shit every woman he’s slept with fell for. And I thought I was smart. Maybe my dad’s been right all along.

“He was just generally fun and nice and danced with us. Then he put his arm around me and whispered in my ear that he’d like to get me a drink.”

“Did the whispering give you that goose-pimply thing all down your side?” Joyce shivers as a memory obviously passes through her.

“You know, it did.” Again, that was dumb. “I mean, I knew he must do that kind of thing all the time and it’s nothing to him. I knew it. But still, in that moment, having a drink with him felt like the right thing to do.”

“When you know, you know.” Mona gives me a slow nod of experience.

“So we had a couple drinks. And he was funny and charming. And we laughed a lot. And when my friends said they were going to head back to our hotel, Hugo asked me to stay and hang out for a while.”

“And you did .” Joyce claps.

“Like a fool, I did.”

“Do we get to the sexy part now?” Joyce asks.

“Joyce, for the love of God. Maybe the poor girl doesn’t wish to share the intimate details of her life.” Winston is always the epitome of considerate.

She nudges me. “Just the general gist of it. You don’t have to do a blow-by-blow of who put what where.”

“Blow-by-blow.” Mona giggles. “I see what you did there.”

I guess I’ll just keep it to the bare essentials. Except I won’t use the word “bare” or it might set Mona off .

“We chatted for a bit. But it was hard because the music was so loud. We basically had to yell right into each other’s ears. And he sneaked a kiss. Right there, while we were standing at a bar table.”

“Did your knees wobble?” Mona asks.

“Everything wobbled.” My knees, my belly, my hands. It was the most thrilling, exciting sensation of my life.

“Again, this.” Winston points at his Sam Adams.

“Since it was so loud, he suggested we go to a quieter bar.”

“Of course he did,” Winston says. As if that’s Pickup Technique 101.

“I was a bit on the tipsy side, so it seemed to make sense.”

“Was he drunk?” Joyce asks.

“Yes. More than I realized.”

I take a sip of Guinness to ease the dryness in my throat from reliving this story.

“Anyway, on the way along the hallway out, we stumbled into each other, and he grabbed a door handle to steady himself. The door opened. And he…er…well, he pulled me in.”

“I knew this would be a good story,” Joyce says.

“It was a janitor’s closet. Pitch black in there when he shut the door. And he kisses me again. And things…er…progressed.”

“You banged Hugo Powers in a janitor’s closet?” Joyce shrieks it so loudly three people at a table on the other side of the pub turn our way.

“Joyce. Shhh.” Winston gives her a disapproving stare. “Save the girl’s blushes.”

“It’s okay,” Joyce says. “They’ll think I meant Mona.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t say no to that handsome young man,” Mona says. “Even if it was in a janitor’s closet. Or any other form of closet.”

Joyce taps my arm again. “Keep going, my love.”

I’m definitely skipping the gruesome details. “Anyway, at one point he stumbled backward into the door and must have hit the handle because the door flew open and he fell out and landed flat on his back in the hallway. Fortunately at the feet of one of his friends.”

Definitely not telling them Hugo’s pants were undone. “His friend dragged him over to lean against the wall and he immediately fell asleep, slumped right there. Hugo, that is, not the friend.”

“So did you hook up with his friend instead?” Joyce is a horror.

“Hell no. Do I look like someone who would kiss a guy and his friend in the same evening?”

She shrugs. “Never look a gift horse, and all that.”

“Anyway, his friend was really nice. Said he’d arrange a ride back to my hotel for me while Hugo took a nap.”

“I would hope he did,” Winston says. “I’m glad someone behaved like a gentleman and made sure you got back safely.”

“He did. Hugo, however, was not as much of a gentleman. I never heard from him again.”

“Maybe he lost your number.” Mona’s glass is always half full.

“He never asked for it. But he could easily have gotten a hold of me via work. Even if he was too drunk to remember that I’d told him I was at Dijon FCO, I’d told his friend too. He was definitely not smashed. And he was polite enough to kill the time waiting for my ride by asking me lots of questions about my job, so I’m sure he would have remembered. ”

“Well, now’s your chance to get reacquainted.” Joyce jiggles her eyebrows.

“Absolutely not. Hugo Powers is a selfish ass of the highest order. And, in a cruel twist of fate, we now have to work together. And work together well enough to get the Commoners winning so I can keep this job. At least then, to some degree, it would mean I get to hold on to the club my father sold to strangers.”

Not just strangers, but four men with piles of influence and even bigger piles of money, but zero soccer experience apart from watching games from fancy corporate boxes at stadiums around the world.

Winston sucks in air between his teeth and shakes his head.

“Anyway”—I glance around at my audience of three—“that, ladies and gentleman, is the humiliating story of my encounter with Hugo Powers in the janitor’s closet of a Paris nightclub.”

And either he’s flat out refusing to acknowledge it ever happened or he was so drunk he doesn’t remember.

Not entirely sure which would be worse.