by Sara Ney
“Nah, I’m sending Wallace. He’s bored and looking for something to do.” He shoots me a glance from where he’s planted on the sofa. Throws me the peace sign to let me know he’s down with whatever.
A few of my friends laugh. “You’re not worried he’s going to steal this girl out from under you?”
Steal her out from under me? “Under me? When was I on top of her?”
They laugh again. “When doesn’t Wallace chase after someone? She could have a bag over her head and he’d find her attractive.”
Brownbagger—someone called me that once, a girl I went out with on a blind date. She got piss ass drunk then slurred the insult at me when I put her in a cab at the end of the evening and sent her home. Alone.
I force a grin, feel it tugging at my cheeks in the most unnatural way.
“Whoa, watch it or your face is gonna crack,” Anderson jests, elbowing me in the ribs and shoving me aside to gain better access to the cheese and crackers. “Let’s get this show on the road, yeah? Keely wants me home in an hour.”
An hour? We won’t get shit done in an hour and the fact that his wife won’t let him stay is beyond fucked up.
“So pussy whipped,” Landon Johnson says, shaking his head. “Okay boys, you heard him—let’s get this show on the road. Wallace? Get the game on son. Let’s see what we’re up against this season.”
2
Miranda
Why am I so nervous?
I shouldn’t be—I don’t even know this person. For all I know, he’s some creepy pervert whose opinion of me I don’t care about at all.
Twenty-five thousand dollars, cash.
I’ve never had that kind of money in my possession before! Will the bank even take it when I try to deposit it? What if they think I robbed a bank? What if they think I’m a drug dealer? Who carries around that kind of money?
Cashier’s check, maybe?
He didn’t say that, though; he specifically said cash. Cold, hard cash.
My palms sweat as I pull my car into the police station, plenty of spots open. I’m right on time, not early and not late. I let my car idle while I wait, looking around for a vehicle that doesn’t belong to the police, one that’s not a squad car.
A minute ticks by, then another, a knot forming in my stomach, the baseball card tucked safely in my purse. Okay, so maybe not so safe—anyone could rob me blind, could steal my purse along with my money and the baseball card.
A cop in a dark navy uniform steps out of the brick building onto the pavement, strides to an unmarked sedan. The only identifying features are the grill on the front and the antenna on the roof.
He doesn’t see me sitting in my car, the same beat-up Tahoe that was passed down from my parents when I turned sixteen. This truck has more miles on it than my college roommate, who racked up notches on her bedpost faster than any frat dude.
I’m woolgathering about school when a sleek, black Beemer rolls into the lot. It’s not the kind you drive off the sales floor—it’s the kind you order and have shipped from overseas, with all the custom bells and whistles. The kind of Beemer that costs more than a house.
I know this because my cousin’s fiancé is obsessed with sports cars and he drags her to the annual auto show. She drags me along, so I can be miserable, too, and it always takes the entire weekend because God forbid the man is satisfied walking through once.
My eyes track the shiny sports car as it slowly creeps through the parking lot, windows tinted a reflective gunmetal gray. The whole visual is creepy and intimidating at the same time.
This is a guy who can afford forking over twenty-five grand—unless he’s one of those men who are all flash and no cash. All show and no dough…
Okay, so I don’t feel so guilty now. It’s not my problem how he chooses to spend his money.
I can’t even see through the windshield, but I know the second he spots me. Stops his car directly in front of mine, blocking me in—although logically, I know that’s not at all what he’s doing. Not technically, though I couldn’t pull my car out if I wanted to.
My heartbeat accelerates and I text Claire, my best friend: If you don’t hear from me in 5 minutes, call the police.
Claire: Are you there meeting the guy for the baseball card?
Me: Yes.
Claire: Okay—where are you so I know where to send the police?
Me: The police station.
Claire: I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.
Me: [sends a photograph of the guy’s car and the police station behind it]
Claire: Yeah, so if he tries to murder you, try screaming really loud.
Me: Ha ha, I’m glad you think this is funny. Oh shit—he’s getting out of his car!
The glossy black door opens slowly and one foot steps onto the pavement. Expensive sneaker, black track pants. One hand grasping the top of the door and within seconds, a head of black hair emerges from behind the smoke screen first.
Tan skin. Full lips.
What the actual…
Holy. Shit.
Who is this guy? He looks like a male model, big, buff, and so damn hot.
My phone pings again, Claire wanting a status update.
Claire: Are you still alive? Text me when you get this.
Me: Yeah yeah, hold on, I’m getting out of my car.
I slide my sunglasses on—not because it’s bright outside, but so I can continue gawking at this male specimen from behind their protective lenses. Where I come from (approximately 40 miles north of here), they don’t make men like this. I’m from a small town that produces construction workers, IT guys, and dudes who work for their families—not stud muffins who drive $100,000 sports cars and look as if they just stepped off the cover of GQ or Fitness Magazine. I wouldn’t know what to do with a man like this, but I sure don’t mind looking at him.
Since I can’t sit here forever, I pull back on the door handle. Lean across the center console and riffle through my purse for the baseball card, which has inconveniently slipped to the bottom.
Shit, where is it?
My fingers fumble, tips finally making contact with that smooth box. Grasp it and slip it into the pocket of my jeans as one of my feet hits the ground. Then the other, until I’m standing next to my truck, blushing.
Thank God he can’t see my eyes.
He’s tall—at least a foot above my five three—and wide, like a Mack truck. Not a bodybuilder, but someone who spends the majority of his time working out. Longer hair. Dark brown eyes. Chiseled jaw and cheekbones, covered in dark stubble.
No, Miranda. No.
Don’t you dare flirt. Do not you dare flirt.
The Goliath clears his throat.
“You Miranda?” The voice matches the stature, deep and masculine and daunting. If I heard it in a dark alley, I’d piss myself.
“Yeah—and y-you’re…” HOT. So hot. The kind of hot that makes angels fall from grace.
“Here for the card,” he answers, not confirming his name is Buzz like he said in his text, holding out his mammoth paw.
I glance down at it. Calloused. Rough. A contradiction for such a pretty man. He comes off more as the type who manscapes, spas, and manicures on the regular. His hands tell a different story or maybe it’s from all the gym time.
His car idles behind him.
“Let’s see the cash,” I demand, so unlike myself. Suddenly, I feel like I’m in a gangster movie, doing shady shit. I glance around, paranoia setting in. Shit, we’re probably being filmed. What if I’m being set up in a sting operation?
Don’t be stupid, Miranda—it’s not illegal to sell baseball paraphernalia.
Is it?
He leans into the Beemer and produces a large manila envelope; it’s fat and full, bursting at the seams. Holy shit, that is what being flush with cash looks like.
“Do you want to count this?” he asks, mouth set in a cocky line. An arrogant line. Smug, almost, as if he knows I’m not going to actually count the cash,
in broad daylight, in the parking lot of the cop shop. “It’s in stacks of one thousand.”
Stacks of one thousand…right. He sounds so casual, but now that I’ve gotten a good look at him, I surmise he probably spends this kind of money at the clubs at night. A grand on a bottle of champagne in the VIP section. Bottle service and primo seating I would know nothing about if it wasn’t in the movies.
I swallow the lump in my throat, pretending to be calm. “Okay.”
He holds the envelope steady on his palm, as if presenting me with an hors d’oeuvre tray and expecting me to select an appetizer, balancing it steady. Waiting.
Knowing damn well I’m afraid to touch it.
“It won’t bite,” he says with a wolfish grin. “Although I might.”
I shoot him a look meant to wipe that egotistical look from his face, but it doesn’t work. Only makes the idiot’s grin widen.
So annoying.
So confusing.
Gingerly, my thumb and index finger pluck the envelope from his hand and he watches as I slowly peel back the flap to peer inside.
I’m flush with cash, and I want to shout I’m rich! at the top of my lungs. In the parking lot. Of the police station. At four in the afternoon.
Get a grip, Miranda—this is not yours to spend on a whim. It is going straight to the bank. I nod emphatically to myself.
“Now let’s see the merchandise,” the guy says.
I pull the card from the recesses of my back pocket, and he takes it. Puts it in his pocket.
“You’re not even going to look at it?” My eyes damn near bug out of my skull—who buys something like this and doesn’t bother to examine it?
Rich, spoiled dudes, that’s who.
“Sure.” He pulls it out and looks at it. Slides it back into his pocket. “There. Happy?”
Uh…not really, but whatever—not my problem if he gets home and finds a flaw. “No returns,” I inform him, crossing my arms.
He crosses his as well, muscles bulging beneath the thin fabric of his black athletic t-shirt.
I tilt my head and study him again. There is a small scar on his square jaw and an indent in his stubble where a dimple creases his cheek. His thick brows look recently waxed—and come to think of it, his arms look waxed, too.
I cannot with this guy.
I have a few guy friends who are vain, but none come close to the man standing in front of me.
“Well, nice doing business with you…” My sentence trails off as I wait for him to confirm he’s Buzz. I mean, yes, we already made the exchange and I have my money, but still.
“Baseman.” He says it like BASE-man, different than the usual pronunciation. His large, gruff hand shoots out for a shake—one I do not take.
I cock my head incredulously. “Your mother named you Baseman?”
“It’s a nickname, dollface. Calm your ti—” He stops himself from telling me to Calm my tits. “Calm yourself.”
Wow. Classy.
“Doing anything tonight? Beer? Wine?” he wants to know. “Blowing me?”
God no, gross—he did not just proposition me to blow him, did he? Did I hear him right? Who the hell does this douche think he is?
“What did you just say to me?” The tone of my voice is scathing, the kind my mom would use when I popped off to her thinking she couldn’t hear me and she wanted me to know she knew I’d told her off.
“I said beer, wine, or me?”
Liar! That is not what he said!
“I’m working tonight, so some other lady will have to do the honors.” I turn my back and start for the car, this whole transaction making me want to take a scalding shower and cleanse myself.
I cannot wait to text Claire about this.
Shit—Claire! It’s been way longer than five minutes and she’s probably assuming I’ve been robbed. Or killed.
“Working? At night?” He’s speaking to my back now. “What do you do work at Target?”
I squint back at him. He knows I don’t have a job; I told him why I need this money when we were texting and that I’m starting my own business—not that he’s giving off an ‘I’m a great listener’ vibe. Quite the contrary now that I’ve met him in person.
What. A. Dick.
“Peace out.” I flip him the universal sign for peace, hopping up into my Tahoe. “Now move your damn car.”
“I just don’t understand the whole thing—it was so weird,” I’m telling Claire from my living room floor, sitting cross-legged as I sift through Grandpa’s box, stacking the remainder of his cards on my carpet.
My friend is in the process of making dinner at her place and has her phone resting on her countertop as we video call, so putting me at eye level with the frying pan on her stove as she steams vegetables and boils noodles.
Meanwhile, I’m sorting baseball cards so I can sell the rest to Buzz—or Baseman, whichever godawful name he wants to go by—though the last thing I want to do is see him again. Ugh, he was pervy and rude, but I’m going to have to suck it up since I know he’s a willing buyer.
And has the money.
“How was it weird? Was he old and creepy?”
“Not old, just creepy. Young and super hot.” Okay, so maybe perverted isn’t the right way to describe him. I try again. “You know those guys on the football team in college who walked around like they were God’s gift to women? That was this guy.”
Claire makes a yuck sound. “Ugh, I couldn’t stand the student athletes. Remember how they used to stroll through the cafeteria? Like what were they even doing in our cafeteria—don’t they have one of their own?”
“Showboating, that’s what they were doing, strutting like peacocks, and that’s what this guy was doing. I’m surprised he didn’t ‘baseman’ his muscles at me, he was so vain.”
Baseman—what an accurate description of him. I’m sure that womanizer gets to first, second, and all the way to home on the first date. What a horrid nickname.
Ew.
My phone is propped on my coffee table so I can see it as I work. “I honestly almost expected him to give me his autograph.” I glance up to find her watching me through the phone. “He hit on me…I think?”
She pauses, wooden spoon hovering above her silver cooking pot. “How do you not know if he was hitting on you?”
“He asked what I was doing later. Then he goes, ‘Beer, wine—or me.’” I feign a gag, fake vomiting theatrically.
“Um, that’s gross.”
“I know! I can’t believe guys still say shit like that, as if there weren’t a thousand better ways to ask someone out—not that that’s what he was doing. It sounded more like a proposition.”
“Yeah, a proposition for you to do all the work. He probably thought you’d suck his dick if he asked.”
“I’m sure he’ll have no problems finding a replacement set of lips.” I laugh.
Claire snorts. “Jesus Miranda!”
My shoulders shrug up and down. “What? It’s true!”
Also true: men aren’t the only ones who are perverts. I think they’d be surprised to find out that women—especially when surrounded by other women—talk dirty about sex just as often, in just as vulgar of terms as they do.
It can be our dirty little secret, I muse to myself, smiling as I put the cards into three little stacks in order of value, most to least.
“What else are you gonna do tonight?” my best friend asks. “Do you want to go out or anything? Monica texted and they’re all going for dinner at The Grainery.”
I shake my head. “I can’t. I have to figure all this out then give that guy a call. I just don’t know about selling him the entire collection—he was such a sleaze.”
A hot sleaze, but a sleaze nonetheless.
I hope he’s not an ass on the phone like he was today. The whole thing was too…contradictory. Honestly, I thought we’d really hit it off and have more in common. I thought our banter when we texted was great. Fun.
I enjoyed it.
&n
bsp; Keep it business, Miranda, and you won’t get hurt…
“You’d really consider not selling him the cards because he was a twatwaffle?”
“Yeah, I really would. These were my grandfather’s cards—I want them in good hands.”
“I know, but you need that money.”
True, but… “I have to have some standards, okay? It would be like selling my soul to the devil and I don’t think it would be worth it.”
“Don’t be hasty girl. Give it some thought.”
“I will. Promise.”
“Okay then, switching gears—what about this weekend?” Claire tries again, determined to get me out of my apartment—the one I could barely afford until today, until that $25,000 bank deposit. That will help with the rent, and the security deposits for the office space I have my eye on, some furniture…
I shiver, excited. A celebratory night out would be magic and I could use some right about now.
“Yeah, maybe I’ll come out this weekend.”
“Yay! It’s been forever. And Gretchen’s boyfriend has this new place he wants to try out—you need a password to get in.”
“That doesn’t sound the least bit out of our league.” Or above our paygrade.
“When you’re pretty, you don’t pay,” she says, grinning confidently, her black hair swept back from her beautiful, flawless face.
My eyes roll to the back of my head. “That’s easy for you to say—you’re gorgeous.”
Her eyes roll, too. “Give me a break—you’re gorgeous too. You just feel dumpy because you’ve been living in sweatpants like you’re quarantined. Slap some makeup on and you’ll feel like a queen Mama. I pinky promise.”
Claire is right—I have been living in leisurewear. In my defense, I’ve been working my ass off to get things off the ground with my business which I still cannot believe I’m doing.
With the help of no one.
I have a few mentors, but not a single soul from my family has ever worked for themselves. I’m the first college graduate and the first to start my own company.
“Alright, I’ll let you drag me out on Saturday.” In my hand is the Jenkins card. I tap it on the coffee table. “Now let me get back to figuring this shit out—Mama’s got bills to pay.”
