The Copper Valley Bro Code Series: Volume 1, page 27
Meda’s once again sitting on the top of the recliner. She gives me the seriously, the underwear model again? stare, and her blue eye looks a little more irritated than her amber eye, which makes me wonder if she, too, is having conflicting thoughts about him.
I shrug and ignore the little blip in my pulse.
He’s not here for me.
He’s here because it looks good.
Except…why come in the back door if that’s the case? Isn’t the point to get caught coming to see me?
Mackenzie shoves him into the living room. “Sarah! Look who wants to watch the game with us.”
He smiles a self-deprecating smile that exudes sexual masculinity and the suggestion that he knows what to do with his equipment, which I also know is most likely a Hollywood lie, or if not, I can at least take comfort in that old rumor so I don’t feel like I might be missing out on something.
“Gotta go with what works to keep the team winning,” he tells me.
“That’s your line?” I ask.
“You remember that year they went to the World Series?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Sarah grew up in Oregon,” Mackenzie says, and I wince, which she doesn’t notice at all. “I converted her.”
“Oregon, huh?”’
Oregon, Los Angeles, it’s all the same. Except not really, but for my purposes, it counts.
Until today.
I really, really need to tell her. But not with Beck here. “Mm-hmm.”
He grins, because that’s apparently all he ever does. “Portland’s awesome.”
“Mm,” I agree again. “Game’s starting.”
Mackenzie shoos me over so Beck can sit in the same seat he was in last night, which puts his long frame right up next to my padded hips.
He smells like bergamot and fresh cut grass today, and he’s sporting thicker scruff than he had last night. If he slept as poorly as I did, you can’t tell by looking at him.
He pops the lid on the popcorn tin and angles it toward me. “For luck?”
Of course he got the kind with caramel and cheese corn mixed together. That’s my favorite.
“Where’s Charlie?” I ask while I help myself, because it’s not weird to be sitting here with an underwear model who insulted me on Twitter two nights ago, let me taser him yesterday morning and then came back for an apology video last night, and randomly showed up for good luck for our favorite baseball team today.
And by it’s not weird, I definitely mean a wormhole opened in my living room.
I wonder if he’s irritated by loud chewers, because I don’t think I can chew popcorn quietly, and it’s going to be crunching in his ear, and that has to be the least attractive sound in the universe.
Not that I care if I’m attractive to him.
Just like maybe he’s a loud chewer and that’ll be perfect because I’m not attracted to him at all.
Or curious about why he’s really here.
“Charlie’s on a conference call with my management team,” he tells me.
“So you escaped?”
“Actually, they chased me off so I didn’t fuck anything up.”
“How’d Mackenzie know you were coming?”
“Psychic powers.” He grins at me, and I swear that makes thirty-two panty-melting grins in four minutes, and the real dig is that I’m wearing RYDE panties, because they are so damn comfortable that I couldn’t bring myself to burn them with the decreasing number of women posting videos on Twitter of themselves doing just that to stand with me in solidarity.
I’m betraying my biggest supporters.
But it’s not like burning my panties takes any dollar bills out of his bank account. I already bought them. I won’t buy more.
“Yes! That’s how you start a game!” Mackenzie pumps a fist in the air. The Fireballs just led off with a single.
That’s remarkably positive of them.
“You ever catch a game in person?” Beck asks.
“Every bobblehead doll game,” my best friend confirms. “And Sunday afternoon games when they’re at home.”
“They have a home series starting tomorrow,” he muses.
I stop chewing slowly—and therefore quietly—to shoot a glance at him.
Is he implying he wants to go to a Fireballs game with us?
And if so, why?
“You have any root beer?” he asks suddenly. “When I was growing up, we’d all crash in Cash’s basement with root beer and caramel corn and watch Friday night games. Man, good times.”
“Ohmygod, I love Cash Rivers,” Mackenzie breathes. “He was my favorite. I even saw him as the cheetah man in that really bad first movie he made after—wait. You’re not going to tell him I said that, are you?”
“Not as long as you don’t tell anyone Sarah got me with a taser yesterday.”
“The whole world already knows that, because it’s on your video,” Mackenzie reminds him.
“Huh.”
Great. Now she has no leverage at all for Beck not telling Cash Rivers that she thinks her Hollywood idol’s first movie sucked, which I know isn’t a big deal, but she doesn’t, and her face is going beet red.
“Airsh Ark ivva didge,” I say around a mouthful of caramel corn that I can’t chew quietly to save my life.
“Sweet,” he says, and he hops up and heads for the kitchen.
“What?” Mackenzie hisses.
I chew fast and gulp down the popcorn. “The Barq’s is in the fridge,” I hiss back.
“That is not what you said.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Oh my god, it sounded like you were summoning a popcorn demon.”
“It did not.”
“It did. And popcorn demons are not the positive spiritual energy the Fireballs need to win today.”
Okay, she has me there.
“You ladies need anything?” Beck pops his head back into the living room. “Root beer? Man, you’ve got shoestring fries in the freezer. I haven’t had those in years. Fucking road diet.”
This is getting weird. “Please. Make yourself at home.”
“Throw some bacon in at the same time,” Mackenzie tells him. “We’ll melt gouda over them and toss on bacon bits and then Sarah will pretty much be yours for the taking.”
“Mackenzie,” I hiss.
“What? I want to see you taser him again when he blatantly tries to get in your pants. Because he’s still no Trent. I mean, who can ever be Trent?”
I wince and try to give myself a pep talk. Just tell her, Sarah. Tell her why you really broke up with Trent.
She misunderstands my wince and she also winces. “Sorry,” she whispers. “But I bet he’s not.”
Beck, who of course has overheard everything, grins and shakes his head, then disappears back into the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” I hiss at her.
“Testing him,” she hisses back. “I realized his PR people might have told him to schmooze you because of so many people shipping you.”
“What-ing us?”
“Shipping. Sarah. They’re fantasizing about you dating.”
“What? No. People don’t do that.”
She gives me the duh, yes they do look, and I realize I can’t actually argue that people don’t do it in general, because I can’t count the number of times growing up I’d hear at school that my classmates wished my parents would get divorced so one or the other of them could marry whichever movie star they happened to have just been in a movie with.
Okay, really, I just didn’t know it had a name.
Because fine, half the Twitterverse was speculating that Beck and I are dating. But not wishing. There’s a difference.
Also, a full twenty percent are still pissed at him and another thirty percent think I’m too fugly—yes, fugly, because ugly by itself isn’t good enough—to ever actually score a hot guy like Beck, and also that women need to stay out of science.
“Okay, fine, people ship people. But not geeks like me,” I amend.
I might look all nice and normal, watching baseball with my superstitious best friend, but I was up well past midnight last night playing Vikings in Space while checking in on Persephone, and I’m legitimately itching to get back to it, because my Viking captainess just made contact with a new species of aliens who can either bend time or hypnotize people with folk music, and I’m not sure which yet.
Also, the last time Mackenzie made me go to a wine and paint night, while everyone else was making spring flowers, I might’ve inadvertently painted a Pokémon.
“You’re a geek accidentally involved with an underwear model,” she whispers. “And you were so freaking adorable in that video. In case I haven’t said it sixteen times yet.”
“Whoa, you have real bacon,” Beck says from the kitchen. “Not turkey bacon. What other goodies do you have hidden in here?”
Mackenzie flails her fingers wide and waves her hands in the air like every excited valley girl ever depicted on TV.
“That’s not fake,” she whispers.
“Stop it,” I warn her. “Give him three weeks, and he won’t even remember my name. And, as you pointed out, he’s still no Trent Fornicus. Oh, look. Stafford’s pitching. You think his shoulder’s going to hold out for the whole season?”
“Yes. And he’s not going to forget your name.”
“We still have nothing in common.”
“Holy shit, that’s a really fucking cool Firefly print. Like when they were babies. Where’d you get that?” Beck calls from the kitchen.
Mackenzie smirks. “Yep. Nothing at all in common.”
10
Beck
I hate being an asshole.
Yet here I am, falling in love with Sarah’s kitchen and knowing we’re doomed. I can’t stay here forever with her shoestring fries and real center cut bacon and this fucking amazing artwork from my favorite space cowboy show.
And when she finds out why I’m here, I’m basically losing her forever.
Her and her kitchen.
And those big dark eyes.
It’s like the taser totally glued them to the front of my memory lobes, and even knowing that I have a really bad track record with women, and that Sarah has secrets, I still can’t help mourning the loss of her and her house and food and impeccable taste.
“No, no, no!” Mackenzie moans from the living room. “Beck! Get back here! They’re losing while you’re not watching!”
Sarah’s cat sashays into the room, gives me a disdainful look like she knows I’m supposed to ask Sarah if she’d consider doing another video with me, or go out in public with me, or make sure to use the magic phrase we’re just friends whenever anyone asks this week.
I want to tell my team to fuck off, that this is a terrible idea, except it’s not.
Vaughn bought the video too. Hook, line, and sinker. We chatted an hour ago, and now that he’s not pissed and calling me a backwoods woman-hater, he asked if I’m actually into her, or if I’m just doing it to clear my reputation.
I can’t honestly tell him I don’t like her. I do. Do I trust her enough to date her? Not so much. But I like her.
And I want this foundation to work, so when he told me to keep her happy, then you’re damn right I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep her happy.
Do I feel guilty? Yeah. It’s not cool to keep dragging her into this.
But it’s for kids who don’t have the same opportunities I had when I was growing up. Kids who need support and help to get involved with team sports and have a place to go after school, and who wouldn’t have a chance to play on a team without us.
If everything falls to hell, if people quit buying RYDE clothes—and the clothes from my other lines too—I’ll be okay. I have plenty of money. Plenty of options.
After what I did Friday night, I could just disappear into oblivion, but I don’t want to go out like this—the most hated man in America who pulled a shithead move with a really bad joke that I thought my sister would appreciate.
Especially when if I can fix it, I can keep putting my money to good use to help the kids of the world.
So I’ll be the asshole who uses Sarah, even if I don’t like it.
I double-check that the oven’s heating up and I head into the living room with a can of Barq’s root beer to reclaim my place between the women on the couch. Score’s one-nothing in the bottom of the first. No outs, no runners on base.
“Lead-off home run for Tampa?” I ask.
“Shut up and do something for good luck,” Mackenzie grumbles.
I glance at Sarah, who freezes mid-chew on a mouthful of popcorn.
“She doesn’t mean kiss me,” she says around another mouthful of popcorn.
I’m pretty good at translating full-mouth talking, mostly because it’s my first language.
Also, now that she mentions it, I wonder how much luck a kiss could really bring.
Probably not much. Especially once I finally force myself to ask her if she’ll pretend go out with me.
Plus, superstitions aren’t really my thing, but I’m happy to humor two lovely ladies who believe in them.
I force a grin and settle back against the couch. “Luck comes from all kinds of places,” I tell her.
Probably not from doing the Hollywood cop-out of taking a girlfriend to make you look good, but definitely from other places.
Sarah slides her phone out of her pocket, and I go momentarily tense until I realize she’s not planning on snapping a picture of the three of us to post on social media, which wouldn’t actually be a bad thing for my image. I’m just falling very quickly out of love with the entire word image, and after almost having to pay a woman off to not post a sex video of me pre-second-paternity test, I still get jumpy.
But she’s pulling up a YouTube feed of a giraffe eating in a concrete enclosure.
Duh. She doesn’t want pictures with me. Or videos with me. She wants to be left alone.
But here I am, not leaving her alone.
“Is that the giraffe at the Copper Valley zoo?” I ask her.
“Pregnant and due anytime in the next six weeks,” she confirms. “Her name’s Persephone.”
“Is it bad luck to watch a pregnant giraffe when you’re supposed to be watching the Fireballs?” I murmur while I watch the giraffe chewing on grass out of a feeding bucket right at her head level.
“It would be worse luck for giraffes to go extinct.”
“Whoa. Did you see the size of her tongue?” I lean in closer to get a better look at the screen. She has an older model phone, one of those smaller devices that Ellie’s always telling me fit better in a woman-size hand and a woman-size pocket. I catch a whiff of caramel and coffee, and when my arm brushes hers, she tenses.
I pull back, because dude, personal space.
This growing fascination is clearly not reciprocated. “Sorry. Forgot about the bubble.”
She shifts those big dark eyes at me, her brows furrowing like I’m a weirdo.
“Personal bubble,” I clarify. “Ellie reminds me every time I’m in town that not everyone’s comfortable with a stranger being all up in their junk.”
Mackenzie coughs. “How many people are watching?” she asks Sarah, who mumbles a number in response.
“Did you just say five million?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Holy shit, Sarah. That’s ten times as many people as were watching yesterday.”
She doesn’t answer, but her cheeks are getting a splotchy red.
“Whoa, did you see that strike?” I say.
Mackenzie glances at the TV, then back at Sarah. “Five million. Not bad for a little bit of public attention with a short video,” she says quietly.
Sarah shovels a handful of popcorn into her mouth and shuts down the giraffe cam. She’s leaning against the armrest, giving herself a lot of physical space. And she’s not looking at either of us, but instead puts all her attention on the game.
And I’m suddenly insanely curious as to why she hates the limelight.
It’s obvious she does.
But not obvious why.
I know some people are just shy. But I also know she went out and grilled the private security guards we put on the street—for her and Ellie and Wyatt and Tucker—and asked questions most people wouldn’t know to ask.
And last night’s I speak Hollywood—there’s a story hiding under all that thick dark hair and behind those big brown eyes.
And whatever it is, if we can get past it, maybe she’ll still appreciate the extra attention for the giraffes.
Maybe I’m not a total asshole for being here to ask her if we can play the accidental lovers for the world.
Tampa scores twice more, and when the first inning is finally over, Sarah rises and stretches, pulling her jersey high and exposing the barest hint of smooth olive skin at her waist.
I’ve done shoots with supermodels that haven’t left me insanely desperate to know if their skin was as soft as it looks, and I have to shift in my seat to combat the swelling problem in my crotch.
Maybe if she tasers me again, it’ll undo whatever the first shock did yesterday.
Except I’m not actually annoyed at my body’s reaction to her.
More curious.
And definitely intrigued.
But still wary.
“That was fun,” she says with a grimace. “I’m going to check on my bees.”
I watch her hips sway under her jersey while she strolls out of the room and into the kitchen.
And I don’t even realize I’m watching her ass until she disappears.
But I notice when she’s gone.
11
Sarah
Holy hell, he was close.
I step out into the sunshine and take my first full breath since Beck arrived. My bees are buzzing around the wildflower gardens lining the privacy fence, darting between their blocky wooden hives and the petals, and the gentle hum makes my shoulders relax even more.
I tuck myself into one of the outdoor lounge chairs under my pergola after making sure the little fairy fountains set up around my small yard have fresh water, and I pull out my phone again. I’m doing a quick search for my parents’ names on Twitter—even though I’d rather google for a hint about my Vikings in Space game or prep more tweets about the giraffes or even just watch Persephone in her enclosure at the zoo—when my back door opens and the underwear ape sticks his head out.
