Chapter 11
Dinner
Radar
The duo of young hostesses lit up when they saw me enter.
“Radar!” the first one mewled.
“Welcome back, Radar!” her partner gushed.
“Girls, I want you to meet Ella Couture. She's Lance's sister, and she's visiting from out of town.”
The hostesses looked at Ella. They hadn't noticed her standing right next to me. They gave Ella polite but disinterested smiles, and then immediately stared at me again.
I looked at the crowd that was crammed into the waiting area. “So what's the wait like tonight?” I asked.
The second girl gave a heavy glance to the first one. The first girl muttered, “well, er, let's see what we have …”
She tapped away at her monitor and then, quietly added, “oh, look at that! I just found a booth.” She whisked us past the waiting crowd and delivered us to an over-sized booth that could easily fit ten people. “Enjoy your dinner!”
I smiled at Ella. “Not bad, eh? I love the service here.”
But she looked appalled. “I can't believe they just did that! We just cut in front of that huge line, and I could feel everyone staring at us!”
“The fruits of being a pro athlete,” I said with a cocky grin. “They treat us like royalty in Boston.”
Ella wasn't impressed. “You hockey guys really are all the same.” Although she was joking, I could swear she sounded a little disappointed for real. “Anyway.”
And although I showed her my confident smirk, deep down, I felt a little strange. Naked, almost. Normally, girls absolutely ate up the special treatment I received around town … but not Ella. I guess I felt vulnerable.
Huh.
Our server swung by the table. We ordered a couple of drinks. I went with a steak and fries, and Ella ordered a grilled chicken salad.
“So, Mr. Royalty, how'd you meet this Kara girl?”
“Through an app.”
“A dating app?”
“Yeah.” I could've left it at that, but Ella's honesty policy had me in the mood to, well, be honest. “Actually, it's more of a hook-up app.”
“Wait, that's different than a dating app?”
“Well, sure. Some people use dating apps just to hook up. But a hook-up app is like, strictly for hooking up. Less drama, I guess.”
She didn't look too impressed at that, either. “I never knew that was a thing …”
“Really? You've never used Tinder or anything like that?”
“No. I've never used any apps to meet people,” Ella said.
“Oh. Wow. That's rare these days.”
“Is it?” Our drinks arrived, and Ella took a sip from her straw. “Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong, then.”
I raised a brow. “You're doing something wrong?”
“Oh, I dunno. I just have trouble meeting people, I guess. I'm always working, so I don't go out too much. And all the guys I do meet are just … blah.”
I shook my head. “Dating apps won't help you then.”
“Why not?”
“You won't meet any quality guys on there. You'll only meet guys like me.”
She giggled and rolled her eyes at me. “Professional hockey sleazes, you mean?”
“Something like that.” I paused. “You know, that's surprising. I would've thought that dating in New York would be really easy for someone like you. You're obviously a smart, attractive girl, and you run your own business. You've got a lot going for you. And there's so many people in that city. There's gotta be some quality guys out there.”
“Right? That's what you'd think. But there's only one quality man in my life.” She swiped on her cell phone and showed me a picture of a mottled gray and white cat. “His name is Eucalyptus.”
“Oh, God.” I slapped my forehead. “I did not have you pegged as a crazy cat lady.”
She giggled. “I'm not. I swear I'm not. But look, this is how dating is in New York . . .”
I listened as Ella explained her struggles of meeting a decent man in New York City. As she told it, it was a city full of guys who were only interested in a girl long enough to find out if he could sleep with her. No one was interested in something longer term. She also explained that guys were rather intimidated by her tendency to speak her mind and tell the truth—if not put off by it completely.
Then she told me about the last guy she was dating. A lawyer named Matthew. She told me about their breakup—and what he said to her. He couldn't stand her, and the only reason he stayed with her was so he could brag to his beer league team that he was banging Lance's sister. And, to add insult to injury, he told Ella that she was a “seven at best” (which is so far from the truth, and such an insulting thing to say to a woman, I ground my teeth in anger).
“He actually said all that to you?”
“Yup.”
I clenched my glass of beer so hard, I thought the glass might shatter in my fist.
“Where does his beer league play?”
She answered right away. “Chelsea Piers in New York.” Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Wait, why? You're not going to go beat him up, are you?”
The fantasy made me smirk. “Would you be mad if I did?”
She took a second to think it over before she wore a smirk of her own. “I suppose I wouldn't stop you.”
“Add it to my bucket list, then. One of these days I'll have to swing by Chelsea Piers and body-check some asshole lawyer named Matthew.”
She let out a dreamy sigh. “Oh, Radar, you can't talk to a girl like that … you'll only get her hopes up and everything.”
I leaned forward and growled. “Sorry, but I still can't get over that. He was only banging you for bragging rights? Who the hell says something like that?”
She bobbed her head from side to side, as if she were considering telling me something or leaving it be.
“Slight correction,” she said at last, “but just to be clear, he wasn't 'banging' me.”
“Hm?”
“We hadn't slept together. He was bragging to his buddies that we were, but we hadn't yet. I guess that's why he stayed with me for as long as he did, even though he found me so insufferable.”
They never slept together?
A wave of righteousness flooded right through my chest and filled my heart. That was the best goddamn news I'd ever heard in my life. That scum-bag lawyer didn't deserve her, and I was glad he'd wasted his time trying.
“How long were you together?” I asked gleefully.
“Four months.”
“Four months …” I repeated, imagining the lawyer's four-month anguish—and savoring every last second of it. “Good.”
“Why is that good?”
“You made him work for it, and he didn't get it, and I'm glad,” I snarled. “Fuck that guy.”
She looked at me like she didn't quite know what to make of my jealous outburst. Part of her was surprised. Another part of her, a part she tried to hide, looked deeply pleased.
“Well then!” she snickered at last, speechless.
Our waitress returned and delivered our dinner. I needed to change the topic, because that lawyer guy got my blood boiling, and I wasn't going to have him ruin my steak.
“So, Ella,” I asked I sawed off a hunk of meat, “tell me about your job.”
She gave me a run-down on the interior design business she ran. Apparently, she was growing quite a reputation in the city for quality work and had already had some famous names among her clients—a couple actors, a few NY athletes and local celebrities. She even had a waiting list. She'd really made a name for herself, by the sounds of it.
“Makes sense,” I said.
“What does?”
“That you'd be in your business for yourself. I can tell you're really … independent. You know. Strong. Capable. Whatever.”
“Thanks,” she said quietly. “Unfortunately, a lot of guys are intimidated by that.”
“Intimidated? There's that word again. Why are guys so intimidated by you?”
She chuckled, but she looked a little uncomfortable, and she didn't give an answer.
“Seriously, I don't get it. Is it just because you run your own business? Or that you expect guys to be honest with you? I mean, I get that it'd be hard … but jeez. Self-employed and honest. Those aren't exactly qualities that I'd think were deal-breakers.”
“Well … it's something else.”
“What?” I asked, doubting it could be anything serious. “You've got your life together and you want guys to prove they're worth your time.”
“Actually. It's a little more complicated than that.”
“Well, what is it?”
She inched forward and lowered her voice. “I'm still a virgin.”
I smiled at her, huge, ready to laugh with her … but she looked completely serious.
“Wait, you're—you're serious?”
“Yeah.”
I rubbed my chin. “Oh. Oh, damn. Huh. Are you, uh, religious?”
She laughed. “Not really. We moved around so much when I was in high school for Lance's career. As soon as I had a boyfriend at school, it was time to move somewhere else. And I told you that I shared a bedroom with Lance all those years, right? Can you imagine bringing a boy back home to that pig sty? I don't think so. Then I was in college, and you don't exactly meet a whole lot of boys in the interior design program at FIT. And then I graduated and started my business, which exceeded beyond my wildest expectations and ate up all my free time, and voila. Here I am, the 22 year old virgin.”
“I'll be damned,” I muttered.
“Look, I don't want make a big deal out of it, okay? And don't tell Lance because he doesn't know and I don't want him to know. I never wanted to make a big deal out of it, that's the thing, it just never … happened. So what? And it's not like I was trying to stay a virgin all this time, either. I just thought, since I waited this long, I might as well wait until I knew the time was right. You know? I guess the time has never been right.”
“Hey, yeah, gotcha,” I mumbled, my words running together. I stared off into the distance. “Totally.”
“See, now you're acting weird, and you're just my brother's friend, and we're not even interested in each other …”
“No no no. I'm not acting weird. I'm not trying to, anyway. Sorry. It's just, that's a rare thing in this day and age, I needed a minute to wrap my brain around it.”
“It is a rare thing,” she sighed, taking another sip from her drink. “Everyone else is using hook-up apps and I'm stuck at 'third base.' Ha ha. Oh well, it's my choice.”
“Wait, third base? So you have done things with a guy?”
“Of course! I'm not completely pure—or anything close to it. I love to sixty-nine, for example.”
I couldn't help it—my cock stirred against my leg. She'd put the image, the sensation, right there in my head: her bare bottom right over my face; my tongue busily lapping at her pink folds; the sound of her muffled moans with me buried in her throat.
I shifted in my seat and tried to push those completely forbidden thoughts out of my head.
“So, you're waiting for a quality guy?”
She took a long sip from her drink. “I was. But I don't know what I'm waiting for anymore. I'm kind of sick of waiting, honestly.”
No no no, not what I need to hear.
“Don't give up,” I croaked. “You'll find a good guy eventually.”
“Yeah, that's what everyone says, but where?”
I felt a heaviness in my heart. “You're asking the wrong guy.”
A still quiet came between us. Lost in my thoughts, I sawed off one hunk of steak after another and chewed.
So that was it. She was a virgin.
That was … unexpected.
But it made sense. Sort of. Like I said, she's tough, capable, driven … I could see how guys would struggle to live up to her standards.
Once the shock wore off, I have to say, I felt—relief. Because, the more time I spent with this girl, I had to admit—I found her even cuter, even more irresistible. And she was so easy to talk to. And that scared me, honestly, because it felt like I was starting to actually like her, and making up excuses to be with her. I'd been lying to myself, thinking that I could be around her and control myself.
Shit, I almost kissed her last night … and here I was, taking her out to dinner?! What was I thinking?
But now that she told me that she was a virgin, I knew that nothing would happen between us. She was a virgin, and she was looking for a good man and, hell, I certainly wasn't that. She was smart enough not to get mixed up with me. And I was smart enough not to get mixed up with the virgin sister of my teammate.
Or are you one of those easily intimidated cowards she's known all her life?
“So how about you, Ryan? How's your love life? Do you ever want to settle down, or are you going to play the field forever?”
“Well, I'm definitely not in love with anyone.” I pushed my empty plate aside. “So I guess it's the field.”
“Ew! Radar!” she squealed.
“What? You asked a question, I gave you an answer.”
“No, it was just the way you said it while you pushed your empty plate aside. Like women are nothing but a prime rib for you to consume.”
I laughed. “Pure coincidence.”
But she was right, in a way, wasn't she? In her eyes, I must've looked like a monster, a sexual deviant. Here I was, bragging to a virgin about going out to meet some random chick I picked up on a hook-up app. Awful.
Then again, wasn't that perfectly fine? I didn't want her to like me. That'd only cause a whole shit-load of problems. So if she thought I was a terrible sleaze, a man-slut … hey, great.
We made small talk and joked around until our server came by with the bill. I grabbed the check and paid it and left a generous tip.
“Thanks for dinner, Ryan.”
“My pleasure. I'm glad I could get you out of the house.”
“Me too.” She gave a gracious smile. “Are you off to meet your next cut of meat now?”
“Whatever.”
I checked my watch. I still had some time to kill until midnight, when I was going to meet Kara at Regret. I could see if some of the boys were around and if they wanted to meet up until then. Or …
Hell, why not ask Ella if she wants to come? We're already downtown. She doesn't have anything else to do.
“You wanna come with me to Regret? I'm not supposed to meet Kara for another hour or so.”
“As long as you promise I won't regret it,” she said in that over-the-top manner that said she knew that her pun was atrocious.
“Ba-dum-tssh. But hey, no promises.”
We left the restaurant. Outside, I hailed a cab and opened the door for Ella. I slid in after her, and the two of us sped off for Regret.