“Okay, I’ll call you right back. What’s your number?”
“What, the old-school house phone doesn’t have caller ID?”
“My dad likes the model with the chunky numbers he can see better, so no caller ID.”
“Tony is the king.” He laughed and gave me his number. “You better get that door before the Girl Scouts leave.”
“You think it’s the Girl Scouts?”
“I think it’s either Girl Scouts selling cookies, or you need a minute to figure out what you want your answer to be. Either way I’m cool, but Thin Mints are always a win so call me back in five minutes, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, smiling in spite of myself as I hung up the phone.
What the hell, what the hell?I sat there on the kitchen counter, gripping the cat, unable to believe what had just happened. Connor Cunningham had literally just called and asked me out. On a date.
Connor Fucking Cunningham.
I looked down at my fuzzy Coyote socks and tried wrapping my head around it. I mean, had I beencharmingon the show—was that it? Had I somehow managed to pass off my awkward personality as…flirtatious? It was possible,but I also fainted and mocked his butterfingers, so…incredibly unlikely.
“Duffy!” my dad yelled from the basement. “Get your ass down here before you call him back.”
I sighed and ran down the stairs. “Did you seriously listen after you said you were hanging up?”
“Of course I did!” The man was beaming. “Connor Cunningham was on the phone—like I was gonna miss the conversation.”
I barely blinked when I saw all three of my older brothers down there. They came and went as they pleased, and it never fazed me anymore.
“That’s kind of rude, don’t you think?” I asked.
“You’re going to go out with him, right?” he asked, completely ignoring what I said.
“Of course she is,” Joey, my oldest brother, said. He was just as big of a football fan as my dad and was currently on the couch, watching the Gophers game, two beers in.
He never tossed his empties until he was finished drinking, the wad, so I always knew how manyinhe was.
“Shut up, I just need to think,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Of coursemy brothers were available to weigh in when I didn’t want them to; that was their area of expertise. They were good at popping in when it was convenient for them, spewing opinions, then leaving me to deal with my father’s interpretations of their ideas.
All three of them lived in the Twin Cities, all three were single, and all three were total workaholics (which was strange when they’d been lazy pains in the asses when we were kids). They were good about calling my dad every day and swinging by a couple times a week, but their devotion to the sixty-hour corporate workweek had left me as the default kid-in-attendance at things like games and Saturday-night Mass.
“I wouldn’t do it if I were you,” Tyler, the second oldest, said. He was sitting on the yoga ball they used as a chair when theyplayed Xbox, bouncing on it idly. “I think he seems like a douche.”
“He does not,” I said in Connor’s defense, even though I didn’t know if I was going to go out with him or not.
I’d never seen Connor act douchey, and I’d been a casual observer of that man since he’d been drafted by the Coyotes. If he was douchey, surely I’d know.
“You’d become the chosen child, that’s for damn sure,” Matty said. He was the youngest of the three, but still a year older than me. “Everyone knows I’m the favorite, but if you start dating Cunningham, Dad will lose his shit.”
“I won’t lose my shit,” my dad said, shaking his head. “Unless Cunningham gets me in the owner’s suite. Thenof courseDuff will be my favorite forever.”
I looked at my dad, the way he was grinning, and I realized that I kind of had to say yes.
Because it really would make himsohappy. One date—I instinctively knew it would be only one—and he could tell his buddies that his Duff had actually done something cool. Hopefully it’d offset the “trouble” I’d gotten into with Carl (insert a thousand eye rolls) that a few of them still weren’t over.
The mascot didn’t mean any harm, Duff.
He probably didn’t even know what he was grabbing, kid. You ever worn one of those suits?