Winning my Best Friend's Girl - Piper Rayne Page 0,12
laugh instead of agreeing. She’s one in a fucking million, as cliché as that sounds. But she doesn’t feel the same about me and I’m man enough to admit defeat.
“But before I go full steam ahead, I need to know where your head is,” he says.
Come on, channel drama class from high school, when Mr. Clayton told me to get into character. That I couldn’t be Kingston acting like Crutchie from Newsies—I had to be Crutchie. I argued that I didn’t know what it was like to have a disabled leg, which led to me getting looked at above the rim of his glasses. The classic look he’d give you right before he kicked you out of class and got you suspended from a game of whatever sport you played. Since I was pitching against Greywall that weekend, I did the best damn acting job I could and kept my mouth shut. Which is what I plan to do right now.
I stand and clamp my hand on his shoulder. “Stella is in my rearview mirror, man.”
“You sure?”
“Jesus, Lunchbox.”
He quirks an eyebrow at me. I never use his nickname because I sense he doesn’t much like it. “Okay, subject closed.”
“Good. I’m going down to eat something. You in?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
Finally Lou stops harping on the Stella subject and we head down to the kitchen to find Greasy cooking. Might as well take my Tums now.
“What’s up?” I fist-bump Greasy and grab a bottle of water before sitting at the table.
“Did you see this?” Lou pulls a piece of paper off of the corkboard that’s supposed to be for important news but is usually filled with business cards for the firefighters’ side businesses. Most of us have a second gig, except for me.
Greasy looks over his shoulder. “Yeah, we did that when we were younger. Of course it wasn’t that nice of a place. We had to take a shit in an outhouse. I froze my ass off that year, but we had good times.”
Lou slides the piece of paper across the table to me. It’s an ad for a rental for first responders to use all winter long. You go up on your days off.
Greasy wipes his hands on his apron and hovers over my shoulder. “I might have to leave the missus and sign myself up. That’s right by Alyeska.” He nudges my shoulder. “They’re doing that death skiing with the helicopter up there.”
Lou chuckles.
“You mean heli-skiing, and it’s not death,” I say, shaking my head.
“It’s not safe either,” Lou says, mostly because he’s too chickenshit to fly up a mountain on a helicopter and ski down. If he only knew I plan to speed ride this winter—skiing with a parachute. Lou picks up the paper again. “I think we should do it. Guy days. We’ll have a blast.”
It’s tempting. Especially now that Stella’s back. Get out of Lake Starlight and Anchorage on my days off. Plus Greasy’s right. Being by the mountain will let me do all the crazy shit I want. “Yeah, I’m—”
Tank walks in. “You guys saw the flyer? There are a few openings, but the nurses are taking them like they’re One Direction reunion tickets, so you better grab your spot if you want in.” Tank pulls a Gatorade out of the fridge and straddles the chair.
“I thought it was a firefighter thing?” Lou inspects the piece of paper as if there’s some fine print somewhere.
“It says first responder.” Tank points at the bold block letters on the top of the page. “It’s actually one of the doctor’s houses, I guess. He’s renting it out for the entire winter because his wife is pregnant, and they can’t go that far away. I’m not sure of the whole story, but it’s a quick way to find out who’s single in our small circle.” He waggles his eyebrows.
“Which nurses?” I ask.
Tank’s gaze falls on me. “Samantha is one.”
I roll my eyes. Of course, I do want to pick her brain about the Alaska Adventure Race she was talking about when we went out.
“Who else?” Lou presses.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize Lou wants to know if Stella is going in on it. Although she loves to ski, I’m not sure if she would want to be away from her mom.
Tank shrugs. “Don’t know. It doesn’t really matter since you have no idea, with the schedules, who you’ll be up there with.”
“I’m not signing up for some shit where I end up sleeping on the floor with, like,