Muffin Top

by Avery Flynn

  Now that was a situation he could do something about, so he did. He swiped the stack from her arms.

  “Here, let me,” he said. “I need to get a couple of beers anyway, so we’re going in the same direction.”

  Shannon gave him a look like she didn’t quite believe him, but in the end just strutted down the hall and into the main bar area. Frankie followed, placing the towels on the end of the bar for her.

  Marino’s had amazing bartenders and the worst clientele in Waterbury. Why? Because it was filled with cops, and the police department and the fire department had a centuries-deep rivalry. His brother Ford was one of the boys in blue, and Frankie would admit quietly, to himself, in a location where there was no way another human being could overhear him, that not all of the men and women on the force were horrible (that was as far as he could go and keep his firefighter card).

  “So,” Shannon said as she pulled two Buds from the tap. “What’s going on with you and Lucy?”

  “A lot, I hope.” If he could manage not to fuck it up.

  Of course, he had to get Lucy on board with going public with him, too. Now that part grated on his nerves. He knew how other people saw him. Hell, he’d spent years encouraging everyone to see him as just the neighborhood fuck buddy. But with Lucy, he hoped for more. He hoped she’d see him as more than that—she’d see him as a forever kind of guy.

  “So, it’s finally happened, huh?” she asked, setting the beers down on the bar. “I always liked her. Plus she tips great.”

  “I owe it all to you, really.”

  “Oh yeah, how’s that?”

  “If we hadn’t had that little chat, what’s going on with me and Lucy wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Well it took you long enough and enough women to figure it out.”

  “I guess I was slow.”

  “Aren’t guys always?”

  “Hey, we’re not all idiots.”

  “Just you. And hopefully not the new owner.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Mr. Marino sold the bar.”

  “To who?”

  “No one knows. Hopefully not a total asshole.”

  Frankie held up his bottle. “Here’s to hoping.”

  She clicked his bottle with her glass of water.

  “So, it’s finally happened, eh Hartigan?” asked an asshole on the barstool, his mouth twisted into what was probably as close as he got to having a genuine smile. “You ran through all the nice ass in this town and now you’re on to second-tier talent.”

  Frankie was going to wear the guy’s face like a glove. “Shut up.”

  He straightened to his full height and took a step toward the jackass, his hands curled into fists, but Shannon reached out with the fast reflexes of an experienced bartender and put a hand on Frankie’s forearm.

  “He’s drunk and not worth it,” she said.

  At the moment, smashing the asshole’s face seemed very worth whatever would happen next. Still, he played it out in his head as if he were about to go into a burning building instead of starting a bar fight. He’d punch this piece of shit, the other cops hanging around the bar would join the fun, and his brothers would come running because of the noise. The whole thing would end with a wrecked bar, the need for serious bail money, and Shannon out of a job for letting the whole thing go down.

  Fuck.

  Sometimes life really did suck rotten cop balls.

  He shook out his hands and relaxed his shoulders. Shannon released a deep breath and gave him a thank-you nod.

  “Hope she’s as wild in bed,” the jerk said with a knowing wink aimed at Frankie. “You know what they say about fat chicks—they’re demons in the sheets because they have to really work it to keep a guy’s attention. But hey, if you want to keep her a secret and not let your family out there in the beer garden know, I totally understand. Sometimes a man just needs to get his dick wet, even if the landing spot isn’t what they really want.”

  Fury snapped, crackled, and exploded like someone had pumped a tanker truck full of oxygen into an enclosed blaze. “What I’m doing with Lucy is none of you or anyone else’s fucking business,” he said, practically nose to nose with the cop. The words flew out of his mouth loud enough for most if not all of the people in the bar to swing their heads around to see what the hell was going on at the bar.

  Frankie could imagine what they were seeing, but he didn’t give a fuck. All he could do was concentrate 99 percent of his effort on not killing the man too stupid to know when to shut his piehole.

  “Frankie.” Shannon’s voice penetrated the red-tinged fog blocking out everything else, snagging his attention.

  But when he looked at the bartender, she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking behind him. He glanced back, and his gut collapsed in on itself.

  Lucy stood at the end of the bar, her face white with fury. It wasn’t aimed at the two asshole cops, though. She was looking right at him as if she was about to pick up a flamethrower and charbroil his ass into ashes.

  …

  Lucy couldn’t breathe. Her lungs stopped functioning. Her brain went on the fritz. Her whole body was hot and cold at the same time, and the only sound she could hear was the rush of blood in her ears.

  Certain words screamed louder than others in her head.

  Sex.

  Wild.

  And she’d thought she wouldn’t have to deal with that whole fat-chicks-are-crazier-in-bed bullshit with Frankie. But maybe he’d just been better at hiding it than some of the others. God knew he’d been good enough at hiding her. When had they ever gone out in public since they’d gotten back? Even here at the party, he’d made sure no one could see them when he kissed her. She’d been waiting for it to all go to shit without realizing that it already had.

  Forget pity fuck. She was his secret fuck.

  Frankie turned to her. “Lucy—”

  She glanced around, her stomach twisting into knots at the idea that the whole bar was hanging on their every word, watching the fat chick get humiliated. It was bad enough this was happening to her at her friend’s engagement party. To be the butt of an entire bar’s joke would be too much.

  “Which part was so wild that made it worth it even though it was me?” she asked, so pissed at herself for that nugget of hope that had somehow grown into a mountain that she was shaking. So she fell back into her most familiar defensive posture. She attacked. “Sex under the stars on the floating deck? Maybe the road head? Or there was the time at the hotel that ended with us getting calls of bravo from the room next door? Which one of those so-called crazy sexcapades made it into your big-girls-will-let-you-do-anything category? Or is it that all of the many, many women you fucked before me were just that boring in bed?”

  The color went out of his face. “It’s not about that.”

  He reached for her, but she took a step back to avoid his touch. If he made contact, she’d break down completely, and she’d be damned if she did that. Not here. Not in front of everyone. Instead, she’d battle and fight to prove they hadn’t gotten to her. They never would.

  “Really, then what is it about?” she asked, her voice starting to shake a little as emotion bled through. “How you were so hard up during your sex break that even someone like me started looking good?”

  Frankie froze. Then a flush of angry red rushed up from his shirt collar. “What the hell, Lucy. You know that’s not the case.”

  “And that’s why we always met at my apartment then, right? That’s why we never left it?”

  “I didn’t want to scare you off. I wanted to prove to you that I was different.” He took a step forward, reaching for her.

  She waved his attempt off. “Oh yeah, the no-sex pledge. How did that go for you? How long did you make it? Almost a week? Wow. You really are different now.”

  “That’s a really shitty thing to say.” His voice was carefully neutral, as if he was trying to hold onto whatever sense of control he still had of his temper. “Yo
u know it was about more than that.”

  Well, it was too late for her. Her fury was on a roll now. Like an avalanche, there was nothing that was going to stop it. All she wanted to do was to make him hurt as much as she did right now.

  “Don’t worry, Junior. You’re not turning into your dad. You’re so fucking scared of taking a real risk that you’re spending your life surrounded by people but without making a commitment to anyone. It’s fascinating, really. You’re so petrified of being alone, but you can’t commit, either. But you’ve got them all fooled, don’t you? Everybody loves Frankie Hartigan, it’s just important not to fall in love with him.”

  He flinched as if she’d just delivered a solid punch before straightening to his full height and narrowing his eyes as he glared at her. “You sure didn’t seem to be complaining when you were coming all over my dick.”

  “Don’t turn this around on me,” she said, jamming a finger into his chest. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Sure it’s not. You’re just walking around with all of your emotional baggage waiting for me to fuck you over like your mom did your dad,” he said, his voice harsh and low. “You said you were suspicious of actual love, but it’s not that. You’re scared shitless.”

  The truth of his words slammed into her, stealing her breath, but not for long. “Oh, that’s rich coming from someone who barely said five words to me before a week and a half ago,” she said, knowing she sounded like some haughty bitch who got paid to make grown men feel like children, but not giving two shits. “You don’t even know me.”

  “That’s shit,” he snarled back, his control obviously ripped to shreds. “I know you better than you think because you’re just like me.”

  She narrowed her eyes and gutted him with a glare. “You know what? There are a million men out there who have mansplained everything from my weight to my food choices to my audacity to wear clothes that show off all eleventy billion of my curves, but I’ve never had one who mansplained my own emotions.”

  “Maybe it’s past time someone did,” he said, his volume spiking, “because you’ve been lying to yourself about them for long enough that you believe your own bullshit.”

  That was crap. She practiced brutal self-honesty—about her size, her personality, her skills, her weaknesses, her ambitions, her accomplishments. Everything. She would never lie to herself about something so important. She wouldn’t.

  Oh really?

  She shoved that quiet voice in her head back down and faced the man she’d been stupid enough to fall in love with. See? Brutal self-honesty.

  “Fuck you, Frankie Hartigan.” Her voice broke on his name, her eyes filling with tears.

  …

  And that’s what broke him. Not the words. Not the things she must have been thinking about him all along. Not the pain tearing him up inside. What got to him was that he’d made her cry. He’d hurt the one woman he should have protected with everything he had.

  He’d failed her.

  He’d failed them.

  Desperate to roll back from the edge they were rushing over, he reached out again, but she avoided his touch. “Lucy.”

  “Just stop.” She held up a hand, warning him off as she took a step back so she was outside of arm’s reach. Then she took a deep breath, letting it out in one slow exhale that seemed to bring her back from the height of her anger. “This wasn’t going to work out back here in Waterbury. Everything that happened in Antioch was that false connection that happens sometimes on vacation when you are with people under unusual circumstances and you forge a bond off of that. It doesn’t last. It’s not real. I knew it. Deep down, I’m sure you knew it, too. There is too much history for you and skewed expectations for me. I don’t have the energy for it when we both know it’s not going to work out.”

  Jagged edges, that’s all he was on the inside, and there was nothing left that he could say. She’d made up her mind. She’d made it up before they’d even left Antioch, and he’d been too fucking thickheaded to realize it. He’d thought they could be different together. So, he stood there and watched Lucy walk away because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  He had no clue how long he’d stood there, staring at the door leading out to the beer garden, before his sister Fallon came storming over.

  “What in the hell was that all about?” she asked, her voice low and angry. “What did you do?”

  He looked at his sister and tried to find the words to explain how he’d epically fucked up—just like their dad had. All this time he’d kept his emotional distance from the women in his life, and it hadn’t made a difference in how things worked out. History was forever repeating itself, with the sins of the fathers passing down to their sons.

  What had he done?

  “Not enough,” he said.

  And losing Lucy was his punishment for that.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sitting in The Pink Narwhal when it was packed to the gills for ladies’ night, Lucy turned to her companion and shared a real world truth.

  “You know, there are few times in a woman’s life when having female friends is as important as when you’re contemplating murder.”

  Zach Blackburn just sat there like a silent hockey Yoda and lifted one eyebrow.

  Of course he did—because he was a man, and they did not know the magic answer to not-really-serious homicidal ideas post-breakup.

  Could it be a breakup if we’d never really been together? Oh, that was even more depressing.

  However, every woman in the world would know that the proper response to kinda-sorta plotting the demise of a man who did someone wrong was not silence, but to share in a low, conspiratorial voice, “I have a shovel.” That was what women did for each other. They were ride or die. Tend and defend. They weren’t silent hulks of muscle and wry glances who drank whiskey neat.

  When the need for a bar buddy arose, though, her choices were vastly limited in this situation.

  “But I can’t call my girls because Gina is marrying into that damn Hartigan family, Fallon is already a member of it, and poor sweet Tess shouldn’t be stuck in the middle trying to pick between friends.”

  Another lifted eyebrow—this time it was the one with the metal bar through it—and another drink of whiskey before Zach finally said something. “I’m so glad that you, as the woman who recently chewed my ass out for punching a guy who literally hocked a loogie in my face for costing the team a trip to the playoffs, have begun to see the beauty of a little violence.”

  See? A girlfriend would never have thrown Lucy’s hypocrisy back in her face. Well, a really good friend would, but she’d pick the right moment after all the initial I-am-woman-watch-me-bury-him-in-an-anthill-naked feelings had abated. Tactical error on Zach’s part.

  “Oh boo-hoo,” she grumbled. “Your asshole insulted your pride. My asshole broke my heart.” She took a long drink of her third (fourth?) vodka and Mountain Dew, relishing the burn as it went down. “Although the whole spitting phlegm thing is pretty gross. And unhygienic. Why are men so nasty?”

  He laughed. That was his tell. The first time she heard the soft rumble, she knew she had a tatted, pierced, growling grizzly bear with a Pooh Bear center on her hands, and she knew she could work with him.

  “That is a longer conversation than I think you’re going to stay conscious for if you keep going at that rate,” he said.

  “What?” she squawked at a loud enough volume level to turn heads and make her realize that she just may have had more than she’d thought. “I’m just keeping pace with you.”

  “One, as an athlete who hits the gym hard every single day, my body can take five of these in a row.”

  Shit. Five? Also, did he just break out the metabolism thing? With her? He had. Asshole.

  “Fuck you.”

  He chuckled at her. “Oh, ow. If I had feelings, that would hurt.” He sipped his whiskey. “Two, don’t worry, we haven’t had five drinks. I’m on my second and you’re on you
r third. Yes, I could see you trying to figure it out because your lips were moving when you were counting.”

  Of all the signs in the world that she should go home now, being told by her most troublesome client that she was drunk in public—not that he used exactly those words—was pretty much the equivalent of a massive neon sign. Instead of heading out, she held up her hand and waved the bartender back over.

  Before the guy could make his way over, though, he made eye contact with Zach, who did some kind of silent man-to-man mind-meld thing. The bartender turned his gaze to Lucy, shrugged, and turned in the other direction.

  She shot back the rest of her drink and set the glass on the bar before turning to the man she knew was trying to help, but damn she was tired of men thinking they knew what was best for her, beginning with her dad thinking that calling his overweight daughter Muffin Top was okay right up to the now, with Frankie spouting off about how she was the best sex to those assholes who only thought fat women were good for banging because they worked more for it. Way to feed right into the stereotype. How could she stay with a guy like that? It wasn’t that she was scared of putting herself out there, of ending up like her dad, mooning after someone who didn’t really want them but only saw them as a soft place to land when things got rough.

  Oh yeah, that doesn’t sound like you’re projecting on Frankie at all.

  Ignoring that little voice in her head that hadn’t shut up since she’d walked out of Marino’s two nights ago, she turned and glared at Zach. It was, after all, his fault that she couldn’t drown out the voice with another vodka and Mountain Dew. Men. They were the worst.

  “You know,” she said, giving him the glare that left the majority of her clients quiet and quaking. “The Post is right. You really are an asshole.”

  But, of course, he wasn’t just a regular client. He shrugged those big shoulders of his that only reminded her of Frankie and how he’d held that stupid birdbath bowl for close to an eternity all to help her win some stupid competition.