Page 12 of Coach (Heartstrings of Honor #4)
Shane
I stood in front of the closet wearing nothing but a towel and a scowl.
Water dripped from my hair, down the back of my neck, and onto the floor I’d mopped just that morning. I ignored it—the same way I was ignoring the clothes in front of me like they were part of some advanced tactical puzzle I didn’t remember learning how to solve.
I’d been staring for ten full minutes.
Shirts hung before me, smug and useless.
I pulled out a plaid flannel long-sleeve, my go-to for pretty much any occasion more formal than a workout at the gym. It was blue with brown lines . . . or whatever they’re called in plaid speak. It was too dark, too plain, too . . . me.
I tossed it on the bed.
Turning, I grabbed the shirt that hung beside its discarded brother. It was plaid, too. Also flannel, but this one was different—brown with blue lines. I chucked it toward the bed, missing by a country mile to watch it smack into the window and fall to the floor.
It was ugly.
It deserved the floor.
Something darker called to me from a few shirts down the line, a solid black button-down I wore to funerals, a shirt that also had a faint paint stain near the hem.
Was it dressy casual or murder scene chic?
Hell if I knew.
It wasn’t like I dated. Not in a let-me-open-the-door-for-you-and-hope-we-both-don’t-choke-on-small-talk kind of way. Outside of servicing my customers and dealing with Stevie, I rarely even peopled.
Leaving the house took effort.
Dealing with other humans took even more.
I was about three minutes from giving up and driving to Decatur in the towel and dripping hair when my phone caught my eye. I grabbed it and hit Stevie’s image on my phone’s favorites.
She was the only image on my favorites page, my only favorite.
She picked up on the second ring.
“Well, well,” she said, voice already thick with mischief.
“If it isn’t my favorite socially stunted hermit.
To what do I owe a call outside of working hours?
Break something large and wooden? Better yet, yank your own wood and want to brag about it?
Got a video for me? I might prefer to muff dive, but I can appreciate a good tool when I see one. We are in the business, after all.”
“No, God no.” I sighed. “I need help.”
“Are you dying?”
“No.”
“Is the shop on fire?”
“No.”
“Are you—” She gasped, loud and dramatic. “Are you considering peopling ?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and muttered, “I have . . . a thing.”
There was a pause.
“A thing ?” she repeated, practically vibrating through the phone. “Is it a date -thing? It’s a date-thing, isn’t it? Is Shane Douglas going on a date? Holy shit, the world might split open.”
“It’s just dinner. It’s not like we even know each other at all,” I muttered.
“Oh, honey.” She laughed. “That’s the point of dates, to get to know someone you don’t know well. You sound like you’re heading to your own execution. What are you wearing? ”
“A towel.”
Dead silence.
“You’re calling me . . . naked . . . because you can’t pick out a shirt?”
“I’m not naked,” I growled. “There’s a towel.”
She cackled so loudly I had to hold the phone away from my ear. As she enjoyed her moment, I glanced into my closet, confirming the hopelessness of this adventure.
“Wow. The romance. The seduction. The total inability to function like a human being. I need to record this . . . for posterity, you know. Maybe for blackmail purposes, too. We’ll see.”
“I hate you.”
“No, Shane Douglas, you love me. Now answer me this, my grumpy woodsman—if this is such a burden, why’d you agree to the date? And who’s the lucky guy, anyway? You never said.”
I didn’t answer right away.
Not because I didn’t have an answer. Because the real answer made my throat go tight.
After a beat—or ten—I leaned against the doorframe and let it out.
“Because he’s . . .” I rubbed the back of my neck. “He’s fucking hot.”
“Uh-huh,” Stevie said, already way too smug. “How hot? ”
I thought a moment.
“You know when we go to a Thai restaurant and order something spicy and the waitress asks, ‘Do you want American hot or Thai hot?’”
“Yeah.”
“Thai hot is a warning. It’s a whole different level of white-people problems. It’s the kind of hot that melts the chrome off a bumper.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Just roll with me here. I’m drowning.”
She snickered. “Drowning in hot sauce?”
“Thai hot sauce, only—”
“Only what?”
“He’s not Thai. He’s Italian. Like from Italy and still has the accent and smells like pepperoni and everything.”
“You smelled him?”
“No!” I blew out a breath. This was useless. I was never getting dressed. “It was an expression. You know, what people say.”
“Literally no one says that.”
“Fuck off,” I said, holding the phone away and flicking her a bird.
“He’s stupidly beautiful, like he stepped out onto the porch and the sun hit him like it was trying to flirt.
He has these big brown eyes, ridiculous hands that move like he’s always talking even when he’s not, and his accent—Jesus—it’s like his vowels are trying to seduce you. ”
“Oh my God,” she wheezed. “His vowels?”
“And he talks fast when he’s nervous, says too much, then tries to walk it back like he didn’t just trip over his own tongue. When I spilled water on myself—”
“Wait, you spilled water on yourself?”
“Focus!”
“Fine!”
“My shirt was soaked and all see-through, which made my nipples and abs poke through like I was about to walk a runway. He short-circuited. He looked at me like I was a fire hazard, and then he stared at my chest like he’d never seen one before.
And I—” I groaned. “I haven’t stopped thinking about him since. ”
Silence.
“You have a boy crush,” she singsonged.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “No, I don’t.”
“You have a feelings-crush,” she sang. “You are emotionally compromised. Shane has actual human emotions for a hot Italian with a tragic accent and a thirst for sideboards.”
“Stevie.”
“You’re into him.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“You want to hold hands and share soup bowls. ”
Click .
I tossed the phone onto the bed and sighed like a man who’d just seen war.
Then I realized we hadn’t solved the “what was I going to wear” problem.
“Well, shit,” I grumbled as I grabbed my phone off the comforter and punched Stevie’s face again. Not literally. Her phone face.
“Miss me already?” she asked.
“Fuck, no. Now, just tell me what to wear.”
“For the love of God, no flannel.”
“Already tossed across the room.”
She giggled. My butch, bike-riding, tattooed-and-pierced vampire Lesbitarian actually giggled. “What about that black shirt? You never wear that, but I bet you look good in black.”
“It has paint on the bottom and on some of the buttons. I think it was beige or faded blue something.”
“Well, that fucks the all-black idea right up the ass.”
I groaned.
“Do you have any white T-shirts that aren’t stretched at the neck or torn or have sweat stains or paint on the bottom? Like, clean white T-shirts?”
I stepped to my chest of drawers and began rifling through stacks of white T’s. I had lots of those—though it took me a solid three minutes to find one meeting her very particular description.
“Got it. What goes with a white T-shirt?”
The sound of the phone dropping from her hand and smacking the floor was followed by more laughter, this time far less controlled or contained than her prim little giggles. The muffled sound of her retrieving her phone was followed by heavy breathing and a failed attempt to rein in snickers.
“What? It’s a fair question. I can’t wear a towel with a T-shirt, not a white one when the shirt’s white, too, right? That’d be too much white, even at Wimbledon.”
“Was that a serious question?” she wheezed.
“Uh, no. Of course not.”
It had been. What did I know about snooty tennis tournaments?
“Throw on the cleanest, most paint-free jeans you’ve got—and please, please, please wear a belt. Just make sure your shirt is clean, wrinkle-free, and a size too small, so it clings to your muscles. I’m fairly certain those were what won you the date in the first place.”
“Not my sparkling personality or cunning wit?”
She howled again.
“Man, that almost hurt.”
“If you had feelings, I would believe it,” she snarked.
“Fuck you.”
“Go get dressed . . . then get laid. The rest of humanity needs you in a better mood.”