“Why are you sorry? I agreed to do this, knowing that I may be walking into a hellstorm.” He put a hand on my head. “Don’t sweat it, Q. I got this.” I nodded, and he continued to push me off. “Now go. Take a breather.”
When I looked back in the direction Zeke had gone, he was standing at his car with the passenger door open, looking back at me. I imagined Alec’s spidey senses were tingling. He wasn’t able to get the night off work for the Wednesday game, so he was going to be upset to hear he missed the coveted asking out for drinks. I walked up to Zeke, and he smiled at me.
“Ready?”
I nodded and grinned back. “Yeah.”
I climbed into the passenger’s seat of Zeke’s car and was immediately surrounded by the smell of a sweet cologne. When Zeke got into the car, the smell got stronger. I’d been so angry out on the field that I didn’t notice it, but now, sitting so close to him with only the middle compartment of the car separating us, it was all I could think about.
We got to a bar far off the beaten path, about fifteen minutes outside of Montpelier. Zeke explained that he knew it because he lived up in Pocatello, about an hour and twenty minutes north of Montpelier. It was a larger city. Apparently, Zeke wasn’t big into the small-town life. We entered the bar, and it wasn’t packed. It was a Wednesday night, after all, so we found a table, and Zeke left to grab us a couple of beers. He set mine in front of me before sitting down at the table. I took a huge swig of the beer and then took a huge breath in and out.
“She’s a nasty one, huh?” Zeke asked.
“She’s bad, but she’s not normally that bad. I don’t know what’s up with her.” I took another sip of my beer. “I think it’s our coach.”
“What’s wrong with him?” he asked, already halfway through his own beer.
“Nothing, he’s great, but she’s got this thing about men.” I sipped more. “She hates them.”
Zeke chuckled. “I can’t say that I blame her.” A look of shock crossed my face, and Zeke laughed a bit more. His smile was inviting, if not a bit intoxicating. “What? I know how men have continuously marginalized women throughout the years. That more women don’t hate men is actually kind of surprising.”
I smiled, and he raised an eyebrow as he set his beer bottle to his lips.
“Well, don’t look so shocked that I’m smart.”
I giggled. “Anyway. She’s gotta get over it. She can’t do that.” I started to strangle the neck of my bottle, but Zeke tapped the bottom of it with his bottle, and I loosened my grip. “Thanks.”
I knocked what was left of my beer back, and Zeke wasn’t far behind me. I stood up from the table. “I’ll get the next round.”
I grabbed a couple more beers for us, and he gave me the best advice he could on how to deal with hothead players. He’d had to deal with quite a few of them in college, and he gave me some solid footing to stand on. We both agreed that if Lila couldn’t come to terms with Cal, she probably wasn’t a good fit for the team, but something about bringing Cal in and then getting rid of Lila because she couldn’t adjust made me feel bad. She was there first. Zeke posited that it was only a matter of time before her disregard for men became an issue and not to beat myself up for the circumstance. I didn’t know how he’d managed to get such a solid grasp on my personality in such a short period of time, but maybe it was just because we were very alike.
One conversation turned into another, which turned into another. Every time our bottles were empty, one of us would go a grab two more, and before long, liquid was sloshing around my brain, and I was slurring my words. Zeke was doing slightly better than me, but not much, and he was still barely into the latest round.
I hadn’t been keeping track of how long we’d been there, but eventually, a bartender came over to us with an apologetic expression on. “Sorry, folks, we’re closing up.”
“What time is it?” I grumbled.
“Quarter after midnight,” he replied.
“Thank you. We’ll head out.” Zeke started to stand up and stumbled a little.
I grabbed his arm. “We can’t drive.”
The bartender smiled. “This bar has a no-tolerance policy for drinking and driving. If you need to leave your car here overnight, it won’t be towed.”
“Thass awesome,” Zeke slurred. “We’ll call an Uber.”
I nodded heavily. “Yup.”
The bartender giggled. “Okay, well come and write down the make and model of your car for me. I leave the information for our tow company so that they know which cars to leave.”
Zeke and I walked up to the bar, and I chuckled at the way Zeke’s handwriting scribbled messily across the page. He handed the paper over to the bartender and then pointed at him. “My car is six figures. Don’t fuck it up.”
“No one will touch it, sir. This is just so they know not to tow it.”
Zeke nodded and then reached down to grab my hand as we left. When we got to the lot, I didn’t pull my hand out of Zeke’s, so we stood there that way until the Uber that Zeke called pulled up. He opened the door to help me inside and then walked around and climbed in the back next to me.
“Where we going, folks?” the driver asked.
“Two locations.” Zeke tapped my leg, and it shot into me with a surprising surge of electricity. “You’re closer.”
I gave the driver my address, and he pulled away from the bar, heading back into Montpelier. We pulled up in front of my apartment complex about twenty minutes later. “Gotta pay for this leg before we can head to the second one,” the driver said.
Zeke clicked a few buttons on his phone before grumbling, “Done.” He tapped his shoulder. “I’m gonna walk her up. I’ll be right back.”
I climbed out of the car and walked around, and Zeke took my hand again. I suddenly wished I was less drunk. God only knew how much of the night I was actually going to remember. I got up to the front door and used my key fob to unlock it. Zeke relented my hand, and I stepped inside.
I turned around to face him, and he smiled at me. “Feel better?”
I nodded. “Much. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We lingered there for a moment, and maybe it was the booze, or maybe it was how attractive Zeke was, but my body moved on impulse. I used one hand to wave the Uber driver away, and the other one to take a fistful of Zeke’s shirt and pull him inside.
17
Zeke
The past few weeks of getting to know Quinn and not being able to decide if I hated her or liked her all culminated and boiled over when she pulled me by my hand onto the elevator leading up to her apartment. The second the doors closed on us, she pressed me up against the velvet-colored wall and threw her lips against mine. My body caught fire against the feeling of her hands all over me, and I let mine slink around her back and sneak up her shirt.
Her skin had a delectable heat to it that felt like it was going to fuse my hands in place, and I wouldn’t mind. She was good looking, any idiot could see that, but there was something else about her. Something else that had me gravitating toward her against my will. I’d spent so much time resisting it that now that I was allowing myself to give in, my whole body was a surge, trying to get as much of her as it could.