Chapter 2 DIEGO
I stumbled off the dance floor as soon as enough people filled it.
It was the only job Kelly, the bride of the hour, had given me: to get people dancing.
Yes, I had planned to dance the fucking night away and be unfailingly fabulous in the face of whatever bullshit the ignorant hometown crowd could throw my way.
But now I had more pressing concerns.
I reminded myself every five seconds not to scan for Taran Kovacs. I recognized the people seated near him; apparently his mom played mahjong with my stepmother Annie because he was stuck at a table full of her middle-aged friends getting ripped on well liquor.
How fucking dare he be even hotter than his extraordinarily fine teenage self? And he had the nerve to be light years more emotionally mature on top of that? Still eternally confused about his sexuality, but two out of three was way too good. Un-fucking-believable.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t made as much emotional progress as Taran Kovacs in the last eight years, because all I could think of was taking him back out to my car and climbing on top of him for old time’s sake.
The only rational response to this scenario was to plummet toward whiskey dick as fast as possible.
I rolled up to the bar and ordered two tequila sodas with a twist.
Kelly wandered by in her massive white fluffy cloud of a dress and held out her hand. “Oh god, D, can I have one? I’m dying here.”
I rolled my eyes but handed one over. “Fine, fine; it’s your day.”
“Were they both for you?”
“Yes, obviously.”
“You’re supposed to be keeping the dance floor alive.” She smiled though.
When Dad first informed me I was about to get a pair of younger sisters, I admit it didn’t thrill me.
Thankfully, Kelly was cool as fuck. Kacey, the younger one, was a bitch on wheels.
Normally that’d be admirable, but not when it blew up in my face on the regular.
Though she was a horrible dancer with no rhythm, I said, “Kacey can handle it for a few—”
“A few what?” She walked up behind me.
I sighed. “Are we sure she’s not actually Satan? Say her name and summon her?”
Kelly snorted inelegantly as a well-wisher sidled up to her, so I was forced to turn to Kacey armed with only one beverage. “You could handle the dance floor, I said.”
“I’m the maid of honor, bitch.” She pursed her lips at me.
“Your lipstick wore off like hours ago, girl.” I gave her mouth my most disdainful look.
She rolled her eyes. “So did yours.”
“Shows what you know. I only wore eyeliner to—”
“Who’s the hottie?” she interrupted.
I turned to follow her gaze, but even before I got there, I knew who it’d be.
She and Kelly both had an eye for the hottest guy in any crowded room.
There he was, Taran Kovacs with his stupid floppy dark hair brushed back from his forehead, his gorgeously summer-tanned skin, and his absurdly blue eyes.
He even had a little stubble on his jawline, and he was wearing the sexiest pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses, which was just more evidence that he never had and never would play fair.
I sighed. “Taran.”
“Friend of yours?” She eyed me sideways so I’d know she meant someone you’ve fucked?
Yeah, I’d learned the hard way not to tell Kacey anything personal. I just shrugged. “Your mom’s friend’s kid, I think. Kovacs.”
“Oh, for real? Uncle Brandon is really going after him.”
Uncle Brandon was a sixty-year-old washed-up football coach from the next county over, so yeah, that tracked.
I was about to talk some shit about him but paused when I noticed that Taran’s baby blues looked oddly unfocused.
He was surrounded by mostly middle-aged men, all of them talking at him rather than to him.
And he was just nodding now and then, his jaw flexing visibly, face otherwise expressionless.
Fuck, I’d been joking about wanting rescued if I started dissociating. He apparently had been serious.
“Be right back,” I lied, heading directly toward him. I started to pick up snatches of conversation:
“I saw you run the ball in for a touchdown early on, though. We all really thought you were going to be there for a good long while.”
“You’re better off. CTE is a real problem,” said one of the guys from Taran’s mom’s table.
“Ah, these guys are sissies nowadays. If you don’t want me to hit the quarterback, put him in a dress,” said another one. “That’s what your dad used to say, Kovacs.”
Ew.
I sashayed up to them deliberately, and Taran’s eyes lit up. Which was nice, but he probably would’ve been happy to see anyone who wasn’t obsessed with bullshit small town sportsball. I said, “Kovacs, can you help me with something for the bride?”
“Uh, yeah, of course. Happy to help.” He raised his glass to the cluster around him. “See you around, huh?”
They kept talking around him, though a few acknowledged his departure with something like warmth. When he fell in step beside me, he muttered, “Jesus, man, thanks.”
“What the fuck?” I asked, making for the front door. Needed a smoke anyhow.
“It’s always like this when I go to anything in this county. Everyone wants to talk about the goddamn glory days.” He snorted and stuffed his free hand into his jacket pocket. His tie was loose now, his top button undone. He was either trying to get comfortable or on his way to getting drunk.
“What, you don’t?” I snorted right back. “You used to soak that shit up.”
“I didn’t soak it up,” he protested, then grimaced. “I loved the game. I was good at it. It was fun.”
“It got you laid.”
He shot me a look. “Obviously.”
“That’s not why I sucked your dick, Kovacs.”
He laughed and opened the door, then stood aside to let me out first. “Why did you?”
“Because you looked so desperate, I took pity on you,” I lied.
“Uh-huh.” He smiled like he knew better.
I walked around the side of the building so no one coming or going would bitch about my smoke.
He followed, sipping at his drink and smiling.
I leaned against the brick wall and lit the cigarette behind my hand, then took a nice, long drag to give me that momentary spin.
I was trying to quit, so I only did four or five a day, max.
It was nicer, though. They actually hit.
“What happened to you anyhow?” I wondered.
“What?”
I nodded toward the door. “You didn’t play all the way through college, right?”
He raked a hand through his well-pomaded hair, leaving it adorably fucked up. “Nah.”
“How come?”
“Honestly?” He grimaced. “It’s kinda pathetic.”
“I love pathetic.”
“I wasn’t good enough.” He shrugged.
I frowned. “But you got a scholarship and shit.”
“My first year, yeah. Remember how I used to talk about stepping up to a Division I school after a year or two at Cooke?”
I nodded. It was all coming back to me—a little too much about the way we used to linger in the darkness after hookups and talk about life.
I’d forget he was a popular jock, and he seemed to forget I was a loser nerd, and we’d spend hours just being…
I don’t know. Friends who sucked each other’s dicks?
Boyfriends who never admitted it, more like.
“Well, turns out that I sucked, so my scholarship shrank. And then disappeared. So not only did I not move up, I didn’t even stay there.” He leaned one hip against the wall, his gaze fixed on my Doc Martens. “No game-ending injury, no life-changing drama.”
“But you ran one in for a touchdown?” I hated football on principle in school, as all art kids must, but in reality it was just kinda meh. I knew the rules and plays, and a quarterback pulling that was hero-level shit.
He chuckled silently, shoulders bouncing so they stretched the seams of his jacket. “We were playing the shittiest team in Div II. It was bullshit, and we were up like thirty points already. Any time we played someone decent, I folded like a paper airplane.”
I sucked on my cigarette in silence, fascinated by his expression and body language.
It was exactly the fucking same as it had been in those quiet, stolen moments together back in the day.
I’d almost forgotten how he slouched and smiled when he was just being himself instead of the big football star everyone wanted him to be.
Not that he’d ever said it was a burden. But I was starting to think that even if it hadn’t been then, it sure as fuck was now. “Must’ve been hard,” I said.
He shrugged with the shoulder that wasn’t against the wall. “At first. Then it was just a fucking relief. Especially when COVID hit.”
“Yeah?”
“I transferred out to a little liberal arts school. When they lifted restrictions, I played on an intramural team just for fun. No one knew I’d ever had the football hopes and dreams of Stanley County pinned on me once upon a time. It was great.”
Well, what do you know: Beautiful people can get headfucked too. “That where you met the hockey-fucker-ex?”
He laughed. “Sorta. She went to high school with my roommate, and he introduced us. We had our good times. Just ended bad.”
“That’s how most of them go, yeah.” But I laughed and shook my head. “Did you ever hate it, even when you were the big fish in the little pond?”
“In high school?”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head slowly. “I guess I didn’t realize that everyone else around me was so serious about it, you know? Like, I knew it was supposed to pay for school, and I would’ve given my right arm to go pro, but I don’t know. I was still having fun, so I thought everyone was.”
Yeah. Sounded very, very fucking Taran.
I must’ve given him a look or something because he flushed dark and looked down again.
“What a pair of idiots,” I said, just to break the tension.
He glanced up through those beautiful, thick eyelashes, asking a silent question.
“We didn’t know the first thing about each other,” I elaborated. “Thought we did, though, didn’t we?”
He smiled cautiously. Nodded. “Probably.”
“Well, you grew up okay, Kovacs. I’ll give you that.” I squeezed out the cherry and tucked the butt into my fist.