So Good (An Alpha Dogs Novel)

by Nicola Rendell

  4

  Rosie

  The Anchor Nurse had been my choice, because even though it was a sort of charmless cross between a down-and-out Cheers and a very sketchy episode of Murder, She Wrote, it was cheap, it was dim enough to flatter, and the food came out as fast as if it were the chow line at the state prison. I mean, the closest I’d ever gotten to a prison was a mishap with Google Maps on my way to Portland—but I felt like it was a pretty good guess. As soon as you said, No pickles on that burger, boom! It was on the table. Sometimes with pickles, sometimes without, but still—awesome! But the speed of the service was a good thing not only because I was hungry, but also for strategic bad-date purposes. This date might be bad, might be good, but I had to hedge my bets. The last thing I wanted was to get stuck in a four-course meal at the Admiral’s Table with a guy who was one or all of the below, a list that I had carefully curated down to four deal-breaking points, all completely, 100% nonnegotiable:

  Some sort of investment banker who was “summering in Maine” and who wore loafers with his shorts.

  Some sort of real estate agent who was “summering in Maine” and who wore socks with his loafers.

  A man who picked his fingernails until they bled.

  A man who looked at my general uterus area and asked my age.

  Tonight’s date was named Jed, which was somehow hot in theory, when it was under a tiny low-res photo, but somehow less so in person standing out in the evening sun in the parking lot…mostly because he was wearing loafers with what looked like barely there socks, like I’d wear with a new pair of half-priced flats from Target. Uh-oh.

  He caught me considering his ladies socks and wiggled his toes. I thought maybe I heard his toe-knuckles crack. “Kinda gay, right?”

  I stared hard at him. I might have a new deal-breaker to add to my list. “Sorry?”

  “Fucking things give me blisters,” he said. “Gotta do what you gotta do.”

  Like buy flip-flops! “I guess.”

  He made a move to open the door for me, but then… Walked through it first.

  Oh, yay.

  Fletcher, who was behind the bar and owned the place, cleaned out a pint glass and slowly shook his head at me as if to say, This again?

  I pursed my lips and flashed my eyes to say, Stop busting my fanny. Fletcher turned his gum over in his mouth, and the glass squeaked.

  On television, one of the Red Sox stole home, and the crowd went wild. Fletcher didn’t even turn to look. He kept his eyes on me, shaking his head. I’d known Fletcher just as long as I’d known Max, but while Max was a huge part of my life, my heart and soul, Fletcher was more the big brother who heckled my questionable decisions like a fed-up longtime fan with season tickets on the third-base line. For chrissake, Rosie. For chrissake!

  He looked Jed up and down and locked in on the loafers. He paused his glass cleaning, closed his eyes, and raised his eyebrows. You can pick them. You sure can. “Table for two,” said Jed as he hunted-and-pecked for letters on his Blackberry.

  Fletcher flicked his finger at the Seat Yourself sign, but Jed didn’t notice, so I led him across the bar to the table by the window.

  Jed was slow on the follow-up, and I was already sitting on the booth side by the time he joined me. He put his Blackberry in his front shirt pocket and glanced around like he’d just been woken up from a dream. He sniffed hard. “Smells weird in here.”

  It wasn’t the Anchor Nurse that smelled weird, of course, but the thousands of angry crustaceans being processed right outside. I glanced out at the fishing boats moored to the docks. “Not from around here, then?”

  He shook his head. I thought maybe I saw some dandruff flake from his gelled hair. Then he looked at his chair with an undisguised horror and brushed off some nonexistent dust. He touched the table with his palms, like he was pretty sure it was going to be sticky. As he got Fletcher’s attention for a wet rag, presumably, I looked away—I don’t think I could be with a man who wanted clean tables at a dive bar—and that was when the door squeaked open.

  And in came Max. Only thing that was missing was the theme song from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

  He was cocky, brawny, and not at all what I needed right now. Also, why were his clothes all wet? What had he done? Slipped off the deck? He gave Fletcher a flick of his chin, effortlessly masculine, and they did that handshake thing where they half hugged over the bar. Lots of biceps, lots of thumping of fists on backs. So many burly muscles, so much rugged, tanned skin. I refocused on Jed, who looked like he might own stock in a company that specialized in SPF 100. In my periphery, though, I could still see Max. As he left the man hug, he looked over at me, looping his foot around a barstool and taking a seat at the corner spot, watching me all the time. I met his stare, and he actually did the two-fingered point at his eyes and then at me.

  Cocky bastard.

  This was a first. He’d often threatened to come with me, to “show up and make sure the fucker didn’t cross any lines with my Rosie,” but he’d never actually shown up. He’d never actually gone this far. But now here he was, a little sunburned, in his favorite old jeans, which were dripping. I pulled my phone from my purse, but I didn’t see any messages about why he’d be soaking wet at five o’clock on a Friday, which was a real bummer. Even if it had been because he slipped on his deck, he’d normally have told me about it right away. But not this time.

  Unless his phone got soaked! Had to be. He’d never intentionally keep me out of the loop.

  But even that lame excuse fell away as soon as he took his phone from his pocket.

  Suddenly I realized that while I’d been staring at Max, trying to assemble a reason for his wetness, Jed had been talking. I tuned in just in time to hear the words, “…summering in Maine.”

  Not this again. “Your profile said you were an entrepreneur.”

  “That’s right,” he answered, trying to do that man-chin-flick thing that Max did so well and which Jed did…so badly. “Half real estate, half investment banking.”

  I tried desperately to catch Fletcher’s eye, so we could order some drinks—hard cider cured all ills—but he was having a powwow with Max, and no sooner had they parted than Max glanced at me and winked, to say he’d taken charge of our drinks.

  I flared my nostrils in our universal signal of No.

  Max just laughed and took a few gulps of his beer. Yep.

  No, I could not be distracted by him. I would give Jed of the barely there ladies socks a fair shot. I would. I was getting too old to be picky. I’d shot all the fish in the barrel. I had to make chicken salad from chicken shit. All the adages combined, and that’s where I was. Making chicken salad from the dead fish in the barrel. I can do this.

  Which was when Jed leaned back in his chair, looked at my uterus, and asked, “How old did you say you are?”

  5

  Max

  Fletcher took the pitcher of margaritas over to the table where Rosie sat across from Loafers, and I did my fucking damnedest not to laugh out loud. I watched her in the reflection behind the liquor bottles and got a glimpse of this fucking killer scowl she’d never actually used on me before. I’d seen her use it for slow drivers and people who didn’t understand the express checkout at the grocery. For about two seconds, I felt like I’d pushed too hard. She was glaring at my back like I’d just unloaded forty items under the Twelve Items or Less Sign. But, c’mon. The guy was in loafers. His hair was gel-crisp. I couldn’t let her fight this war alone.

  Not anymore.

  I heard Fletcher make up some bullshit about Pitcher Fridays and that the first pitcher was on the house. Free booze in this bar made hell freezing over sound like a seasonal thing. Never free booze at the Nurse, never. Fletcher came back around the bar and went back to cleaning pint glasses. “Nail picker. Doesn’t stand a chance.”

  Again, I forced myself not to laugh. Fletcher turned up the volume on the TV above the back corner of the bar, and I focused in on the Sox as best I could. It wa
sn’t easy because I was more aware than ever of her presence and how it was making me feel. I could smell her perfume, and that got me thinking about her bedroom, and that got me thinking about her panties, and that got me thinking about her tattoo, and that got me so fucking…

  “You okay?” Fletcher asked.

  “Yep. Totally.” I slugged back the rest of my beer and tapped the bar like I would’ve asked for another card in poker.

  Fletcher put my dirty one in the rinsing sink and grabbed a fresh one off the shelf.

  “What the fuck did you do? Go swimming in your clothes?” Fletcher asked, pulling me another pint.

  “Rescued a Chihuahua, if you really wanna know.” Fletcher slowed the stream on the tap and started to smile. The thing about Fletcher was he was totally a dog guy. Fucker had been trying to get me to adopt a yellow Lab for as long as I could fucking remember, so if I were going to tell this story to anybody other than Rosie, it would definitely be him.

  “Fuck you,” he said. “You’re shitting me.” He let the head overflow and cleaned the side of the glass before putting it on my coaster.

  I raised one hand, scout’s honor. “From drowning. True story.”

  Fletcher shook his head in that way he’d done to me a million times before. “Knew it. I fucking knew that under there somewhere you had a heart.”

  Ballbusters. I was surrounded by them.

  It was a pop fly to right field, and though I pretended to be paying attention to the game, I was eavesdropping to see what kinda bullshit Loafers might be spinning. I was pretty sure I heard the words, hedge, fund, and regatta. “She’s not gonna make it to the seventh-inning stretch,” I muttered to Fletcher as I put my elbows on the bar. I had visions of her storming out of this place, and me following her, calming her down with a beer on the beach, and then we could go to back to her place where I could show her just exactly how much I…

  But before I could get too far into that one, I noticed Fletcher’s face change from a skeptical, serious, don’t-fuck-around-in-my-bar perma-scowl, to an openmouthed grin.

  A table clattered, screeching on the floor as someone pushed it aside. I spun around on my barstool, beer in hand, and for the second fucking time that day, the world went into a slow-mo Jackie Chan fight sequence. Rosie had both hands on her hips, and there was an angry blush in her cheeks. “Excuse me?”

  “What!” barked Loafers, lifting his arms and tipping back in his chair, like those assholes who sat in the back of every class in every school. “It’s just a question! Your profile says you’re thirty-four?” He actually pshawed. “Doubtful!”

  I heard Rosie bellow, “Listen, you asshole…”

  “My guess is thirty-nine. Forty, maybe.”

  The air rippled with her growl, and then she picked up the pitcher of margaritas and dumped it…

  Right.

  Over.

  His.

  Motherfucking.

  Head.

  If I hadn’t stopped her, I was sure she’d have kneed him in the nuts. It would’ve been awesome, but no way was I letting her wildcat herself right into an assault charge, hell no. Loafers had the look of a guy who had his lawyer on speed dial, top of his favorites. Probably even had a special ringer for him—“Back in the Saddle” or some shit. No fucking way was I letting her go headlong into her first bar brawl, even as truly epic as that would’ve been. So, damn near before the margaritas splashed to the floor, I’d scooped her up in my arms from behind, lifting her right off the ground, and feeling her body—every curve—as if for the very first time. Her hips, her stomach, everything. Fuck. She gave me a few solid elbows to the gut, but she was way out of her league now. Welterweight to heavyweight. I proved it, tightening my embrace on her. After a few more elbows to my abs, she did start to give in. Her body relaxed into mine, and she stopped fighting me quite so hard. But still, I kept her close. As close as fucking possible, and not just because I thought she was still mad enough to go for his balls either. That too, though.

  Fletcher could barely keep the laugh tears out of his eyes as he stepped out from behind the bar with a dish towel over his shoulder.

  “This is going on my Yelp review!” squeaked Loafers, stepping out of his tequila-drenched shoes and standing there in these superweird little socks.

  “Dude, are those womens socks?” I asked, my cheek right next to Rosie’s, the intoxicating smell of her perfume making me feel doped up and stoned.

  “They are, aren’t they!” Rosie barked. “Those are Peds! Liner socks! In nude!”

  Loafers wriggled his toes. “I told you! Blisters!”

  “Out you go,” Fletcher told Loafers as he gripped the back of his neck in a horse bite. He showed him the door and then tossed his shoes out behind him.

  Fletcher turned around and shook his head at the two of us, me behind Rosie like I was about to…

  Anyway. With Loafers out of the bar, the tension dropped instantly. A tremor of laughter and a honk filled Rosie’s body as Fletcher slapped his bar towel into his hand. “What are we gonna do with you?” Fletcher said, pretending to be angry with Rosie—which none of us ever were, ever.

  I felt Rosie’s full-body laughter against my chest. Then I caught the laughter, and Fletcher gave in completely. He steadied himself on the bar and wiped a tear from his eye. “Fuck. That was awesome.” He headed around to the back of the bar, lining up three glasses on the rubbery mat next to the taps. “If that ends up on Yelp, it’ll be the high point of my career.”

  “You good?” I said into Rosie’s ear, close enough now to see she was wearing the earrings I’d given her for her birthday—small pink rose studs I’d found at a shop downtown. I could see her smile, and she nodded. “What’d he say?”

  She sighed, and at the same time she held on to my forearms tighter, so I could just feel the tips of her nails digging into my skin. Yeah, I wasn’t going to be able to hold out on this very long. Ten minutes more of this, and I’d have to lock her in the bathroom with me and show her what kind of man she never knew I was. For the moment, though, I was holding it together. Sort of. Except then she answered, “He told me I should freeze my eggs. I could’ve killed him.”

  Rage actually does have a color. Just like blood in the goddamned water. I let myself feel it for a count of three and shook it off. What a fucking asshole. “You don’t look a day over thirty. Fuck forty.”

  “You say that because you like my cupcakes.”

  Jesus Christ, you’ve got no idea. Yet, no matter how much I wanted her, or maybe because I wanted her so much, I knew it was time to put my foot down. In the puddle of margaritas on the floor. “No more guys in loafers, Rosie.”

  “Never again.”

  “You gotta knock off this internet dating. It’s killing me.”

  She nodded, and I felt it more than I saw it, that’s how close we were. “All right. Okay.”

  “Promise me.”

  “Promise, Max. I’m done. Tapping out. Closing up shop.”

  “You deserve better than some motherfucker telling you to freeze your eggs.”

  She hung her head, and the sunset off the bay lit up the curve of her neck and shoulder. “I know.”

  There were a thousand things I wanted to say then. That she was beautiful and perfect and whatever she wanted to do with her goddamned eggs was her business. And that no man, ever, would treat her like that again. It was like seeing her naked had unleashed me, but I kept a lid on it. This wasn’t the time. This wasn’t the fucking time. “If I set you down, you’re going to stay here. Got it?”

  “Give me a steak knife, and I can go deflate his tires. C’mon! Live a little!” She bit her tongue as she laughed. A sultry laugh, though. Not a giggle. Something saucy and dark and fucking delicious.

  “Cool it, hot stuff.”

  She took a few deep breaths, and I let her feet come back down to the floor. “I hate men.”

  “Nail picker. Forget that shit.”

  She shimmied out of my grasp but stayed c
lose, now facing me. “I hate them. I hate them all.”

  I was standing with her in my arms, like we were about to tango. I didn’t step away. “Yeah? All of us?”

  Rosie’s big brown eyes moved over my face and down my shirt. “Maybe not all,” she said, her voice tamer now, but almost…dangerous, somehow. Not so sweet. My thoughts unraveled so fucking fast in the direction of where I shouldn’t let them go. “Max…”

  Jesus Christ. Maybe she did know. Maybe she was thinking the same fucking thing that was stuck in my head, like an endless GIF loop. Her and me on her kitchen table. “Rosie.”

  “Why are you all wet?” she asked.

  “Sit down. I’ll buy you a drink. I can tell you all about it. How’s that?”

  She shifted her lips to one side. They were sparkly and a slightly darker pink than normal. The lipstick was enough to take her out of sweet and into naughty. It was all mesmerizing—her blush, her fury, her beauty, her feistiness. For the first time ever, I thought, Kiss her. Right now. But before I could make my move, Fletcher came over with the shots. We clinked glasses, straight tequila, which Rosie downed like a fucking champ. Fletcher gathered up our glasses and headed back to the bar. When we were alone again, I flipped my chair around backward and took a seat. “Betcha never knew I knew how to do canine CPR.”

  Rosie’s jaw dropped, and she planted her hand on the booth seat. She slowly lowered herself down with knees pressed together. Cleavage perfect. Lips perfect. Everything perfect. “Shut the front door!”

  I clicked my tongue. I liked making her wait. I liked drawing it out. I also liked being with her, heroic dog story or not. I didn’t want this night to end, not now that I had her all to myself, not now that I knew what was under that dress. “Nachos?” I asked her.

  “God, yes.”