Page 35 of Penalty Shot

Me:Hey Elise, you wanna hang with me and the guys tonight? Like after dinner or something. If you aren’t tired or busy or whatever.

My phone rings.

“I was about to call you,” Elise says, and something like relief crashes into my consciousness. “You can say no, alright? So don’t feel any pressure.”

Something about her hesitation intrigues me. “Need me to rob a bank for you?”

Her laugh tinkles. “No. But I like this game. Guess again.”

“Hmm, do your taxes?”

“Haven’t done it in years.”

“That better be a joke.” I’m Canadian; we don’t fool around with our taxes.

“Wouldn’t you want to know,” she says with a chortle. “I’m kidding!” Elise adds to appease me.

“Let me think…” I ham it up with a pause. “Help bury the body of your boss with the shitty resting face?”

“You’d really help me bury a body, wouldn’t you, Randall?” she asks, and I can hear the smile.

“You know it.”

“OK, so maybe what I’m offering isn’t so bad.”

I get stuck on the phrasewhat I’m offering.

“Just say it,” I grumble because I’m pissed at the way my body reacts to her. My hardening cock needs to calm the fuck down.

“I’m busy tomorrow night. My mom refuses to find a proper date to her charity event, so I’ll be her plus-one. But…”

“But?”

“She’s making a huge homecoming dinner tonight and I thought, since I won’t have another chance to see you, maybe you’d like to join us.”

Dinner with her mother. I had offered to help out, if needed, but crashing her private family time makes me a jackass.

“Hey, I said no pressure,” Elise interrupts my thoughts. She took my hesitation the wrong way.

“You don’t have to invite me because I’m nagging you to hang out,” I say.

“Did it sound like a pity invitation? Because that’s not how my other friends took it.”

Friends. Plural. “It isn’t only me butting into mother-and-daughter time?”

“No! She loves cooking for my friends. That’s why I have so many, remember?”

I’m one of many friends. Of course I am. I should be relieved. Instead, something in my chest deflates. As does my cock. At least that’s no longer a problem.

“Yeah, count me in. What should I bring?”

“Not food, though we don’t say no to wine around here. Come by around six, six thirty?”

When I show up at six fifteen, the driveway is already full. Apparently the homecoming dinner for Elise constitutes a party. This doesn’t surprise me.

I’m cradling two bottles of wine and gripping a six pack. I take stock of my surroundings before staring at the wooden front door. I don’t think I’ve knocked on the door of a stranger’s house since maybe high school.

In a bar with the buzz of alcohol and the boost of my team, it’s easy to cruise. When we go to parties, doors are opened for us. Apart from the rare dinner in my father’s condo, most sit-down meals I’ve had in the last few years have been in restaurants. The idea of a genuine dinner party in someone’s home is so alien to my lifestyle, my comfort zone is in another county. Add conversations with people who know each other but not me, and it becomes painfully obvious that I made a mistake in agreeing to come.