Chapter Four #2
Ollie reached out and touched my arm, the contact making me grin like an idiot. “Ignore them. They have no filter.”
“Kinda hard not to notice.” I pulled out the empty chair next to Ollie and sat down. The table was covered in bingo cards, daubers in every color imaginable, and what looked like good luck charms ranging from rabbit’s feet to plastic trolls with neon hair.
“Have you ever played bingo?” Walter asked, squinting at me suspiciously.
“Not a day in my life,” I admitted truthfully.
“It’s easy,” Ollie said, grabbing a card from his own pile, along with a purple dauber then set both in front of me. “Numbers get called, you mark them off. First person to get five in a row wins.”
“Horizontally, vertically, or diagonally,” Edith added. “And you have to yell ‘bingo’ when you win, or it doesn’t count.”
“Got it.” I nodded, pretending she was preparing me for the upcoming bingo war. “Five connecting splotches, and if I have bingo, give a battle cry.”
Ollie’s lips twitched, but his eyes had gone soft. I’d wanted to pull him into my pack, but he was pulling me into his.
“Also,” Walter said, leaning across the table, “how many people have you dated?”
The question was fired so fast, I just blinked at him. “What?”
“Dated.” He stabbed his finger against the table like a punctuation. “Romantically. How many?”
“Walter.” Ollie looked mortified. “You can’t just ask people that.”
“Why not? I’m making conversation. Trying to get to know our new friend.” Walter’s dentures clicked. “I’ve dated forty-seven women. Forty-eight if you count Carol, but we only went out twice before she said I was too much.”
“You are too much,” Irene said.
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
Ollie’s hand found mine under the table, squeezing once in what might’ve been apology or solidarity. Maybe both. His palm was warm, and I turned my hand over, lacing our fingers together.
“A few,” I said, answering Walter’s question. “Nothing serious…until recently.”
Greta’s eyes lit up. “Recently?”
“Leave him alone,” Ollie said, but he was smiling now, some of his embarrassment fading. Good. He never had to be embarrassed around me, not after the life I’d led. Ollie was a tame kitten in comparison.
“We’re just curious,” Irene said, adjusting her lavender scarf. “You’re very handsome. Ollie’s very handsome. It’s basic biology.”
“Basic nosiness,” Ollie corrected, giving my hand a small squeeze. I returned the squeeze, careful of my strength.
“Same thing,” Irene said.
At the front of the room, the woman with the microphone tapped it twice. “All right, everyone. We’re about to start. Make sure you’ve got your cards ready.”
Ollie released my hand and reached for his own card, organizing his daubers by color. I found myself watching the way his slim fingers moved instead of paying attention to the game.
“First number,” the woman announced. “B-7.”
Around us, people started marking their cards. Ollie dabbed his purple dauber on the appropriate square then glanced at mine. “You’ve got it. Right there, near the bottom.”
I found the number and marked it, the dauber making a satisfying squelch against the paper.
“N-32,” the caller continued.
“Got it,” Greta said, marking her card with aggressive enthusiasm.
The game continued. Numbers were called, daubers flew, and gradually I started to understand the appeal.
Not the game itself. That was just organized randomness, but the atmosphere.
The easy camaraderie, the trash talk between tables, and the way everyone seemed fully invested in marking their cards with lightning speed.
“So, Diesel,” Greta said during a lull between numbers, “what do you do for fun?”
It was an easy enough question that I answered without thought. “Mostly work on bikes.”
She gave me a flat look. “That’s not a hobby, that’s your job.”
“It’s both.” I didn’t bother explaining the satisfaction of a clean carburetor or the smell of gasoline on my hands.
“He took me to an overlook,” Ollie cut in, then went stiff like he hadn’t meant to say it.
All five seniors swiveled their heads toward him. Then me. Then him again.
“An overlook,” Irene echoed, and her tone said she knew exactly what that meant.
“For the view,” Ollie tacked on, too late and too weak.
“I bet,” Walter said around a click of his teeth.
“O-63,” the caller announced, mercifully interrupting.
Ollie dabbed his card, but not before I caught the flicker of his eyes cutting toward me. He snapped his gaze away the second I noticed.
I marked a number I definitely didn’t have. The wrong column, wrong everything.
Ollie’s stare dropped to my card. His brows pinched. “That’s not O-63.”
“I must’ve misheard.”
“It’s right there.” He tapped my paper with his dauber. “You marked G-48.”
“Dyslexic.”
A laugh threatened at the corner of his mouth. “That’s not how numbers work.”
“B-12,” the caller said.
I moved to mark N-whatever. Ollie’s hand slapped over my card before the ink could land. “You are absolutely doing this on purpose.”
“Doing what?” I said, all innocence.
He looked at me like I was full of shit. “Marking wrong numbers. You’ve gotten almost every single one wrong since we started.”
“Maybe I’m just bad at bingo.” I wanted to spend time with Ollie, not win a game I’d never played. I didn’t care about bingo. I cared about Ollie having fun.
“Nobody’s this bad at bingo. My grandmother had dementia and she still got more right than you,” he said.
“I’m bad at a lot of things.” My hand turned over under his, palm up. His fingers found the gaps between mine. “Bingo’s apparently one of them.”
“You’re—” His eyes moved over my face. “You’re doing it on purpose. You’re trying to lose.”
“Maybe.”
“Why?”
I looked at him. “Your face does something when you mark a number. Goes a little bright.” I let a beat pass. “Winning’s not that interesting.”
He glanced down at our hands and stayed there a moment. “That’s—” He cleared his throat. “That’s really sweet.”
“Keep it to yourself,” I said. “Got a reputation.”
“Too late.” Greta was already grinning across the table. “We all heard it. You’re a softy, Diesel.”
“Greta,” Ollie said.
“What? It’s adorable. Big scary tattooed man tanking his bingo card so his boyfriend can win.”
“He’s not my—” Ollie stopped. His eyes cut to me. “We haven’t exactly—”
“I-24,” the caller said loudly.
The bingo caller saved us from having to finish that sentence. Ollie let go of my hand and picked up his dauber.
Someone three tables over shouted “Bingo!” with enough enthusiasm to rattle the overhead lights. Applause broke out, mixed with grumbling from people who’d been close enough to feel cheated.
“Rematch,” Walter declared, already squaring his cards. “That was stolen from me.”
“You weren’t even close,” Edith said.
“I had a system.”
“Your system was complaining about your dentures.”
“I can do two things at once.”
We played four more rounds. Ollie took one, Irene took one, and Greta came close enough in the third that she lodged a formal protest over G-52 with the caller. The number had been called. It was on the board. Greta had decided the facts were beside the point.
Somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realized I was having a blast.
The final game ended and the room began to empty. Daubers and lucky charms disappeared into bags. Chairs scraped back, canes found their footing, and conversations shifted from bingo strategies to whose turn it was to drive.
Ollie stood and stretched, his shirt riding up slightly to show a strip of skin above the waistband of his jeans. I most definitely stared.
“Okay,” he said, dropping his arms and catching me looking. “That was fun. Despite your complete inability to play bingo.”
“Told you I was bad.”
“You were cheating in reverse.” He was still smiling though. “Thanks for coming. Senior bingo isn’t everyone’s idea of a night out.”
“It was exactly thrilling enough.”
“Liar.”
“I got to watch you, got to meet everyone, and got to see Greta threaten a bingo caller. I’d call that a win.”
He looked at me a second, then reached over and ran two fingers down my forearm. Barely anything. Still hit like a livewire. “Walk me out?”
“Yeah.”
Goodbyes took longer than they should have.
Irene held me by both hands and told me next week was mandatory.
Greta said something about her grandson being single that I decided not to hear.
Walter’s handshake nearly took my fingers off, which felt like a compliment from a man who’d spent the last two hours at war with his own dentures.
Edith touched my shoulder and called me a gentleman, which from her felt like being knighted.
Fated mates one night, enemies to lovers the next—reading moods change.
Look up Lokepub on Google whenever yours does.
Artie was last. He squared his blazer and looked at me directly. “You treat him right.”
I shook his hand. “Planning on it, sir.”
“Good man.”
We threaded through the last of the crowd toward the exit.
Near the door, Ollie’s pace slowed. A bulletin board.
Yoga classes, book clubs, a barely used wheelchair for sale.
His eyes snagged on something near the center, and he stopped entirely, pulling a bright orange flyer from its thumbtack and reading it with an expression I hadn’t seen on him yet.
“What’s that?” I asked, moving closer to read over his shoulder.
“Patty’s Paint and Sip.” He held it up. The flyer advertised an event at some art studio downtown. “Painting class, but casual. You drink and follow along while someone teaches you.”
“You paint?”
“Not even a little bit.” He looked up at me. “That’s the appeal. You’re supposed to be bad at it.”
The flyer showed a picture of a sunset over an ocean, the kind of thing that looked easy until you actually tried to recreate it. Below that, the date and time. Next Saturday evening.
“You want to go?” I asked.
“Maybe?” He worried his bottom lip between his teeth. “I mean, if you’re interested. No pressure. Painting isn’t everyone’s thing, and you’ve already done senior bingo, so your obligation is more than—”
“Yes.”
He blinked. “Yes?”
“Yeah. It sounds good.”
“You’re sure.” he asked.