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“Because you’re a sexual Sharknado?”
This earned me a laugh. “Fuck you,” he finally says. “And yes, I am... but that’s not why. It’s because I’m an asshole and for some inexplicable reason, the vast majority of the female population love assholes. They love deluding themselves into thinking they’ll be the one to change me. Fix me or some shit.”
“Being an asshole isn’t a super power, cousin,” I say but by now, he’s got me half-convinced that it actually might be.
“If you do it the right way it is,” he tells me. “It’s time you use who you really are to get what you want. More to the point, who you want.”
I shake my head again, spinning my empty pint between my fingers. Who I really am is miles and miles from the guy he’s describing. Going upstairs to finish the Yankees game is starting to sound like a good idea. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Seeming to know that I’m halfway buying his bullshit, Conner goes in for the kill. “You know what Tess and Cari call you behind your back?” He leans back, head cocked like he can’t look at me head on and say it at the same time. “Predictable Patrick.”
I feel my spine stiffen like he’d rabbit-punched me in the kidney.
Predictable Patrick.
Safe. Boring. Harmless.
That’s what Cari thinks about me. It’s how I feel and it make me sick.
Conner lets out a rough sigh. “Look, cousin—” Before he can lay it on me, Lisa comes back with my Jameson, along with a water.
“Here ya go,” she says setting the rocks glass on the table in front of me. Then she slides the water onto the table alongside it. “Paddy says to tell you it’s holy water,” she says with a shrug and I can’t help but laugh. It’s my uncle’s way of telling me not to start trouble in his bar.
From the corner of my eye, I can see Conner watching Lisa with avid interest. I’m suddenly sure that instead of telling me what I need to do, he’s going to show me. Before I can stop him, Conner reaches for Lisa’s hand and pulls on it gently, giving her the same lopsided grin I’ve seen him give a hundred women—and watched it work every time. “Sit down for a minute, Lees, I want to tell you a secret…”
I’m not surprised when she does what he says because I’ve never met a woman who wouldn’t. I watch while Lisa allows herself to be tugged down into the booth beside him, angling her shoulders so that they’re pressed against the hard expanse of Conner’s chest.
Watching him slip a tattooed arm around Lisa’s waist, he leans in close to whisper something in her ear—something that makes her blush—was like watching myself. Or a much more adept version of myself. He’s got his large, callused hand splayed across her abdomen, the tip of his work-roughened pinkie finger slipping inside the waistband of her shorts, making contact with bare flesh. That contact, coupled with whatever Conner is whispering in her ear is enough to loosen the lock Lisa has on her knees. They fall apart just a bit—enough to make it obvious that she’s more than down for whatever it is my cousin is proposing.
I am no longer halfway convinced that being an asshole is a super power.
I am a true believer.
I’m about ready to excuse myself from the table so they can have some obviously much needed privacy when suddenly Conner leans back, unwinding his arm from her waist. Now I notice Lisa’s got her eyes locked on me. She’s looking at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. Like I’ve got something she wants. She stands, skirting the table until she’s standing right in front of me.
And she’s holding out her hand.
I look at Connor and he’s grinning at me—that dimple of his promising a boatload of sin. Don’t say I never gave you nothing, cousin, I can practically hear him say it. He reaches across the table and palms my Jameson, offering me a silent toast before he drains the glass. In its place, he leaves a strip of foil-wrapped condoms.
I don’t want to think about Cari anymore. I don’t want to want things I can’t have and I don’t want to worry about how this will make Lisa feel afterward or about what kind of guy this makes me.
I’m done thinking. Thinking is for nice guys and tonight—right now—that isn’t me. I swipe the condoms off the table and shove them into my back pocket before I give Lisa my hand and let her take me to church.
Eighteen
Patrick
Cari and I have one roommate rule. It’s hard and fast—non-negotiable.
No bringing home conquests. The moment Lisa takes my hand and pulls me out of the booth, I know I’m going to break that rule.
I could pull a Gilroy and fuck my uncle’s cocktail waitress in the ladies’ room, or I can treat her like an actual person with real feelings. I opt for the latter. I know, I know... not very assholeish of me.
Baby steps.
Somewhere between the booth where we left Conner and the bar my uncle is behind, I start leading her. Pulling Lisa through the growing crowd, we weave our way through a large throng of co-eds—girls drinking cranberry and Malibu and dudes choking down black & tans because ordering a Bud Light in an Irish pub is akin to pissing on a barstool.
I take Lisa’s drink tray and toss it up on the bar as we pass by. On impulse I swipe an open bottle of Jameson from the well. “I’m taking my break, Paddy,” Lisa calls over her shoulder as I pull her up the stairs leading to my apartment. She’s slightly out of breath—whether it’s because I’ve got her running the Boston Marathon or because I’m about five minutes away from getting into her pants, I don’t know and I’m caring less and less.