Hail Mary Read online

  Not exactly what you want the opposing defenders to be saying. Welcome to my life. It’s been a shit-ass season. Game four and Cutler got his ass fired, so then it was finally my turn to come off the bench. Finally, after years of playing second-string, I was the starting QB.

  And I’ve lost every fucking game since.

  Now we’re 4-5. If I can’t turn this shit around, my five-year plan is going to take a serious detour. Like, toward a different line of work completely. Or maybe, God help me, Cleveland.

  There I am, taking off my helmet, with grease paint all over my face. The sun is in my eyes, so I look not only exhausted, but also super confused. I wasn’t confused. I remember what I wanted to say was, We have fuck-all for an offensive line except for Valdez, so what do you think happened? And what is wrong with the fans here? I got hit with a rubber chicken on the twenty. Are you kidding me?

  But I didn’t.

  Instead, I watch myself running my hand through my sweaty hair as I say, “Just a bad day, Tammi.”

  She puts the mic to her mouth. “Had some trouble there with penetration…” She trails off. She really does sound like she’s talking about erectile dysfunction, and she might as well be. To complete the picture, there’s an ad for CIALIS right behind her. This fucking game.

  “We just played the hand we were dealt,” I tell her. When in doubt, resort to old sayings. Minimal sound bite trouble, very little chance of inserting an accidental expletive.

  Tammi looks at me sadly. “Hope it all starts getting better for you, Jimmy.”

  No shit. It better start getting better and fast.

  “Ready?” a voice says behind me. I spin around.

  The whistle comes out of my mouth before I can stop it.

  Fuck. She’s rosy-cheeked, and her hair is still damp from the shower. Her eyelashes are long and look soft in spite of the dark mascara. Fucking A. And as if she wasn’t naughty enough before, now she’s got a pretty diamond stud in her nose. But it’s perfect. It’s the lace tattoo all over again. A sweetheart sinner. Sign me the hell up.

  “You’re sure you want ribs?”

  She looks incensed. “Don’t back out on me now.”

  “No, you’re just…”

  “What?” She lifts her face, all sassy. “You think I’m too delicate for ribs?”

  Delicate. Not delicate. Pretty. Beautiful. Elegant. And wearing a sexy, white turtleneck sweater. I want my mouth on that neck so fucking badly…

  She sweeps her hair off to one side, over one shoulder. On the ring finger of her right hand is one of those Irish rings. I don’t know what it’s called, but I’ve seen them before. With the heart in the middle and the hands on each side? It’s silver and old. The heart is facing toward me. I might not be Irish, but I’ve been around the block enough to know what that means.

  Game on.

  “You were tougher when we were sparring,” I say, studying the way her hair falls over her breasts. “Now you’re…”

  She leans in. She smiles. “Finish that sentence the right way, and the first round is on me.”

  Jesus Christ, she’s got me upside down. I pull up my pants a little and focus on forming complete sentences. “I’ll take you to Il Forno. They’ve got great wine…”

  She shakes her head and slings her gym bag off her shoulder, her pink gloves hanging from the strap and her wrist wraps poking out of the top. “Way too fancy. Baby back or bust. Give me beer or give me death!” She elbows me in the arm.

  Whoa.

  From a hook on the wall, she takes down a gray puffy coat with a fake fur hood and zips it up. Then a gray hat and matching mittens from her pocket. She pulls the hat down low on her head. It’s this stinking adorable thing that’s a little too big for her. It looks like someone she loves a lot knitted it for her, and she loves them too much not to wear it.

  She zips up her jacket and I get a whiff of fresh coconut. “Going to say anything or just…going to stare at me? Because I don’t mind, not at all. I only want to know the plan…”

  I cough. “You don’t fuck around.” I drag my eyes off her and glance over at the Knockout Wall.

  “Oh!” She walks over to it as she puts on her mittens. She’s in these cute brown boots that come almost to her knees and have salt stains on the toes. Jeans. Tight jeans. My mind immediately goes to what color underwear she’s got on, and I think, Pink. Fuck, I hope it’s pink. She twists one leg over the other so she’s standing there cross-legged with her hands clasped together. Pure fucking delight as she beholds the proof of her power. “Right? Not bad. That one.” She taps on one of the guys in the middle with her mitten. “He was almost as big as you.” She beams up at me. “Almost. What are you, 6'5", 280?”

  She knows her shit. “6'6", 283.”

  “No way, really?” She smiles so hard that it makes her nose wrinkle.

  I cock my head as we head for the steps. “Yeah. Why?”

  In my mind, she comes back with something like, You’re a beast, or, You’re huge, or, Is it true what they say about the correlation between shoe size and…

  But instead she says, “Means you’re the biggest guy I’ve ever taken out!” Then she raises one mitten up into the air for a high-five. “Whoop, whoop! Hollaaaaaaa!”

  6

  Mary

  He takes me to a little hole-in-the-wall place around the corner. More precisely, a door-in-a-wall that I’ve walked past a hundred times without noticing. It’s sandwiched between a barbershop on one side and a Subway on the other, and it looks like a service entrance. Dinged blue steel, rusted on the bottom. Except now, looking closely, I see it has SWEET UNCLE EARL’S painted in tiny, tiny letters at eye level.

  “You ever been here?” he asks, and knocks with his bare knuckles on the metal, a very distinctive rat-a-tat-tat-tat.

  Actually knocks!

  “This is like a speakeasy,” I say. “I’ve never been to a place where you have to knock to get inside. Is there a handshake?”

  He sniffs in the cold. “Not for me, pussycat. Not for me.”

  Oh God, I find that confidence so hot. I pretend not to be kind of dying inside and adjust my hat. I don’t want to be too easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, so I fake-glare at him and sniffle. “I’m nobody’s pussycat, as you know.”

  “Tough, because I really dig that nickname.”

  I huff. It’s just for show. I love it too, especially when he says it.

  He warms his hands in front of his mouth. He smiles behind his clenched palms and the skin around his eyes crinkles. Into his fist, he repeats, “Pussycat.”

  The door swings open with an icy creak. We’re met with a blast of hot air, which smells exactly like a smokehouse, and I start salivating immediately. Inside the door is an old man in a white apron that reads BBQ IS MY RELIGION. It’s spattered with barbeque sauce, and his face lights up so warmly when he sees Jimmy, it makes me wonder if maybe this guy is more than just a Gillette model after all. “Come on in, champ! Just took a fresh batch out of the smoker.”

  As we walk through the door, it’s like some Chicago-style variation of Cheers. Everybody bursts out with a big joyous, “There he is!” as Jimmy steps inside. I find myself almost unconsciously making way for him, to give him space to fill the room, but he positions me right in front of him, one hand on each of my shoulders. Like he wants to put me first. An old guy behind the bar tips his hat at us and smiles. A rotund lady in a tiny apron gives him a kiss on the cheek and gives me a warm pat on my arm.

  Instead of Jimmy, though, they all call him “The Falcon,” which is a bit strange.

  “What, is that your street name?” I ask, as we slip into a dimly lit booth. “The Falcon?”

  He waits with his fingertips poised on the table, and cocks his head at me.

  I take off my hat. “You know, like The Rock? Dwayne what’s-his-name? Like that?” I unwind my scarf and stuff it in my purse.

  Now Jimmy nods. He takes my coat and hangs it on the hook between the booths. “Sort of like that,
sure.”

  He sits down and the bench groans underneath him. He bumps the table with his knee, making the candle flicker inside its tin-can holder. He is a massive human being. Massive and sexy and dreamy and…I have this flash in my head of him breaking my bed. Crack, bang, thump.

  The waitress comes by with a small, very rumpled notepad in her hand. I order a beer but defer to Jimmy on the ribs. He orders two racks with a side of corn and potatoes for both of us.

  It’s been a long time since anybody ordered anything for me. And I find, much to my astonishment, that I really like it. That take-charge thing, it’s sexy. None of this hemming and hawing and, Please, have whatever you’d like except maybe not the rib-eye because I’m not made of money. Nope, none of that here. Just bing, bang, boom. And on with the show.

  The Jimmy show.

  The thing is, I’ve hit a bit of a dry spell. About a year ago, I broke off my engagement to a man I haven’t seen since. And I’m happy. Happy as I’ve ever been. Over the last few months, I’ve slowly gotten back into dating. It hasn’t been great. The guys I meet are either on the heels of a divorce, with the vague label of “separated” on their Match.com profiles (liars!), or are just that much older than me, so that the only thing on their minds is marriage and kids. I’m getting to be that age where people start looking at me as though my uterus is starting to shrivel up like a prune and telling me all about it.

  When it comes to kids, I wonder if maybe there’s something wrong with me. I’ve started to think there might be. When I see little ones on the street with their parents, or children of my friends, whose faces now litter my Facebook feed, I try to find some little flame of warmth, or interest, or adoration. I try to look at their puffy cheeks and their little noses and feel something, anything. It’s like it’s not there. But I know I have a lot of love to give—show me a dog in a sweater vest and I can’t help myself at all.

  As if on cue, my phone buzzes in my purse. “Is it okay if I check my texts?”

  He looks utterly stunned. “I can’t believe you asked that…”

  “Well, I don’t want to be rude.” I smile. “With you taking me out and everything.”

  He blinks quickly, almost embarrassed. “Sure, yeah, of course.”

  I reach into my bag and find my phone at the very bottom of the purse-vortex. On my home screen is a text from my best friend, Bridget. There she is, sort of sultry, with a new smoky eye she’s trying out. In her lap is Frankie Knuckles. He’s her dog, technically. Technically. Underneath is the caption:

  Mama Mary, where are you?

  Holding up the screen for Jimmy, I say, “My roommate is guilt-tripping me for not coming home.”

  I watch his eyes. I fully anticipate an understandable widening when he sees Bridget. The guy is only human, and Bridget has been known to make bus drivers forget their routes. But amazingly, he looks at her without any particular interest. Certainly nothing like the way he looks at me.

  Which is, you know, fantastic.

  “Holy shit.” Jimmy reaches out and unpinches his fingers over Frankie’s face. “That looks like an ewok.” He leans in, putting his enormous elbows on the table so that everything on it sloshes and slides like we’re at sea. I clamp my hand to my side of the table and try to right the vessel with my shoe. Victory. Not even a drop of beer lost.

  “Frankie Knuckles is his name.”

  “Jesus,” he says with a snort, looking at the picture. “What a bruiser.”

  Not exactly. He’s 13 pounds, allergic to wheat, afraid of aluminum foil, and carries a half-stuffed drool-crusted panda bear around with him everywhere he goes.

  “Do you like dogs?” I ask, as casually as I can muster.

  In my head, I swear to God, I hear the theme song from Jeopardy. This is a moment of truth. I’m not sure I’ll ever see this guy again, but I’d like to. I’m not sure I’ll ever know his lips on mine, but I want to. But this question, the dog question, this could be a deal-breaker. I find non-dog lovers to be very, very suspicious. I once heard Ted Bundy disliked dogs, and I thought, Of course he did. But this guy, Jimmy, he’s so perfect that we’ve got to be headed for a catastrophe. This might be it. Just my luck he’s going to say, I’m allergic, or I have twenty-nine cats, or I’m really into snakes.

  Please, no.

  “I fucking love dogs.”

  And the crowd goes wild!

  “Me too,” I say, smiling. It’s an understatement, but I don’t want to get pegged as crazy dog lady quite yet. With a non-greasy finger, I type in my passcode. “He’s a Brussels Griffon. And everybody says he looks like an ewok, but I’ve never actually seen Star Wars, so I can’t weigh in on that.”

  He scratches his head and glances at the bar. “Never?”

  “Never.”

  He clears his throat. “I mean, I don’t want to be rude, but do you live under some kind of rock? Are you a hermit? Because I could totally be into that, but you know, full disclosure…”

  Oh Lord. I could be into that.

  I swallow hard.

  Wait. What was the rest of that sentence?

  Right. Star Wars. “I just never saw it growing up, and now it’s sort of a thing. I’m not morally opposed to Darth Vader or anything. Just…never got around to it.”

  Jimmy shrugs his massive sexy shoulders. He’s in a navy-blue thermal Henley and a gray Bears hoodie zipped halfway up. I’m pretty sure I can smell Bounce fabric softener tangled up with the Ivory soap smell. It’s hard to tell through the hickory smoke. It’ll require further up-close investigation. I’m definitely on board with that.

  “Fair enough,” he says. “I guess it’s possible to not have seen Star Wars. Maybe? Did you grow up in Amish country?”

  My giggle comes right from the depths of my stomach. “I grew up mostly in Vermont. My aunt was an apiarist.”

  I feel like a jerk immediately. He probably thinks I’m quizzing him on his vocabulary…

  “Holy shit. Bees?”

  And the crowd goes wild again!

  “So many bees. We didn’t have cable, but I can talk your ear off about honey.”

  He slides his lower jaw off to one side and looks me up and down. “Honey, huh?”

  I snatch up my beer and take a gulp.

  He grins. “It’s okay. I see your lack of Star Wars and I’ll raise you. I’ve never seen The Princess Bride.”

  “Well, that’s ridiculous. Even we had that one on VHS. Auntie Cheryl said it was a feminist film. She feels like Buttercup was inspired by Gertrude Stein.”

  He snickers into his beer. Did he just laugh at a second-wave feminist reference? I might love him already.

  It’s then that Sweet Uncle Earl himself comes over with a basket of steaming potato skins and shakes Jimmy’s hand. I’m not at all sure why they all love him so much, but if it means free potato skins, then I’m definitely down. They give each other that manly arm-to-arm handshake that I find incredibly sexy, but then Sweet Uncle Earl says something about the game and I tune out.

  As quickly as I can, I reply to Bridget:

  Busy. At dinner. Ribs!

  Without me?

  That’s it. Friendship over.

  I'll file the divorce paperwork via Legal Zoom, I guess.

  Sorry!

  The password is b3stfriends4ever

  K.

  Who are you with?

  Is he cute?

  Will you just stop?

  It’s Movember. You know what that means…

  Yes. I know what that means. I live with her. I know she has a thing for facial hair. A thing verging on a fetish.

  He is very cute

  But doesn’t have a moist achy

  Moist ache

  MOUSTACHE

  Did you learn to read in Britain?

  Moist ache LOLZ

  Mustache. It’s mustache.

  “Moist ache” tickles me so much that I’m almost telling him about it before I remember to think first, talk second. Moist Ache. It might be a little too m
uch too soon. Unless it’s to do with brownies, people are weird about the word “moist” and I’m not sure that he needs to know he’s gotten himself a nickname already.

  It’s okay. We’re here binge-watching Stranger Things.

  She is the worst best friend ever.

  Good thing I have Legal Zoom on my phone.

  LOL.

  Be careful. Roads are fucking awful.

  Have fun with Moist Ache <3

  When I look up from the messages, I see Sweet Uncle Earl is gone and Jimmy is watching me. Either the space heater in the corner has seriously malfunctioned or I am blushing uncontrollably. I realize I must have been smiling like a lunatic because right now my cheeks burn. I drop my smile, put my phone into my bag, and reach for my beer. I take a long thirsty gulp. He shakes his head like he can’t believe me, and again I feel the heat in my cheeks. When I put down my glass, now—not surprisingly—about half full, I say, “What do you do for a living?” I can feel some foam on my lips and I quickly lick it off.

  Again, he gives me that weird look. He glances over at a television behind the bar, which is showing some football clips. A guy with the ball gets hit really hard by some other player in a different colored shirt. The headline says: “WILL FALCONI HAVE ANOTHER SACKTACULAR?”

  There’s a long pause as he looks from the screen to me and back again, so I take a potato skin from the basket and cut it into two pieces. For someone so sexy, he’s a little bit awkward with me, and I like that. It’s really very endearing.