Playbook (The Holland Brothers 2), page 5
“Alec,” the girl hisses. London.
I like her name. I like her. She’s all fiery and not afraid to walk across a bar and call out a guy she doesn’t even know. I respect it.
Alec clears his throat and stands tall, letting his hand fall back to his side. “Was a big fan.”
“Is everything okay?” Cody steps up beside me. He’s a grumpy asshole, but he has my back and it’s obvious something is going down. I spot Archer eyeing up the situation as well.
“Fine,” I tell him.
“No, it isn’t fine,” London says, shifting her weight and drawing my attention back to her hot as fuck red shoes.
I drop my voice. “I am sorry about the mail. I forgot about the PO Box.”
“You forgot?!”
All right, not the right thing to say.
“I’m sorry.” Short and concise. Say less, Brogan.
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. It makes her long brown hair fall over her shoulders. “I don’t need you to be sorry about the used panties stuffed into my mailbox every day; I just need you to make it stop. Maybe you could let your girlfriends know you’ve moved?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I say dumbly. Did she say used panties? Yikes. Things have really escalated.
“Just hundreds of women with whom you engage in kinky mail play?”
“Kinky mail play?” I mouth the words, barely whispering. I hold my hands out. “I think you’ve got the wrong idea.”
Cody cackles beside me and suddenly more people are listening in. I think I catch one person with their phone out recording. Perfect. Billy Boone will have a field day with this.
“Look, I’m not interested in what gets you off or whatever explanation you’re about to make up on the spot now. Your secret is safe with me, just for the love of god please keep it out of my box.”
And with that, she turns on her sexy red heels and stalks off.
I don’t know what the hell just happened, but I am undone.
FIVE
“Oh my gosh.” Paige is folded over with laughter. I sip my wine, a resigned smile tugging at my lips. Tuesday night happy hour with my best friend is exactly what I needed. I feel lighter than I have in days.
“Shut up, it’s not that funny.”
“You yelled at this guy.” She holds up her phone and aims the screen at me. A picture of Brogan in his Mavericks uniform stares back at me. He’s holding his helmet in one hand, and his brown hair is sweaty and pushed away from his face. He’s ridiculously good-looking. I’d think this photo couldn’t possibly be real if I hadn’t seen him in person.
Three days have passed and I still feel an odd mix of pride for standing up for myself and embarrassment for yelling at a local hero. Or at least that’s what Alec called him after he we left the club.
“I’m sure that he’s already forgotten about the whole interaction.” And it’s not like I’m ever going to run into him again.
“Of course he has women sending him their used panties, I mean look at the guy.”
“Oh, I’ve seen him.”
“Better or worse-looking in person?” She sets her phone in her lap and leans forward.
An image of Brogan flashes in my mind. The look on his face as I yelled at him, the way his shirt pulled across his broad shoulders, the warm brown of his eyes. He’s photogenic in pictures (I spent the night after the incident looking him up and scrolling through every picture I could find), but in person, he just has something about him that makes him larger than life, irresistible even.
“Better,” I admit finally. “Probably the hottest person I’ve ever seen in real life.”
“Oh, really?” Her voice trails off in a tone I know too well. That voice has set me up on numerous blind dates and once convinced me to sign up for a dating app.
“He’s a professional football player and underwear model,” I say. “And I yelled at him.”
“You’re hot. He’d be so lucky to let you yell at him again.”
Something only a true best friend would say.
Thankfully she drops it and asks, “What are you doing the rest of the night? Do you want to grab dinner or do a little shoe shopping?”
“I can’t. I gotta work.”
“You just left work,” she says, one brow cocked.
“Illustration jobs have picked up. I’m booked through the month.” I try to brush it off, but in true best friend fashion, she latches right onto it.
“Lo, that’s amazing. I’m so happy for you. You are so talented. I’ve told you a million times that you should be doing that full-time instead of wasting away at that stuffy news station. Have I not told you that? I framed the drawing you did of me and Pat at our wedding.”
Her excitement is the encouragement I didn’t realize I needed.
“Get your parents out of your head,” she says with a stern look. I hadn’t been thinking of them, but now I am. They don’t think my freelance work is a “real job.” They think I need a stable, steady job with benefits and a corporate ladder to climb. Part of it is just that they’re still salty I didn’t go to law school like planned. But after two years you’d think they’d be over it.
“Thanks. I need that stuffy job to pay the bills though. I don’t know if I’ll ever make enough from the side projects to do it full-time, but it feels good to be creative.”
My job at the news station is fine. I do graphic design for the website and social media pages, but there isn’t a lot of room for creativity. I have specific colors and fonts I can use so that it’s all cohesive and branded.
My freelance clients have a broad range of needs and wants. I get a lot of portrait requests, character art, and right now I’m even working on an illustration for a fantasy book cover.
“Well, I’m proud of you. And you know I will blast your information to all my clients. Do you have some business cards I can hand out during open houses? They’re all still using paper.”
Paige works for her family’s estate sale business. She organizes and hosts estate sales for clients to sell off household items to prepare for the house to be rented or sold. We met in college. She studied interior design, even though she already knew she was going to work for the family business. Her husband, Pat, works there too. He does a lot of the heavy lifting, moving furniture around to stage for the sale and then delivering it after it’s sold.
“I don’t think that’s exactly my target audience,” I tell her.
“These old people have money to spend,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “Last weekend I sold a fifty-piece basket collection for over five thousand dollars. Baskets! Who needs five grand worth of baskets?”
I snort a laugh. “What do you even do with that many baskets?”
“No idea, but I’d bet they’re also looking for portraits of cats and dogs, maybe the grandkids.”
“Perhaps cats and dogs in baskets?” I tease.
“Definitely.” She laughs. “I am happy to pimp you out as the official Stephenson Family Estate Sale company artist.”
“And I love you for that, but I’m okay. Truly. A few of my clients have already booked more projects with me later in the year. I know there will be slow months with only word of mouth marketing, but I don’t have enough hours to spare anyway. Slow and steady is just fine with me.”
“All right, but just say the word.” She eyes me closely like she wants to make sure I’m not pushing her away when I really need a life raft.
Maybe I’m being stubborn, but I want to do it on my own with clients that I connect with. It’s all been mostly referral so far and that’s allowed me to build slowly. Cats in baskets isn’t a bad fallback plan though.
“All right, well, I am going to do some shopping for Pat and my’s vacation.”
I groan. “Don’t go.”
She’ll be gone the weekend of Sierra’s engagement party, and I really wish Paige could be my plus one. Maybe it wouldn’t be so awful with her to help me suffer through.
“You should just come with us. Tell your family that as my maid of honor, you’re required to be there for the honeymoon. Besides, this is just Sierra’s first wedding. I’m sure there will be others.”
I laugh, something loosening in my chest at everything she just said. Even if I know it’s not true. Or I hope it’s not.
“I am not going on your honeymoon with you. I love you, but I draw the line at a threesome.”
She snorts. “It’s hardly a honeymoon when our wedding was almost three months ago. We’ve banged a lot of the newlywedded-ness out of our systems.”
I seriously doubt that. I’ve seen how handsy they are even after being together for three years before getting married earlier this spring.
“Speaking of…” I slink down in my seat. “I may have let sex Saturday slip to Alec.”
She laughs instead of shooting daggers at me, but still I feel bad.
“I’m sorry. I was drunk and spiraling…”
“It’s fine. Everyone should schedule sex. I like to guarantee an orgasm once a week.”
I can hardly argue with that.
“So you’re not coming to the beach with us?” she asks, knowing the answer.
“I have to be at the engagement party. She’s my sister,” I say. And as worried as I am about it all happening so fast, I wouldn’t miss it. “Plus, I’m not letting Chris get off that easily. He’d think I was hiding from him because I’m still obsessed with him or something.”
“I don’t know. Not showing up could be a real power move.”
“He’s too egotistical to see it that way.”
“Fuck him,” she says, and I arch a brow. Paige rarely cusses. “Seriously,” she continues. “He was lucky your standards were so low in college. You deserve so much better.”
I laugh again and nod my head in agreement, but my throat tightens. It isn’t that I think she’s wrong. I’ve accepted that Chris is an asshole and not the amazing guy I believed him to be during our relationship. I was young and in love. Stupid love.
Paige stands. “All right. I’m gonna go.”
She pushes the strap of her purse over her shoulder and steps toward me. “Love you, Lo. Text me later and let’s hang out this weekend. Should we hit the club?”
I glare at her, then wrap my arms around my friend. “I’m never going back there again.”
On the way home from happy hour, I stop to get my mail. I brace myself as I turn the key but when I open the small, metal box it’s empty, or nearly empty. I pull out the two envelopes – both perfume and lipstick-free. I double-check because it feels too good to be true, but yep, both are for me.
Today must be a slow mail day for Brogan’s harem. And then my eye catches on the sender’s name written in the upper left-hand corner on one of the envelopes. Brogan Six.
I glance around, half-expecting him to jump out at me, but I’m alone. I close and lock my mailbox and then carefully open the letter. His handwriting is small and neat and fills only about a quarter of the page.
Dear London,
Nice to meet you Saturday night. I’m sorry about the mail mix-up. It should be taken care of now, and your box should be free of my panty kink. If you run into any more problems, let me know.
I really am sorry, and I think you got the wrong idea about me. Can I make it up to you?
Brogan
SIX
Friday morning I’m in a staff meeting, struggling to keep my eyes open. Once a month we have these big department-wide meetings with management and members of the executive team. It always feels a little like they whisk in totally unprepared and hurried, as if this is just one of many meetings on the docket for the day and we’re clearly not the most important.
My boss, Wayne, is standing in front of the conference room going over all the projects we’re currently working on.
“And finally, the T-shirt design for the picnic next month.” On the large screen in front of us, the mock-up of the shirt displays.
One of my coworkers, Shane, glances over at me and smiles. The whole team pitched concepts to Wayne, but he picked mine. A surprise since he hadn’t shared that with me or anyone else as far as I know.
My design is simple, really. It says Channel 3 in the same style and font that is used on all the branding, but I made the inside of the letters a red and white checkered design to fit the whole picnic theme.
I’m pretty proud of it actually. I don’t get to use a lot of creativity on the other projects I’m given. It’s all consistency and following the style guide.
I glance around the table to gauge the reaction of management, and they’re all smiling and nodding. Not in a super excited way, but in what I like to think of as the executive nod of approval. It screams “that’ll do.”
The VP of our department is perhaps the most impressed. She sits forward and turns her gaze to the three other executives. “I think it’s quite good. Any objections?”
There are none, and I allow myself to feel a little excitement. The entire company is going to be wearing T-shirts I designed. It’s sadly the coolest thing that’s happened since I started working here.
“Great job, Wayne.” She beams at my boss. “You have a wonderful eye for design.”
My cheeks heat with the compliment she doesn’t even realize she’s giving me, and I wait for Wayne to correct her assumption that he did it.
He doesn’t.
“Thanks,” he says instead. “I thought it had a nice, simple but sophisticated, fun feel to it.”
That’s exactly what I had said to him when I submitted it.
The meeting adjourns and everyone is quick to leave. I hang back to talk to my boss. When he sees it’s just the two of us, he offers me a small smile. There’s no hint of remorse on his face or even embarrassment like I would expect from someone who just publicly claimed my work as theirs.
“You went with my design,” I say, trying to keep my calm.
“Yeah. They loved it.”
“Why didn’t you correct them when they assumed you came up with it?”
“Ah, you know how the executives are,” he says, casually gathering up his laptop and notebook. “It looks better for the whole team if it comes from me.”
“But it didn’t come from you.”
“You work for me, so in a way, it did.”
I don’t know what to say or even feel. I’m angry and hurt. I feel betrayed, but then silly because it’s just a dumb shirt design.
He starts to walk out of the room, but turns with his hand on the doorknob. “Oh, and I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your raise.” Wayne’s mouth turns down at the corners. “Human Resources has put a freeze on raises company-wide. I’m sorry.”
After work, I swing by to get my mail and have another letter from Brogan. I must have read the last one a dozen times. Did I spend an embarrassing amount of time wondering how he wanted to make it up to me? Yes. But there was no way I was replying. I don’t want to be another woman sending him embarrassing mail.
London,
I don’t know if you got my last letter. Someone should really invent read receipts. Anyway, I feel really bad about not forwarding my mail sooner. Also, I’m not really into collecting panties—used or clean. How about dinner or drinks this weekend?
Brogan
His number is scrawled along the bottom. Dear god, the man gave me his phone number. Does he really think I’m going to call him up like he’s just some normal guy? I try to picture what it would be like to go out to dinner with Brogan, and laugh. It’s too ludicrous to even imagine.
I stuff the letter into my purse and head home. Alec has been gone all week to some big weatherman conference or something, so I order takeout and pour myself a glass of wine.
I flip through the channels while I eat and drink. I have a few new projects that I need to work on, but I’ve found that I’m able to be more creative if I take a couple hours break between jobs to reset.
There’s nothing good on and I’m about to turn off the TV when I see his face. Brogan. His and several other Mavericks players’ team photos are lined up, and the sports announcers talk about their expectations for the season.
I pull out his letters from my purse and reread them. They’re sort of oddly sweet. He does seem sincere in his apology. He’s just misguided in thinking I need him to take me out like I’m some sort of fan. I feel like I’m getting a pity invite or something. Or worse, he’s just trying to have sex with me. I don’t need a relationship or anything serious from a guy, but I don’t think I’m cut out for casual with a guy who is used to women throwing themselves at him. I know guys like that. They’re only interested until they feel like they’ve “won.”
Either way, something tells me he’s going to keep sending me letters until I make it very clear that we’re all good and that I’m absolutely not sleeping with him.
That’s the only rationale I can come up with when I find myself pulling out a piece of paper and writing him back.
Dear Brogan,
I received your letters. Consider this your read receipt. My box being panty and perfume-free is all I need, so thanks, but no thanks to the dinner or drinks. Might I suggest you invite one of your other pen pals?
London
It’s the weirdest letter I’ve written in my entire life, but I don’t take time to rewrite it. Instead I fold it and rummage around until I find a stray envelope that probably went with a greeting card I never sent. Once it’s addressed and stamped, I feel better. Sayonara, Brogan Six.
The following Tuesday, I get another letter. My surprise and annoyance quickly turn to amusement as I read. He’s funny. I don’t remember that about him.
Dear London,
Would you believe me if I said I’ve never written back to any of them? Well, none that sent panties. There are occasionally other types of mail I get. Just the other day I got a letter from Conner in Missouri. He said he was my biggest fan, so I sent him a jersey and a signed photo. Wait. Does that make me sound cringe? I hope not, but honestly sometimes it feels cringe. It’s still weird to me that people want my autograph.
