He laughed. “If you must know, I had a huge crush on her when we were young. But that’s done and dusted. She missed her chance.”
“What happened? She didn’t want to be spit roasted by you and your buddies? Shocker.”
“Something like that.”
“Wait, for real?”What a pervert!“I need the entire story immediately.”
“Do you promise to never breathe a word of this to anyone?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. So we grew up down the street from each other in a small town about 2 miles from here. As kids, we were inseparable. We rode our bikes to school together every morning. We spent our summer days playing outside and our summer nights hiding out in my treehouse. And when it got too cold, my mom would make us hot chocolate while we played with my Legos.”
“Well that’s adorable.”
“Yeah. It was, until high school started.”
“You got too cool for her?”
Cole downed the rest of his Slippery Meow in one big gulp. “Quite the opposite, actually. She joined the cheerleading squad. And instead of riding our bikes to school together, she startedgetting rides from the football players.” He turned to the bartender. “Another one, please.”
“So why didn’t you join the football team?”
“I would have been killed. I weighed like a buck twenty back then. All elbows and knees.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was.”
“There’s no way.” I just couldn’t picture it. It seemed impossible that such a hunk could have even been lanky and awkward. “I would have pegged you as the captain of the football team. Not some nerdy loser.”
“Whoa, slow your roll there. I never said anything about being a nerdy loser.”
“Weren’t you though?”
“Yeah, I guess I kinda was.”
“Please tell me you have a picture of that.”
“Of course.” He reached into his jacket pocket.
Oh my God, yes!I could not wait to see this photo.
But instead of pulling out a photo, all he pulled out was his middle finger.
I slapped his arm. “Hey!”
“Did you really expect me to be carrying around embarrassing childhood photos?”
Yes.Which I realized was ridiculous, so I said the first thing that popped into my head so he’d stop making fun of me. “When did you get hot?”Smooth.
“So you think I’m hot, huh?”
Shit!He’d caught me. “You’re okay.”
“Uh huh. Anyway, I got hot in prison. Getting picked up for knocking off that liquor store with Naked Bill turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.”
I put my drink down on the bar and stared at him. “Naked Bill?”
