Chapter 24
Coming Clean
Radar
Outside the restaurant, the air was chilly and each hot breath gave off a puff of steam. We walked from the front of the restaurant to the back. Two of the restaurant's cooks huddled outside the rear entrance with cigarettes. Their faces looked long and tired, and their white shirts were spattered with red sauce. They watched us with a distant curiosity, blowing out clouds of smoke.
“So what's up? What's the deal?” Lance asked, sensing something wasn't right.
“Look, man, I've gotta tell you something.”
“So what is it? Spit it out already. You're making me nervous as fuck here, man.”
I rubbed my mouth, wondering how to say it.
God damn, am I about to make another mistake? Shea said to take it to the grave …
“It's about Ella.”
“What about Ella?” Lance asked, his fists balling with rage.
“Last night, after you left for Lindsay's, I saw Ella on my way out the door.”
“And?” Lance asked, wanting me to get right to the point.
“I felt bad for her, Lance. She hadn't eaten dinner. I told her I was going to meet a girl from MeatMarket, so she might be third wheel or whatever, but she didn't mind. She wanted to get out of the house. We came here, to MacAllister's.”
“So that's why the hostess knew her,” he mumbled under his breath. “But what the fuck? Why would Ella lie about that? She never lies. And why am I only finding out about this right now? What'd you guys do, Radar?”
I took a deep breath. “She went with me to Regret after we ate.”
“And?”
“And when I met the puck bunny, Ella ran home. But I felt bad, and I was worried she wouldn't know the way home, so I went after her.”
“Tell me what fucking happened already, Radar,” he growled.
I sighed. “Lance, I don't know what happened. From the moment she showed up, I felt like there was something about her, about us—”
Pop.
A sudden force impacted my face, right below my eye, and a bright flash forked like lightning across my vision.
I staggered backwards from Lance's punch.
“Yep,” I mumbled with a hand pressed over the sudden throbbing pain. “I deserve that.”
“I don't want to hear your whole fucking love story, asshole, I want you tell me what the fuck you did with my sister,” Lance snarled at me.
“I kissed her,” I said. “I kissed her, and one thing led to another, and we fooled around, but that's it, that's all—”
Lance interrupted me with two more punches—the first to the gut, and the second to the jaw. The latter knocked me off my feet, and I landed on my ass in a sludgy puddle of MacAllister's fry grease.
He grabbed me by the collar.
“Did you fuck my sister?!” he yelled, his other fist clenched.
“No, I swear I didn't.”
He let go of my collar and gave me a shove, throwing me right back into the puddle of fry grease. Now it covered the back of my shirt, and the sickly smell of greasy, salty, burnt fry oil made me queasy.
One of the cooks shouted at us. “Hey, uh, everything alright with you guys?”
We both waved and smiled at them. “Yep!”
They shrugged, ended their smoke-break, and went back inside.
Lance squatted over me and stared me down, face-to-face. “Look me in the eye and tell me you didn't add her panties to your fucking collection.”
“I didn't add her panties to my collection, Lance.”
“Were those her panties in the living room?”
“Yes,” I swallowed, “but I wasn't going to take them anyway. They just, uh, ended up there.”
“Oh, they just ended up there, did they?” he snickered. “Why should I believe you weren't going to swoop in and take those panties?”
“Because I'm not into stealing a girl's panties. And if I explained it to her, first of all, and she'd look at me like a freak. Don't you get it? That was something I only did with puck bunnies or girls I didn't care about.”
He gave a snort. “Oh, so now you're saying you care about my sister?”
I paused. I wasn't sure if admitting this part made it better or worse.
“I actually like her, Lance. I like her a lot.”
“What the fuck, Radar. You think you like her? You've known her what, two days? And that's enough to know that you like her?”
“I can't explain it. I've never felt this way about a girl before.” I gave a defeated chuckle. “Doesn't matter, though. She hates my guts.”
“Why?”
“Because. That whole story she told you this morning? About me and the puck bunny I brought home? She made it all up.”
Lance shook his head. “But why would Ella lie?”
“Because I made her. She would've told you the truth about us, but … I was afraid you'd kill me if you found out.”
“Oh.” Lance suddenly looked lighter, and he stepped away from me. “You fucked up, Radar.”
“I know.”
“First, you fucked up when you touched my sister. I meant what I said about getting traded to Winnipeg, bud. Hell, maybe Winnipeg's not even far enough.”
I accepted my fate with a heavy head nod.
“But second, man, if you truly had a thing for my sister? Lying to her is bad, but making her lie? You really fucked it all up. That's the last thing you should've done. She'll never forgive you for that.” He snickered at me, looking pathetic as I laid in a puddle of trash and grease. “Fuckin' idiot.”
Lance wrung his hands, as if cleaning me off of them.
“Don't bother coming back inside. You look and stink like shit now. You should head home, clean yourself up, and get a head start on packing your bags, because you'll be getting a call from the team GM first thing in the morning.”
“What will you tell the boys?”
“That's not your problem.”
He walked off.
Slowly, I staggered to my feet, and started walking for the water taxi. I knew there was no point in calling a cab—they'd kick me out as soon as they smelled my fry oil stinkin' ass.
I felt disgusting, covered in that slimy grease. My jaw hurt like a bitch, and my eye was swelling shut. Without my suit jacket, I was cold as hell—especially once I got on the water taxi and had the harbor breeze blowing over me.
But as cold and dirty and miserable as I was? I actually felt better than I had before, now that I'd come come clean. Ella might hate me even more for telling Lance the truth, but …
At least she wouldn't have to lie about it anymore.