Beauty and the Beefcake

by Pippa Grant

  She glares at him.

  He grins. “Take it out on me later.”

  Ambrosia eyes his junk and grins back. “Gonna cost you.”

  “I know.”

  Joey gags. Z and I have a stare-down over who’s driving.

  “Spiders,” I say.

  Z shudders, but he doesn’t move, except to clap me on the shoulder. “C’mon, man. Don’t make it worse. You know you shouldn’t be putting pressure on your foot right now.”

  “I grabbed you a half-dozen hard-boiled eggs from the breakfast bar,” Joey tells me. “And I brought a bag of chocolate mints.”

  Fucking cheaters.

  “Unwrap them before you give them to him,” Ambrosia tells her. She’s leaning in my car.

  I let Z have the wheel after giving him the death stare of don’t you dare fucking hurt my car.

  I don’t give two shits if he hurts my car, but I fucking hate being useless.

  Do like getting a man-hug from my twin though. Miss the fucker. He takes good care of me.

  Sniffer and The Bear meet us in front of the fancy apartment building near downtown, maybe a mile from Mink Arena where we should all be getting ready for morning skate, except the team’s not in town, so no morning skate. Sniffer nods once.

  Dude we’re looking for is still inside.

  We walk in—all six of us—and the doorman shits his pants.

  Not really.

  But that would’ve been fun.

  Instead, he blinks once, twice, and looks between me and Z. “Holy shit, the Brute and the Force,” he whispers.

  Fuck, I miss hanging with Z during hockey season.

  My twin grins and pulls out a black marker. The doorman offers his balding head, Z signs it, I add a scribble, we boost him up on our shoulders—even if it makes my ankle hurt like a son of a bitch—and Chase snaps our picture with the dude’s phone.

  “We’ll be out in ten,” Z tells him as he slaps a hundred in the guy’s hand.

  I grunt.

  The six of us traipse to the elevators and head for the third floor.

  At the dickhead’s door, I point my friends down the hall.

  This one’s mine. I can’t play hockey today, but I can fucking take care of Murphy’s sister like he asked me to.

  I knock once at the fancy wood door. Then twice.

  Before I have to knock a third time, the door swings open. “Wha—aat the fuck?”

  I lean into the little man’s space. He has a patchy beard, eyes like a weasel, and a nose like a bad pirate. Crooked without anything to show for it. He’s got some bulk to him, but not compared to me and Z.

  “Her stuff,” I growl. “Now.”

  He visibly gulps and tries to shut the door in my face.

  I lean closer, because it would take ten of him to move me, and I could hold this door open with one finger. “Her stuff,” I repeat.

  “You can’t be here.” Beads of sweat form on his forehead. “I’ll call security.”

  “Try it.” I left my crutch in the car, and I’m wishing I hadn’t. Fucking ankle is swelling once more. Shooting hot shards of glass up my calf. Heat’s building at my hairline again. Shouldn’t have picked up the doorman. “Last chance. Easy way. Now.”

  Z moves behind me. So does Chase. The three of us—always a team. Even the years we didn’t talk to Chase after he screwed Ambrosia, before they worked out their problems.

  I lean even further down, until I can smell last night’s vodka on the fucker’s breath. “Move.”

  He scrambles backward. I push in, my team behind me.

  If it weren’t for the damn ankle, I could grab a bag and do this all myself. Helped push a semi onto the side of the road once. Carrying boxes is easy work.

  Dude’s got a posh place. All black and gray and wood and marble with furniture that needs some springs broken. My ass is good for that. Broke a lot of chairs in my lifetime. Like that chair in Chase’s office. Took a glitter bomb up the butt for it too. Need to pay my sister back for that, since she put it there.

  “You can’t do this,” the dickweed says.

  “Not so good for business if word gets out that you’re a thief,” Chase says while he heads for a box under the window overlooking Reynolds Park. “Or a psychopath.”

  “You threatening me?”

  “Is it that obvious?” Z says.

  “We’ll try to be more subtle next time.” Joey goes straight for the bedroom. Guy eyes her like he thinks she’s the weak link. “Go on and try it, asshole,” she says. “I’ll pluck your nut hairs out one by one and stuff them up your nose until you’ve got a nut hair mustache.”

  Chick’s scary. I spent a week watching out for her baby sister. Little scared to breathe wrong the whole week.

  Good match for Z. She can handle him. He’s grinning like a loon over her threats.

  I back the dude into a corner while my friends reclaim Felicity’s stuff and some other shit he won’t miss.

  Chargers for his phone. Light bulb here or there. Remote to something. Lids to all the water bottles in his fridge. The spindles off his toilet paper holders. His Thursday and Saturday boxers.

  Yeah.

  Dude has day of the week boxers.

  We don’t leave until Joey finds Harold the puppet chilling in the freezer when she goes to grab some pizzas.

  And people think I’m crazy.

  “Be good to women,” I growl.

  “I’m calling the cops.”

  Hope he does.

  Z tips the doorman again on our way out. “We weren’t here,” he says.

  Like the dude’s not sporting our signatures.

  The doorman nods. “I didn’t see you.”

  Yeah. Not moving into this building when I leave Gammy’s house. Eventually.

  I like Gammy’s ghost.

  Felicity’s okay too.

  No hurry to move.

  13

  Felicity

  Guess what.

  You’re never going to guess.

  Really. It’s shocking.

  You ready?

  Ares is gone.

  You’re fainting in surprise, right? Who would’ve expected that of him?

  I take a Lyft to the tire place to grab my car, then drive myself to the police station over lunch, where I feel like a fool for confessing to the officer that I got involved—again—with a cray-cray guy who seemed nice and confident and together at first, and then got all possessive and domineering after I moved in with him and now randomly shows up at my house at odd hours and won’t let me go.

  The same officer took my report three years ago when something similar happened.

  Apparently I have a type.

  And that type is bad for me.

  I should go hang out at a library or something and find some nice quiet guy who likes to read and discuss the literary merits of Tolstoy and considers having two beers in a night a crazy, wild time.

  But I like guys who are strong and confident and successful. It’s coded in my DNA to want a big strong hunter Neanderthal. The siren call of their testosterone beckons to some primitive part of me. A handsome, ripped stranger offers to buy me a beer after my set at open mic night, and poof.

  There I go, getting on the crazy train again.

  I know there are men out there who can tick off all my boxes without being certifiable, but I haven’t found one yet.

  And no, I don’t want to talk about those telltale signs in my hoochie-coochie that my hormones are getting fired up for a certain overgrown hockey player who’s living at my Gammy’s house with his monkey.

  What woman wouldn’t be turned on by a guy who shovels soggy dick cookies for her though?

  Never mind.

  I just realized how weird that sounds. All of it.

  After I’m done at the police station, I call Melba. “Has Ares come back?”

  “Haven’t seen him,” she tells me. “You okay?”

  I rub my temples. “My head hurts. My heart hurts. And I want ice cre
am.”

  “When’s the last time you had ice cream?”

  “My twenty-first birthday.” I went full vegan about a week later after watching a documentary about cows while I was temporarily in a biomedical engineering degree program, and honestly, the idea of eating dairy sort of turns my stomach now. Not for the cows’ sakes anymore either. I don’t know that my body could handle the lactose. “I’m going to run home for lunch.”

  “Take your time, hon. Life happens.”

  I drive home and park out front, since it’s quicker and I need to get back to work. But parking in front means I have to I walk past the drying cookie crumbles that formerly made up Soggy Dick Cookie Mountain. I jiggle Gammy’s key in the lock, step inside, and promptly forget all about my internal debate over a black bean burger or a rice bowl for lunch.

  I gasp, and my eyes water.

  Because there’s a new mountain in my living room.

  It’s a modest mountain, but it’s my mountain.

  The caved-in boxes I rescued from behind a grocery store for my books. The reusable shopping bags I’d shoved my clothes in. More boxes I don’t recognize.

  My Chester Green Thrusters jersey is peeking out from one of the bags. It’s from Chester’s retirement year. Not replaceable.

  Ares is sleeping on the couch. He’s so tall, his legs dangle over the edge and almost touch the ground. He’s not in his boot, and I can see from here how swollen his ankle is.

  Part of me wants to shake him, because he should not have been on his foot for me.

  But he’s holding Harold the Grumpapotamus to his chest.

  He brought me Harold.

  Who the fuck cares about the jersey?

  Harold is home.

  I stifle the sob building in my chest and press my fingers into my eyeballs to stop the impending flood of tears. The couch creaks, and I open my eyes again.

  “Thank you,” I whisper to Ares.

  His eyes go wide. “No cry.” He leaps to his feet. Pain creases his face.

  “Oh, sit. Please.” I step to him, meaning to push him down, but when I get there, instead, I find myself wrapping my arms around his broad form, resting my cheek on his hard chest, and struggling to breathe through suppressing the tears. “Thank you,” I whisper again.

  He smells like chocolate fudge cupcakes. His T-shirt is warm and silky soft, and his heart thumps hard and fast under my ear. I should let go.

  But then he pats me softly with both hands, which are so large they cover most of my back. His arms are safe and strong but so, so gentle.

  He’s my own personal teddy bear.

  “No cry,” he says again.

  Which of course makes the tears burn harder.

  Yes, yes, I’m crying over a puppet. And possibly over my poor choices in boyfriends. And definitely over guilt that my poor choices mean this man is on his feet for me when he should be keeping his weight off his ankle.

  But now he’s rubbing his hands up and down my back, his heart settling into a rhythmic, soothing drumbeat, and this might be the best hug I’ve had in my entire life.

  I don’t want to let go.

  His fingers don’t slip any lower than my waist. He’s big enough that he could reach around me and cop a sideboob feel, but he doesn’t. No, instead, he strokes my spine—my whole entire back—with one hand while he moves the other to pet my hair.

  Sparks explode all over my scalp, and my breasts tingle. I’m gripping my hands together around his back, but I let go of myself and hesitantly rest my fingers and palms on the hard planes on either side of his spine.

  His body is as majestic as a mountain.

  And now that I’m this close, I can’t break the force holding me here.

  I’ve never been able to resist masculine perfection. And Ares—taller, stronger, broader—is the very epitome of masculinity.

  Right down to that firm bulge growing against my belly.

  He drops his hands and springs back, shoving Harold at me. “Talk.”

  My gaze grazes his crotch area, and yowza, that can’t all be real.

  Also, I need to not be thinking about his crotch. Or his crotch rocket. Of course it’s large. He’s large. That doesn’t mean he knows what to do with it.

  Or that I should be thinking about it.

  Or getting hot and horny over wondering about his crotch rocket landing in my lady field.

  I’m making ridiculous excuses to try to abate my curiosity, and I’m okay with this.

  He’s Nick’s teammate. Here to babysit me because I have terrible taste in men.

  I fumble through propping Harold into position and stare at my puppet. Harold scowls at me. Mostly because his big hippo jaw is built in a scowl with his nose turned up. His gray-purple skin is wrinkled, his eyes pale blue and creased at the edges, his dark hair clearly receding behind his cute hippo ears. Though don’t ever tell him I called them cute. He hates that.

  “Hey, Harold!” I say. “We missed you, buddy.”

  “I can’t believe I’m here,” I vent back at myself in my grumpapotamus voice. “I had that whole shithole to myself, and now I have to share this place with you and that weirdo cat and the stuffy goat who keeps fawning over her. And your Gammy’s ghost. Now there was a woman. She could’ve sliced Hitler’s skin off, that woman had such a sharp tongue. God, I miss her.”

  “Gammy wasn’t into bestiality, Harold.”

  “Whatever makes you sleep easier at night, Felicity.”

  The house creaks again.

  I steal a glance at Ares. A smile’s teasing his lips while he settles his foot onto Gammy’s coffee table, which also creaks under the weight.

  “Leave it, big guy,” I vent as Harold when Ares starts to lift his foot. “If that thing breaks, she might come back for a visit. Been too long since I got my wood waxed, and I’m totally into ghostiality.”

  “Were you watching the pay-per-view poltergeist channel again, Harold?”

  “Oh, yeah, Felicity. I ran up a huuuuuge-ass bill at that loser’s house. He’s gonna have to skip the extra shot of espresso in his coffee for a whole week thanks to me. High five, you cheerful pain in the ass.”

  I leave him hanging. “I think you’re looking for Lucy. She’s the cheerful one.”

  “Maybe when she’s got a hairball.”

  Ares snickers.

  “Go on, keep laughing,” Harold says to him. “You won’t be laughing when you meet Lucy. She’s annoying as fuck. Likes to paw through people’s underwear.”

  “She does not,” I say.

  “She’d go through his. Probably ask to see his tattoo too.”

  I’m making myself blush. When Harold gets going, he gets going. By which I mean when I get going, I make Harold keep going. It’s so easy to get on a roll and pretend that I’m not the one making the puppets talk, which means it’s easier to say things I wouldn’t normally say.

  I kinda have a thing about performing.

  Which might be why I got fired from that first job I had at a big accounting firm downtown. But that’s another story that led to my marketing degree, which also didn’t work out so well.

  For reasons.

  Completely unrelated to me performing.

  But directly related to an unfortunate situation involving a man. And a misunderstanding.

  And a video camera, a stuffed alligator, and a rubber hockey stick.

  But back to Gammy’s living room.

  I’ve never performed while Ares was watching me so closely. Yes, I made his monkey talk—his Loki monkey, not his penis monkey—but that wasn’t exactly a show for Ares. That was a show for six people at a dinner party.

  “Harold, I think you’ve been through quite an ordeal, and you should go take a rest,” I inform the puppet. “And I need to get back to the clinic.”

  “And take this guy who saved my tail out for dinner,” Harold says.

  I glance at Ares. He’s watching me as though there’s way more than a thank you dinner on his mind. He doesn’t st
rike me as the type to ask a woman to show her appreciation with a blow job, but he’s also not giving me the puppy dog, yeah, yeah, anything for food! look either.

  No, this one’s more complicated.

  It has some you’re my crazy-ass teammate’s sister in it.

  Some you talk to yourself with puppets sprinkled in.

  Maybe also some honey, you can’t afford to feed a big guy like me too, though that’s totally not fair because he has no idea what my finances look like but people always assume a twenty-seven year-old woman living in her grandmother’s house and working on a fifth degree is probably loaded with student debt, even though I’m actually quite comfortable for now thanks to that left-handed app I wrote for the three big smartphone operating systems, although I don’t know if Ares’s mind would drift into student debt territory.

  Also, now that he’s making me think of him as a big guy again, I’m remembering that swell of his cock against my stomach, and we’re back to this is a bad idea.

  “I was going out with the girls tonight”—I wasn’t, but they’ll run with it, they’re awesome—“and I’m sure they’d love it too if you could join us.”

  I don’t care how many people say Ares Berger doesn’t think about anything more than socks.

  There’s something going on up there in his head.

  Something way deeper than anyone would ever give him credit for.

  Possibly something profound.

  And I want to know what it is.

  14

  Ares

  Felicity, man.

  She hangs at the bunny bar.

  Didn’t expect that.

  Thought she was joking when she said we were going to Chester Green’s. Named after the Thrusters’ all-time great. There’s a Chester mannequin in an old-school Thrusters jersey next to the hostess stand. The walls are plastered with articles about the best moments in Thrusters history. Sports channels on every one of the dozen big-screen TVs hanging from the rafters, all showing hockey highlights from the whole NHL. And the bar itself is stuffed full of hockey-obsessed fans.

  From the former players to the weekend goaltenders to the bunnies.