Chapter 7 Real Helpful, Guys
Real Helpful, Guys
Eric
I wake up on my side, drooling into the pillow, to a buzzing noise. It sounds like angry bees.
When I pry one eye open, it proves to be a mistake. The Florida sun is doing its best impression of a laser beam through the sheer hotel curtains. Why didn’t I close those blackout curtains last night?
Oh, right. Because I was hammered. Because we lost. Because the season is over, and I’m a failure who deserves this hangover.
My phone buzzes again. I grab it off the nightstand and squint at my messages. All forty-seven of them, most of which are from my parents. They’re worried about how “devastated” I looked during the postgame interviews.
Mom wants me to fly straight home to Massachusetts. Dad has sent three articles about how to recover from a big disappointment. Real helpful, guys.
Even as I’m holding the phone, a new text from my mother comes through. The silver lining here is that you can make it to Maribel’s shower! Would you like to stay with us for a whole week?
Ugh, no.
I drop the phone onto the pristine white duvet and close my eyes again. It’s too hot in this bed. And I’m still wearing my dress pants from last night. And one sock. The other one is… somewhere. Along with my dignity.
My mouth tastes like something crawled in there and died. Probably my pride.
With a groan of anguish, I roll away from the sunlight, onto my other side.
And then I shriek like a preteen girl. Because there’s another warm body in this bed. Holy shit. I search my memory, but I don’t remember hooking up with anyone.
She clears her throat. Deeply. What the fuck? My eyes pop open again, and I see DeLuca grinning down at me. “Sleep okay, little buddy? How’s your head?”
“Jesus Christ,” I say, and his grin only widens. “What are you doing in my hotel room?”
There’s a snicker from elsewhere in the room. “Whose hotel room?”
“Oh God.”
DeLuca and Chase Merritt laugh in stereo as I lever myself up to a seated position. Merritt is on the sofa, looking perky in a warm-up set with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. DeLuca is propped up in bed beside me, scrolling his phone, a cup of coffee beside him, too.
I search the room, and my gaze lands on a suitcase. DeLuca’s. Things must have gotten so hairy last night that they were afraid to leave me alone. There’s even a carefully positioned ice bucket on the floor beside the bed, probably in case I started puking.
God. I let out another groan, and a few of the night’s horrors begin to puncture the mist of my hangover, like a lighthouse through the fog.
I remember DeLuca and Merritt showing up with a half-drunk bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
I remember taking the elevator down to the hotel bar once we ran out of liquor.
And something about Darcy? Hell. I still need to apologize to her. Right after I stop the room from spinning. And maybe throw up. And find my other sock.
“How did I end up here?” I croak.
“You wouldn’t stop drinking,” Merritt says. “You even gave the bartender a hard time for cutting you off.”
“Seriously?” A headache begins to pound behind my eyes. “I’m never rude.”
“This is mostly true,” DeLuca says with a shrug. “And you never get that toasted. We figured you just needed a night to let your hair down, you know? But you were kind of a sad drunk.”
I press my hands into my eye sockets. “Can you blame me? We lost the fucking game.”
“Yeah, you couldn’t shut up about that,” Merritt says. “Somehow everything that went wrong was your fault.”
“Wasn’t it?” I growl. “I played like shit last night.”
DeLuca shakes his head. “You weren’t the only one, pal. Although, drunk Tremaine thought he was responsible for every missed opportunity. Even that ugly goal I let in.”
“Even O’Connell’s injury,” Merritt adds. “Explain that one.”
I shake my head, but it hurts, so I stop.
“You need some food and coffee,” DeLuca says. “And you, uh, might want to apologize to Darcy.”
Dread rolls through me. “Oh no. What did I say now?”
DeLuca looks thoughtful. “It was a little weird, actually. She was working late at the bar, if you can believe that…”
I can, though. Now that he mentions it, I recall spotting Darcy in a corner of the lobby bar, hunched over her laptop, probably trying to reorganize her boss’s travel plans now that his summer vacation just got extended by ten days.
When I’d lurched over there, she’d looked up at me with those big turquoise eyes, all concern. But then…
I let out another groan. “Let me guess—I was trying to explain myself to her, but I was too drunk to do it.”
“Yup,” Merritt says, taking a deep pull of his coffee. “But after she excused herself, you became more articulate. You told the whole bar how pretty Darcy is. And how you can’t tell if she likes you or not. You seemed really confused.”
“Christ.” I roll over and bury my face in the pillow.
“Didn’t know you had a thing for Darcy,” Merritt adds with a chuckle. “You should date her instead of that harpy you keep bringing home.”
“No chance,” I grumble into the pillow. “I was such a dick to her yesterday.”
Honestly, my little episode outside the arena is more embarrassing than anything else that happened yesterday. It’s worse than getting sloppy drunk or even taking a stupid penalty.
“What was so bad that you were trying to apologize?” DeLuca asks.
“I…” Ugh. “I was having a rough moment yesterday before the game, and I took it out on her.”
“On Darcy?” Merritt yelps. “Bummer. I always thought she might have a thing for you. She gets, like, tongue-tied when you talk to her.”
I lift my eyes and find DeLuca smiling at me. He winks, but he doesn’t say anything. He promised me he wouldn’t tell anyone else about Darcy’s rogue text message.
“Who’d want a piece of this?” I point out. “She could do better.”
“That’s the spirit.” DeLuca slaps me on the ass. “Pull yourself together, Captain. The bus for the airport leaves in ninety minutes. Get up. Go back to your own room and shower. Eat a bagel, drink some coffee.”
“Everything looks better after breakfast,” Merritt says.
Does it, though? “How come you’re so cheery? We lost the fucking game.”
“You could look at it that way,” Merritt says. “Or you could feel a little gratitude that we made it to the third round, which is better than last year. And now we get a vacation. I’m hoping to take my girl to the beach.’’
“And I’m hoping to tag along,” DeLuca says. “We might rent a house, if we can find one. Drown our sorrows at the beach. You should come.”
“He has to go to some wedding shower,” Merritt says. “He ranted about that, too.”
The fucking wedding. “I hate my life.”
“Last night was brutal,” DeLuca agrees. “That’s why you need coffee and a shower. Things might look better then.”
I heave myself out of the bed to find out if he’s right.
He is. Sort of. I still have a pounding headache, but a shower and some clean clothes help. At least I look human.
Then I head for the lobby, where I purchase a black coffee for me and a double cappuccino with skim milk for Darcy.
It won’t be hard to find her—on road trips, she’s never far from the lobby.
Her responsibilities seem to include anticipating anything that could go wrong and then fixing it before it does.
True to form, I find Darcy standing beside a potted fern near the front entrance to the hotel. She’s wearing a dress in Legends blue that makes her legs look endless, and she’s frowning at her phone.
Don’t look at her legs, asshole. I yank my chin upward. “Morning, Darcy. Could I have a minute of your time?”