Take a Chance on Me

by Alexa Land

  “What’s this going to do to you financially?”

  “I’ll still collect my base salary during the investigation. The problem is, I count on all that overtime to make ends meet.”

  “You know, you never cashed that check I gave you for the Hummel figurines. Maybe that could help bridge the gap.”

  Duke rested his cheek on the top of my head and told me, “There’s no way I’d ever cash that check.”

  “Why not?”

  “You donated them to charity. Plus, you were doing me a favor, and I’m glad I don’t have to live with them anymore.”

  “But I shouldn’t have done that. Do your parents know they’re gone yet?”

  “No. They’re bound to notice next time they come over, but I haven’t brought it up, and I’m not going to worry about that now.”

  I curled up in his arms and said, “I’m a disruptive influence in your life.”

  “Yup.” I glanced up at him and he grinned at me. “It’s not a bad thing. My life needed some disrupting.”

  “Not like this, though. I never wanted you to get into financial trouble because of me.”

  “Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: punching that guy was my choice. You’re not at fault. I obviously could have handled the situation a lot better, especially after all my years of police training. But I didn’t act like a cop. I reacted with my emotions instead of my head, and now I have to face the consequences, whatever they may be.”

  He tilted my chin up and kissed me gently, and I asked, “Do you hate what I did to the living room? Be honest. It occurred to me after the fact that you might actually have preferred things to be calm and orderly tonight, so maybe I should have left it alone.”

  “I like the fact that you Quinned it up in here. This room was boring and uncomfortable before.”

  “You seemed less than thrilled when you first saw it.”

  He said, “Actually, it barely registered when I got home. I was thinking about what I’d do if I ended up losing my job. But that’s totally premature, and I need to stop focusing on the worst case scenario. Let’s just enjoy tonight. Wait, why are you home so early? Please don’t tell me you got fired because of me!”

  “No. My manager sent me home with pay. Specifically, he told me to, and I quote, ‘go find that hot cop and thank him properly for kicking that douchebag’s ass.’ Preston’s a nice guy.”

  “What did your dad say? I’m embarrassed that I acted like that in front of him.”

  “He was upset about that guy groping me,” I said, “but it ended up being a great conversation. I feel like he heard me, for once.”

  I told him what was said, and Duke exclaimed, “That’s fantastic! I know how much you needed that.”

  “I did. And now you and I both have an unexpected night off, so what would you like to do? We could play board games, or watch a movie, or whatever.”

  “Anything, really.”

  I reached for the remote, then traced the outline of the logo on his chest and said, “I have to ask what this stands for, because I have no idea.”

  “A hockey team, the Vancouver Canucks.”

  “I didn’t know you like hockey. Did you ever play?”

  “No. I was a total klutz on skates.”

  “Why Vancouver,” I asked, “as opposed to a local team?”

  Duke admitted, “When I was a senior in high school, I had a huge crush on a hockey player, this Norwegian guy named Even Eide. He was only on the team for two years, but I watched every game without fail, and that was enough to turn me into a lifelong Vancouver fan. I know that’s a stupid reason to like a team.”

  “No it isn’t. We all had teen crushes. Were you always into older guys?”

  “He wasn’t much older. He got drafted at nineteen, and I was seventeen at the time.”

  I turned on the TV as I asked, “Whatever happened to him?”

  “He got injured and had to retire after a couple of years. Then he actually moved to San Francisco and opened a sports bar with a friend of his who used to play for the Kings. It’s called Ellingsen & Eide, and I guess it’s a big success. There are two dozen locations throughout the state now.”

  “I’ve heard of it. Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve heard of Even, too. I remember the odd spelling of his name, instead of E-V-A-N like it’s pronounced. So, did you ever go to his bar, hoping to run into him?”

  “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that would have been painfully embarrassing.” When I grinned at that, he said, “What?”

  I settled back onto his chest and said, “I love the fact that you’re so shy.”

  “Why would you like that?”

  “Both because it’s sweet, and because it makes the fact that you asked me out extra special. I’m guessing you don’t do that very often.”

  He kissed the top of my head and said, “You’re right about that.”

  As I flipped through the on-screen menus, I said, “Maybe we should count this as our first date. I know you were planning to take me out tomorrow night, but you don’t need to spend money on me.”

  “If we were going to count every wonderful afternoon or evening we’ve spent together, this would be more like our tenth date.” Duke touched my cheek as he said, “I know you’re worried about me, but my financial situation’s not dire. In fact, I shouldn’t even have mentioned it, and I have no intention of canceling our plans tomorrow night. I wasn’t going to try to impress you by spending a bundle anyway. There’s nothing fun about overpriced restaurants and all that fancy stuff.”

  “Okay, good. So, tell me what you want to watch.”

  I flipped through Netflix, and after a minute Duke said, “How about that?”

  “The Great British Baking Show?”

  “I mean, only if you want to.”

  “Definitely! It’ll probably result in you baking something delicious, so I’m all for it.”

  I was right. After the first one and a half episodes, Duke clicked the pause button and told me, “I want to try making Florentine cookies, like the contestants just did. Do you want to bake with me?”

  “I will never, ever say no to that.” He hoisted himself out of the beanbag and smiled at me as he pulled me to my feet.

  He seemed happy as he moved around the kitchen with confidence, gathered up the ingredients, and went to work. I sat on the counter and watched him, and after a while I said, “Why aren’t you doing this for a living? You’re so passionate about baking!”

  Duke looked up from the recipe on his phone and adjusted his glasses. “I wanted to become a pastry chef when I was a kid, but my father thought that was completely frivolous. I guess I let him influence my decision.”

  “How is it frivolous to make people happy? I think it’s one of the best things any of us can do with our lives.”

  “That’s a nice way to look at it.”

  “You know, I never asked. How did you end up with a career in law enforcement?”

  He picked up a bag of slivered almonds and shook them into a bowl on a small scale as he said, “It started with a high school guidance counselor. He gave me an aptitude test and told me it was the perfect career for me. Apparently I have a strong need for order, and I’m big on following the rules. For lack of any better ideas, I went with his suggestion.”

  “That exactness is also part of the reason you’re such an excellent baker,” I said as I watched him remove two almond slivers from the scale and recheck the measurement. “Do you actually enjoy being a police officer?”

  He shrugged and said, “Sometimes. I like it when I feel I’m making a difference, but those instances are rare. Usually, we just deal with a lot of hostility and people at their worst. For example, Finn and I arrested a guy for being drunk and disorderly tonight. It’s the seventh time we’ve arrested him. He gets locked up, pays the fine, heads right back to the bars and does it all over again. Every time we arrest him, he calls us every name in the book and pees in the b
ack of the patrol car, just out of spite. That really wears thin. But he doesn’t want to get sober, and it’s impossible to force people to get help, so nothing ever changes.”

  I wrinkled my nose and said, “I’ve been in that back seat.”

  “Don’t worry, we always clean and disinfect it after he’s been in there.”

  “Why do you stay in that job? It sounds awful.”

  “It’s not always that bad.”

  “That’s not a very ringing endorsement.”

  “I think I just have the wrong temperament for that line of work,” he said. “So does Finn, actually. It’s tough for us to let all the negatives bounce off without affecting us, and that’s what you really need to do to be happy as a police officer. But, it’s a job. It pays our mortgages, and it lets Finn take care of his family. I don’t want to seem ungrateful, not when there are so many people out of work or barely scraping by.”

  He started to melt some butter in a saucepan, and when I asked how I could help, he assigned me the task of chopping the almond slivers. As we worked side-by-side, he asked, “What do you see yourself doing once your dance career runs its course?” He thought about that and glanced at me. “Is that an insensitive question? I know it’s not going to end for a very long time. I just wondered if you’d thought about it.”

  “It’s not insensitive. No one can do this job forever. Ballet takes a huge toll on our bodies, and every injury has the potential to be a career ender. But I don’t know what’s next. If I’m lucky, I won’t have to answer that question for quite a few years. I think though, once my number’s up, I won’t take the route so many do and teach ballet. Instead, I’ll start fresh and completely reinvent myself, like my mom did. I’ll figure out the exact opposite of being a ballet dancer, and I’ll do that.”

  “Please don’t reinvent yourself too much,” he said. “It’d be a shame if you stopped loving rainbow beanbags and macaroni art, or if you stopped wearing body glitter and making homemade board games. I noticed a stack of them waiting for us in the living room.”

  “There’s a new one. I’m calling it Twist-and-Seek. I just came up with it a few days ago, and you can help me take it on its maiden voyage.”

  “I look forward to learning what that is.”

  Once the cookies were in the oven, I found two huge serving spoons and handed one to Duke. He asked, “What’s this for?”

  “You’ll see. Chocolate or vanilla?”

  “Chocolate.”

  “Right answer.” I hopped up on the counter, took a big scoop out of the cake I’d baked, and started to eat it like a drumstick. Duke chuckled, and then he took a slightly less heaping scoop of cake and started eating it the same way I was. When I said, “That’s the spirit,” he grinned at me.

  We laughed and chatted while the Florentines cooled, and we made a mess while coating them with chocolate. Then we carried a big plate of cookies into the living room. I made sure they were in reach when I set up my new board game.

  “It’s basically a cross between Twister and I Spy,” I explained, indicating the 6-foot-square, brightly colored, children’s play mat I’d spread out on the floor. “There are all kinds of hidden objects in this cartoon cityscape, plus I’ve added a bunch of stickers. Instead of a spinner, we’re using this.”

  I held up a round child’s toy with an arrow in the middle and pulled the string. The arrow spun around, and a mechanical voice told us, “The cow says moooooooo.” The arrow stopped on a hand-lettered square that read left foot, lucha libre wrestler.

  I stepped onto the play mat and looked around, then stuck my foot on a sticker of a masked wrestler that was peeking out of a window in a brightly colored skyscraper. “See? You just do whatever it tells you. I’ll show you one more.” I stuck a cookie in my mouth and pulled the string. The toy told me what a duck said, and the arrow stopped on: right hand, scary-looking baby. I looked around, then pivoted to put my hand on a sticker at the edge of the mat. I took a big bite out of the cookie, then held the remainder with my free hand as I explained, “We’ll both be doing this at the same time. If I beat you to a sticker or picture, you have to find another one. First one to fall over loses.”

  “But you have an advantage. You know where everything is, because you made the game.”

  “I really don’t. I added the stickers to the mat while wearing x-ray specs, so I could barely see. Plus, it’s not like I’d remember.” Duke grinned and joined me on the mat.

  For the next several minutes, we took turns with the pull toy and followed the instructions. At one point, when he and I were totally tangled up and I arched backwards to put my left hand on a rabid squirrel, Duke said, “No fair! You’re a hundred times more flexible than I am!”

  “But you’re eleven inches taller with much longer arms and legs, so it all evens up.”

  “That’s a good point, actually. Pull the string.” I ended up pulling it with my toes, because I couldn’t reach it any other way. We both shifted around to get our left foot onto a zombie, and Duke and I ended up face-to-face. He told me, “You’re a brilliant game designer.”

  “I’m more of a Doctor Frankenstein. I take bits of other games and cobble them together into some sort of unholy creation.”

  I could feel the heat from his body as he hovered right above me. His right arm was wrapped around my shoulders, and his thigh was between both of mine. I looked into his eyes and smiled before I stretched up and kissed him. He deepened the kiss, but then he murmured, “Oh crap.” I felt his legs start to shake, and a moment later, he tumbled onto the mat and took me with him. Duke kissed me again and said, “Best game ever.”

  We spent a long time kissing. When we finally came up for air, I asked, “Can we have a sleepover? I have this awesome new Barbie tent I’ve been wanting to try out.”

  “A tent for Barbies?”

  “No, a tent for people, made to look like a hot pink castle. I’m not sure what that has to do with Barbie, but her name’s on the side of it in huge letters. Can we set it up in the living room and spend the night in it?”

  He got up and held his hand out to me. “I can’t possibly say no to that.”

  We moved the furniture around and pitched the tent in front of the fireplace. Next, we loaded it with a foam mattress, blankets, and every pillow in the house. When we climbed inside, Duke’s feet stuck out beneath the flap, which made us both chuckle.

  We curled up in each other’s arms, and after a while he said, “If they fire me and I lose my house to foreclosure, will you come and be homeless with me? I’ll find us a charming vacant lot, and we can live in the Barbie tent.”

  “I’ll follow you anywhere. We don’t have to be homeless, though. We can buy an old hippie bus, load it with beanbags and macaroni art, and stick the tent on top like a second story. It’ll be awesome!”

  He pulled me closer and said, “It’s a plan.”

  *****

  Duke and I awoke around the same time in that little pink tent the next morning and exchanged groggy smiles. He murmured, “Good morning,” and brushed his lips to mine.

  I whispered, “It’s so nice to wake up to you,” and kissed him again.

  Several minutes later, we were still kissing. I rubbed my thigh against his growing hard-on, and his breath caught. My cock throbbed as I pulled down his shorts and briefs, slid between his legs, and licked his shaft before taking the tip between my lips.

  He moaned softly as I sucked him. I held his gaze and really got into it, sliding my mouth up and down his cock, working on taking him a bit deeper down my throat with each pass. But then, without warning, the front door slammed open. It made me jump, and I accidentally bit down. Duke yelped, and I sat up and stammered, “Shit, I’m so sorry!”

  My heart raced as a booming voice demanded, “What’s going on in here?” We were fully concealed by the tent, so the man must have been talking about the condition of the living room and not what we’d been doing moments before.

  I looked at Duke, and he m
outhed the words, “My father.” He pulled up his shorts and winced.

  Anger welled up in me. I burst out of the tent and was confronted with a man who was nearly as big as Duke. He sported a thick, dark beard, which made him look like a lumberjack, and I got the impression the deeply-etched scowl on his face was a permanent feature. I demanded, “Have you ever heard of knocking?”

  The man glared at me and sputtered, “Who the hell are you?”

  Instead of answering, I told him, “This is Duke’s house, not yours! You have no right to barge in here like that!”

  The man squared his shoulders and growled, “I have seventy thousand dollars wrapped up in this place, so that gives me the right to come and go as I please!”

  “Oh, you mean the high-interest loan you gave Duke when you pressured him into buying this house? He’s the one busting his ass every week to not only pay the mortgage, but to pay you back with interest, so spare me that bullshit!”

  Duke untangled himself from the tent and asked, “What are you doing here, Dad?”

  “I found out you got suspended from the police force, so I came over here to see what was going on. Now I find this!” He swung his arm to indicate the living room.

  Duke crossed his arms over his chest and said, “I’m on administrative leave. Who told you I was suspended?”

  “I called the station this morning to talk to a golf buddy who works in HR, and he told me the paperwork had just come across his desk.” He looked around and asked, “Where are the Hummels? I told your grandmother you couldn’t be trusted with anything of value!”

  Duke snapped, “To hell with the Hummels! That conversation with your buddy in HR was a serious violation of my privacy, and so is bursting into my home unannounced! When I gave you a key, it was for emergencies, not so you could barge in here on a whim and interrupt my boyfriend and me!”

  “Your boyfriend!” His father glanced at me with disgust and told Duke, “He looks like a prostitute. I don’t know what’s come over you, but all of this is totally unacceptable!”