Snap Shot (Cayuga Cougars Book 1)

by V. L. Locey

  “You’d be a terrible accountant, baby. You can’t even balance your checkbook.”

  She smiled warmly and reached out to pat my cheek. “You do know me well, Seamus.” Her hand drifted back to her cup of coffee. “During Joseph’s ‘Lost Years’, as I now call them, he dated a young woman. She was very nice and had a lovely smile. Joseph impregnated this young woman.”

  Lila threw a quick glance in my direction.

  I stared openly at her. “So you have a kid?”

  “Yes. He’s fifteen now. I know that you must think I’m a horrid person for not telling you about this sooner, but I’ve crossed that bridge too early in a relationship before, and it sent the man running.”

  My thoughts were whirling. Lila sat there waiting for me to say something. So I forced something out.

  “I told you I’m not going anywhere. So you have a kid who lives with his mom.”

  “Well, yes, he did for a few years, but she passed away when he was five from a congenital heart disease. Langley, that’s his name,” she said and I bobbed my head. “I had begun to embrace who I was by the time Langley needed a parental figure. When I appeared at the funeral to ask for my son, Marlene’s father took one look at the big black man in a stunning but tasteful black dress and decided that a cross-dressing freak should not raise Langley. His exact words, not mine.”

  “Oh, baby.” Anger ignited in my gut.

  “It was very rude and hurtful of him, of course. Marlene’s mother was never as blatantly crude, but from her silence, I noted her agreement. I acquiesced to their demands to raise my son. It was my worst failure as a woman, but I was young and new to myself. My self-confidence was not where it is today.” She looked up from her coffee to me.

  “Understandable. It took me years to develop that ‘Kiss my ass’ attitude.”

  “I knew you would grasp where I was at the time. You’re such an empathetic person.”

  I didn’t know about that, but if Lila thought so, then that was good enough for me.

  “Perhaps in the long run, I reasoned, Langley would be better off not having to explain to his friends how his father had become his mother.”

  “Lila… baby…” I wished I had better verbal skills of some sort. I wanted to say so much to her.

  “I kept in touch, of course,” she hurried to explain. “I sent him gifts for his birthday and Christmas. And his grandparents sent me school pictures every year. He’s so handsome. Do you want to see his picture?”

  “Yeah, sure, I’d love to.”

  She leaped up and scurried off, her silky yellow robe and gown fluttering behind her. I sat back in my chair and stared out the window at the darkness. Sweet Mary Madonna, she had a kid. My ass felt numb, so I shifted around a bit. Lila sailed back into the kitchen, a fancy quilted scrapbook held to her chest.

  “Here now – this is my Langley,” she said after sitting down and flipping open the scrapbook.

  I looked down to see a young man who looked so much like Slash from Guns N’ Roses that all he needed was a top hat and a smoke dangling from his lip to take the tribute band on the road.

  “His mother was white,” I said, and looked at Lila.

  She nodded, then turned another page.

  “He’s how old now?” I enquired as she flipped page after page.

  “Fifteen. He’ll be sixteen next March.”

  Right. She’d already mentioned that. Damn, but I was rattled.

  “Well, it seems like he’d be a good-looking kid if he didn’t have all that hair in his face,” I commented, and she beamed with parental pride.

  “He is quite good-looking, and smart. Also on the road to becoming deeply troubled, I’m afraid.” The glow of pride left her eyes to be replaced with worry. “He’s been getting into some misadventures.”

  Our eyes met over the scrapbook. She was sitting on something big, something that she was worried about telling me. I could see the trepidation.

  “Is he doing drugs?”

  She shook her head strongly. “No, or at least nothing aside from a joint here or there. It’s more anger issues and acting out. His grandfather died last year, and since then Langley has been doing poorly. Bad grades, staying out late, running with a bad crowd…that sort of thing.” She sighed with real pain.

  And that was one reason I’d made sure never to let my sperm meet a willing egg. Who needed that kind of heartbreak? I’d witnessed firsthand how much shit I’d put my mother through when I was Langley’s age. Thanks but no thanks to the whole parental thing. If I needed to coddle something that badly, I’d buy a Shih-Tzu.

  “I was shocked when his grandmother called and suggested this solution. She simply cannot deal with him any longer. She’s older now and has sugar quite bad. She said they may have to take off a few toes soon. Dear Lord above, can you imagine having someone cut off a part of your body?”

  She had mentioned that fear of hers before, which was why she only added things to her magnificent frame and didn’t have anything cut off. And didn’t that work out great for me? Yep, I was back to being all grabby-hands.

  You suck, McGarrity.

  “So I offered to bring him here to live with me.”

  Annnnnnd there it was. The bombshell she’d been sitting on was now in freefall. I stared at her for ages, it seemed.

  “Seamus, I do wish you would say something.”

  “What about your parents? Could they take him?”

  Her lips flattened a bit. “My parents stopped talking to me the day I became Madame Lila,” she curtly informed me, then snapped her scrapbook shut. “If this is a major problem for you, then I would suggest that after you leave this morning, you do not return to darken my doorway ever again.”

  I blinked at her. “Whoa, okay, who the hell said anything about not coming back?”

  She went to stand, and I grabbed her shoulder to hold her in her seat. The glare I got was lethal.

  “I told you before, I’m not going anywhere. Shit, woman, you need to give a man a little time to soak up that kind of announcement,” I explained, and some of the hurt and ire eased away from her tightly set mouth.

  “Yes, of course, you’re right.” Her shoulder slumped under my hand. I slid my fingers into her soft hair. She sighed and let her long lashes flutter to her cheek. “I know this is hard to imagine, but the thought of losing you terrifies me.”

  “I keep telling you that you’re stuck with me. I’m just like a homing pigeon.”

  She peeled my hand from my coffee mug and raised it to her lips. A single soft kiss fell on my palm. “I love you so, Seamus.”

  “I love you too, baby.”

  At least words that made her feel good had fallen out of me that time. Most of my head was still back on the original stunning announcement, but a wee part seemed to be paying attention.

  “You’ll love Langley too. I think he and I may just drive up to Cayuga after we get back from North Carolina. You can meet him, and maybe we can see one of your games. You are playing now, right?”

  “Preseason games, but yeah, we’re playing.”

  What the hell kind of mess would a kid bring to our lives? I didn’t want some teenager mucking shit up. I liked my life and my time with Lila just the way it was.

  “Then it’s a date.” She was glowing. I mean literally beaming.

  You are a callous jerkwad, Mario Seamus McGarrity.

  “I’m leaving today to drive down. It will take a few days for us to gather up his belongings and transfer his school files. How about we arrive on Friday and stay the weekend? You’ll be home then, yes? No road trips?”

  “Nope, no road trips,” I assured her, and was rewarded with a lusty kiss followed by a breakfast fit for a king and a goodbye blowjob that nearly made me faint it was so fucking good.

  When I was back on the road to Cayuga, the reality of the past two hours set in. Not only was I going to be late for practice, which would get me chewed out at the very least, but I had been sucked into the dark, angsty world
of whining kids by a pair of dewy brown eyes and long, firm legs. I threw the rosary dangling from my rearview a dark glower and turned up Conway.

  The things love did to a man’s life.

  I had barely stepped foot inside the Rader Arena when the new special teams coach strolled out of the dressing room carrying a can of Coke.

  “Yay, look who finally showed up,” Victor Kalinski said, then popped the top on his can of soda. “You know what sucks?”

  “You and Arou,” I stated, and tried to get around the redheaded Pole with the venomous tongue.

  He snapped out an arm to block my path. I was not in the mood for Vic’s mouth this morning. The Langley news and the flat tire on the New York/Pennsylvania border had pushed my usual good humor off a cliff.

  “Har-de-har. Damn, you are a riot. But no, what sucks is being on the job for two weeks and having to discipline a man who I think of as a sort-of friend.”

  I gave the tall, bearded Pole in the black suit paired with a purple tie a long look. “You’re going to discipline me?”

  “I got no choice. You blew off special teams drills without even calling in. Dude, that is not cool. You know our penalty kill sucks balls.” Vic lowered his arm. I glanced around him into the dressing room. “So, you planning on telling me why you pulled a no-show? I mean, give me something so that Dewey won’t think I’m playing favorites. I’d be happy as a contented clam to just sit you down and give you a firm talking-to and call it good.”

  “I had shit to deal with.”

  Vic gave me a sour look right before I shoved past him. Sometimes it irked the piss out of me that I had to take orders from someone eleven years younger than I was. Not that I begrudged Kalinski his new position, because I didn’t. The man had been dealt a shit hand. He was too young and too talented to be behind the bench. Fucking concussions ruined so many careers.

  No, what twisted my nuts about it was the fact that I had clocked so many more years than Vic and had nothing but bloody piss to show for it. And yeah, it was not Vic’s fault that he was more talented than I could ever hope to be.

  Let the pity party for Mario begin.

  “What kind of shit? Like, literal shit? Because sitting on the can is not the most original excuse for missing mandatory drills I’ve ever heard.” He caught up to me with ease, then sucked down what seemed to be half a can of soda at once.

  “Life shit, okay? Fuck’s sake, Kalinski, back off.” I threw my bag into my cubicle. The chitchat among the guys around us ended.

  “What. Ever. I was just trying to help you out, buddy.”

  Eyes closed, I tried to get my shitty attitude under control. When I turned around to cough up an apology, Kalinski was gone. I got a sideways look from Vic’s husband, Dan Arou, which I pretended not to see. If I were lucky, Dan would just go about taping his stick.

  “Everything okay, Mario?”

  I glanced to the right to find Arou had taken a seat right beside me and was back to taping. He worked with precision. Taping your stick was serious shit. The glint of his wedding band kept catching my eye. I sat down beside our alternate captain, my gaze on my shoes.

  “How did you handle it when Vic told you about Jack?” I chanced a glance at him. He had stopped taping and was staring at me with those big blue eyes of his. Since Victor and Dan had gone through the drama of an unplanned kid, maybe he had some words of wisdom on how to handle things.

  “Not good,” he replied, then returned to taping. “I kind of blew up and went back home to Winnipeg. I needed space, you know.” Again, the taping stopped. “Lila didn’t cheat on you, did she?”

  “No, man, it’s nothing like that,” I quickly replied with a wave of my hand.

  Arou exhaled, then resumed with the tape on the stick.

  “She just kind of laid something on me that I had totally never expected to deal with while dating her.”

  “So you think you need to go to Winnipeg?”

  “No, no. Why the hell would I go to Canada?”

  “It’s closer than Scotland,” Dan deadpanned.

  That tugged a grunt out of me. “Yeah, you got a point.” I returned to staring at my shoes. “She has a kid.”

  A moment of silence from Mr. Arou-Kalinski ticked past. “Wow,” Dan finally said.

  “Yeah, wow. I mean, I am not in any way parent material. I seriously contemplated having a vasectomy at twenty, but my priest talked me out of it.”

  “Shit, that’s commitment,” Danny mumbled.

  I gave him a look and a nod.

  “I never saw myself as the fatherly type. Call me a greedy bastard. And now she flings this kid at me and expects me to be fucking Mike Brady or something.”

  My head felt close to bursting and my fucking lower back was killing me. It needed to be iced again. Maybe I should just slide into the ice plunge and soak my whole body, including my head.

  “Is it wrong to be mad at her for not telling me sooner?”

  “No, I don’t think being mad is wrong. Vic says his therapist tells him we got to own our emotions. Feelings ain’t good or bad, they just are.” Dan took a second to inhale. “I get jealous of Heather sometimes.”

  Heather being the chippie who Victor had tagged one drunken night and knocked up. I’ve heard both sides of the tale and would call it a pass on the cheating rap. The two hadn’t really formally committed to each other so…

  “So I should tell her I’m mad about this?”

  “Oh, no,” Dan said, then pushed to his stocking-covered feet, stick in one hand, the tape dangling from it. “I ain’t saying nothing for what you should do. I will say that if you love her, you need to work on getting past it.”

  “That what you did?”

  “That’s what I’m still doing time to time, you know?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

  Dan clapped my shoulder, then went back to his side of the dressing room. I’d toed off my dress shoes and stood up to take off my tie when the Cougars team captain summoned me out into the hall.

  “Kalinski tells me that you had a family emergency this morning?” Mike Buttonwood asked.

  Mike was aces as our captain. He loved the game passionately and brooked no hatred among his teammates, and that included any kind of homophobic bullshit. There may be a few guys who think I’m odd as a cod for being with Lila, but they keep that shit to themselves because of how the team and our captain has backed LGBTQ rights. Mike might be a bit of a bumpkin, but he was good people.

  “Sort of,” I replied, and scoured the hall for the redheaded Pole. He was nowhere to be seen and “Forgive me for being a scrotum” was sort of sticking in my throat and needed to be expectorated.

  “I hope everything’s okay?” I saw nothing but sincerity in Mike’s green eyes. “Is Lila sick?”

  “No, she’s good. Just a bit of a family dilemma that we had to work out,” I explained to the lanky, sandy-blond man studying me closely.

  “Well, good – as long as everyone is healthy.”

  “Thanks, Mike.” I extended my hand to him and he readily shook it, which was cool for a dude who still was confused about Lila’s letter in the LGBTQ scheme. I’d seen people flatly refuse to touch me, Lila, Kalinski, and Arou. Like being gay, bi or trans was catching. Some people are stupid little turnips.

  “It’s all part of the job. Now lose the skirt and get in your gear.”

  “It’s a kilt, Buttonwood, and men have died bloody deaths for calling it otherwise.” I made sure to roll my Rs for that pronouncement.

  “Right, sorry. Get your ass out of that kilt and get your gear on. I suspect you’ll be doing sprints for an hour at the very least.”

  And boy howdy, how amazing was it that my team captain was right? Dave Dewey, our new head coach, had hit me with a monetary fine and ice drills, which he supervised. Dave was a gruff coach but not nearly as volatile as Lambert had been. He did believe in making players pay for fuck-ups, and missing an assigned skate was a big one, so he worked me twice as hard as th
e others. By the time I was done, my legs felt like rubber bands. August Miles, our new starting goalie, had also put in some overtime with the goalie coach, so we were the lone men in the dressing room. The Cougars had sent Dunwoody down and called August up. So far, he was a marked improvement.

  It had taken August considerably longer to hit the showers simply due to the amount of goalie gear he had to take off. When he passed behind me, I raised a soapy hand in greeting. I was too exhausted to do anything more. Did you ever feel someone looking at you, but when you glance their way they’re not looking at you? I did that about ten times, then chalked it up to exhaustion and my knotted brain.

  When we were in the dressing room after our odd showers, the sensation returned. I smeared some deodorant under my left arm, threw Miles a fast under-the-arm glance, caught the kid looking at me weirdly then called him out on that shit.

  “Hey, what the hell is up with you?” I asked while lowering my arm.

  The tendie gawked at me as a fine blush crept up his neck. He was a cute kid, fresh out of college and already playing for the Cougars, which says a lot about his skill-set. Another year or two of seasoning and he’d be in up in Boston. He had short brown hair and enormous brown eyes that reminded me of a beagle we had owned when I was a kid.

  “Nothing, just checking out that bruise,” he muttered, and made a point of keeping his eyes averted.

  “Right,” I snapped, and the kid flinched a little. “Okay, is there something on your mind, Junior? If it has anything to do with the fact that I’m sleeping with—”

  “I think I might be a little gay.”

  He threw those words at me as if they would shut me up. They did. I blinked half a dozen times. August stood staring at me, his brown hair plastered to his skull, a towel around his waist, and his jaw trembling slightly. What the fuck? Was today “Drop a Bunker Buster on Mario” day?

  “A little gay? Buddy, that’s like being a little pregnant. You either are or you’re not. Do you like men and women?”