“Damn, you’re playing dirty tonight.” Mitch, my accuser, throws his cards onto the table as I rake in my chips.
“I’m playing poker, Mitchell. It’s a dirty game.”
He grumbles under his breath along with the four other men around the table as they toss in their cards. My poker companions are all in their seventies and couldn’t care less that I’m a world-famous professional soccer player. As soon as they figured out that I didn’t play baseball, basketball, or American football, I was chopped liver. More than fine by me after living over a decade in a place where soccer players are royalty, hounded by the paparazzi, constantly under the microscope. Compared to that, the poker guys are a breath of fresh air.
I met them through Mitch, who’s my neighbor—not my immediate neighbor, but he lives in the neighborhood. And I met Mitch when I was seeing a specialist about my forever fucked-up back and he was there for his knee replacement follow-up, both of us sitting in the waiting room. I drove him home after his appointment since he mentioned he’d used public transportation, and when we realized how close we lived, there was no damn sense in him taking a bus when I could drive him. By the time I’d dropped him off, somehow I’d gotten myself roped into not only weekly poker nights with his buddies, but hosting them, too.
The table’s littered with snacks, sweets, and seltzer cans. You think teenagers eat a lot, watch out for five septuagenarians. They’ll clean out your pantry in one night.
“I need a drink,” Lou grumbles, his silver afro swaying as he shakes his head and scowls at Jim.
Stacking my chips in order, I tell him, “I’d be glad to oblige if the alcohol police here didn’t ban all the fun.”
“It’s contraindicated for my meds!” Jim snaps. “If I can’t have fun, none of you assholes get to either.”
Collective grumbles fill the room as Jorge deals.
Itsuki pokes my bicep. “What’s on your mind? You’re particularly bad-tempered tonight.”
I glare down at him. He smiles back. He’s not remotely frightened of me. None of them are. It’s strange. Everyone else is scared of me. I’m six-four, big-boned, my voice sounds like gravel-laced ice, and my sentences are eighty-five percent profanity. These guys don’t care. They simply roll with how I am and tease me along the way.
I know if anyone would hear what turned my day to shit and not judge me for it, it’s them. I’m just too used to holding my cards close, in every sense of the word.
“Nothing,” I mutter, sweeping up my cards from the table.
“Nothing,” they all mock-grumble.
“Oi.” I glare at them.
“C’mon,” Jorge croons, rearranging his cards. “Just get it out. You’ll feel better. Less constipated.”
“I’m not constipated, you pink-haired troll.”
Jorge pats his rose-gold-dyed hair, which, while annoyingly bright, I will concede, complements his warm, golden-brown skin rather nicely. “Emotionally, you are.”
“Am not.”
Itsuki, Jorge’s partner, gives me a long, serious look. “Oh dear.”
“What?” Jorge hugs his cards to his chest and leans in. “What is it?”
Itsuki sets a hand over mine. “I think our boy’s been bitten by the love bug.”
The room erupts.
Who is he? Tell us about him! What’s he like? Have you kissed?
“Oi!” I yell.
They fall silent.
“I have not been bitten by the fucking love bug. I…” My voice dies off. Mitch gives me an encouraging nod. I clear my throat roughly, glaring down at my cards. “I…may have experienced a…professional…setback…today.”
Jim wrinkles his nose, feigning thought. “What the hell do you even do again?”
Mitch tuts disapprovingly. “Go easy on him.”
“Man, I’m still mad about that,” Lou says. “Mitch reels us in with some shit about you being a big-deal professional athlete. I’m picturing seats behind home plate at Dodgers Stadium, a nice, toasty box at the arena. I’m seeing courtside with the Lakers, the fifty-yard line at SoFi Stadium, and what do you do? Kick a bathroom-tile-looking ball around and run so long you make me tired.”
Itsuki snorts a laugh, then schools his expression. “That wasn’t nice, Louis. Besides, I like soccer. It’s very calming.”
“You’re watching the wrong kind of soccer, then,” I tell him.
“Back to the matter at hand,” Mitch says. “What’s going on?” He leans his elbows on the table, offers a nod of encouragement. His white hair’s a soft cloud white, his matching mustache neat and trimmed. He reminds me so much of Fred, the one person who ever saw something in me, whose kindness changed my life.
Maybe that’s what makes me momentarily shed my typical armor as I gruff, “I have to team up with someone at work who I don’t want to team up with at all.”
A chorus of hmms and oohs echoes around us.
Itsuki asks, “Why not?”
“You don’t get along?” Lou offers.
“I hate sharing air with him,” I snap.
It sounds vicious, but God help me, it’s true. I hate sharing a team, a field, a practice space, a locker room, meetings, you name it, with Oliver Bergman. Sharing captaining is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Jorge frowns at me in curiosity. “Why?”
I bite my cheek, remembering vividly how it felt the first time I saw him two years ago. Like I’d taken a direct kick to the gut. Tall, fast. All long, lithe limbs and easy smiles. He’s everything I once was and more. Young. Happy. Healthy. The world at his feet. Untold possibility on the pitch.
It stung like a thousand papercuts doused in vinegar. It hurt in so many ways. And the last thing I need in my pain-riddled life is one more thing to make me hurt. So I’ve made it abundantly clear to Oliver Bergman I want nothing to do with him.
“Dispositional differences,” I mutter. “Now can we play some fucking cards?”
“Nope.” Jim stands slowly, hands braced on the table. His gaze travels his fellow card sharks. “Gents. You know what we need to do.”
Mitch sighs, scrubbing his face. “I’m going to have to call in sick tomorrow, aren’t I?”
“You’re retired, asshole,” Lou grumps. “I’m the one who’s gonna be hating himself in the morning.”
“Oh dear,” Itsuki says quietly.
“What?” I bark. “What the hell is going on?”
Jorge pats my hand and smiles. “It’s best not to ask questions and just go along for the ride.”
My tongue is sandpaper. My head pounds.
“Fuck.” Groaning, I blink open my eyes, hating the existence of daylight. I’m on my bed, still wearing last night’s clothes, reeking of sweat, fried food, and syrup-sweet tiki drinks.
A vague memory of the night flashes through my mind. The poker guys piled into my Land Rover, commandeering my sound system, dragging me to some hole-in-the-wall that Mitch promised me “nobody who’s anybody knows about.”
I groan again as I slowly roll to my side, then sit up. My body screams in protest over how I slept—my sore knee bent off the bed, my always-aching back twisted sharply.
Breathing slowly, I shut my eyes and try to piece together the rest of the night as pain pulses through my body. I remember karaoke. I definitely didn’t sing. I never would. But the poker guys did, especially Jim, who stuck to mocktails and brought down the house with his version of Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger.”
Clearly I drank a metric shit ton of tropical drinks with those damn tiny paper umbrellas to survive the experience.
Gingerly, I ease off the bed and stand.
“Shit. Fuck. Shit. Shit.” Each step toward the bathroom is agony. My knee hates me. So does my back. So does my neck. Waves of white-hot pain radiate through my body, so intense my stomach churns.
Or maybe that’s the alcohol talking, too.
I vomit, and the pain of my torso contracting, engaging my spasming back muscles, nearly makes me vomit again.
Cursing under my breath, I flush the toilet and gingerly ease myself upright. I avoid my reflection in the mirror, knowing it’ll show me something I don’t want to see, and rinse out the taste of last night’s poor choices.
Fuck, I should not have drunk like that.
After gingerly peeling off my clothes, I step into the shower, hissing as the hot water hits my skin. Once I’ve showered, changed, and gulped down my usual complete-meal breakfast shake, I grab my practice bag, wallet, and keys, pocket my phone, then head out the door.
Which is when I realize my car is nowhere to be seen.
“Fucking hell,” I growl, dragging down my Ray-Bans. The sun’s trying to fry my retinas right out of my head.
“Morning, neighbor!”
My jaw clenches at the sound of his voice. Yes, this is the worst part. Not only do I have to see Oliver Bergman nearly every goddamn day, January through December, I live next door to him.