“So, you work with these guys?” He nods toward the table.
“Unfortunately,” I say, sipping on my drink.
He laughs. “What do you do?”
“Social media for the team.”
“That’s kind of cool. If you hadn’t noticed, we are big hockey fans.” He smirks.
“Not sure what gave it away,” I tease, making him laugh, which pulls Fish’s attention to us. His brows rise, and I see he is checking to see if I need saving, which is kind of sweet. I give him a subtle head shake, and he goes back to his conversation with the boys.
“And what do you do?” I ask back.
“Work in finance, the suit didn’t give it away?” He grins.
“Kind of did. What do you do there?”
“Mergers and acquisitions.”
“So, you buy companies and fire people,” I ask, taking a sip of my drink.
He grimaces a little. “You make me sound like an ass, but you’re not entirely wrong.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s a job.” He shrugs. “Do you like your job?”
I nod. “Yeah, I love it. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but it was always going to be something with hockey.”
“You’re a big hockey fan then?” he asks.
“Had no choice. My father was a player, as are my brothers.”
He stills, his beer bottle paused on his lips. “Do they play for the Mavericks?” he tentatively asks. I nod. His eyes widen. “Are they here?”
I shake my head. “If they were there would be no way in hell I could be talking to you right now.”
He seems surprised. “Your brothers are protective, I take it.”
“Suffocatingly.” I groan, which makes him laugh.
“My sister would probably say the same thing about me.” He chuckles lightheartedly.
“Well, on behalf of your sister, stop it,” I warn him, which makes his grin widen even more.
Griffin is easy to talk to. He’s smart, he listens, and he doesn’t make every conversation a competition, which is refreshing when your daily existence involves men who think the most interesting topic in any room is themselves. We talk about New York, about how I just moved here, about how he grew up on the Upper West Side.
“Where did you move from?” he asks.
“South Dakota.”
“Oh wow. New York must seem crazy compared to South Dakota,” he says, sipping his beer.
“Look, I loved my time in South Dakota, and I miss the wide-open spaces, my friends, the safety of it, but I’ve always wanted to live in New York. Maybe because I grew up on Gossip Girl or something, but I just felt like it was for me.”
“I get that, New York is amazing. It just has something that other cities don’t.”
“Oh great,” I grumble as I see a group of puck bunnies converge onto our table. Three of them, glossy and polished, appear out of nowhere with the kind of precision that suggests a group chat pinged the second the boys walked through the door. They descend on them within minutes of walking into the club.