Winter Ball E-Book

Amy Lane

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Winter Ball
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 302

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

a Winter Ball novel Through a miserable adolescence and a lonely adulthood, Skipper Keith has dreamed of nothing but family. The closest he gets is the rec league soccer team he coaches after work—and his star player and best friend, Richie Scoggins. One brisk night in late October, a postpractice convo in Richie's car turns into a sexual encounter neither of them expected—nor want to forget. Soon Skip and Richie are living for the weekends and their winter league soccer games—and the games they enjoy off the field. Through broken noses, holiday decorating, and the killer flu, they learn more about each other than they ever dreamed possible. Every new discovery takes them further beyond the boundaries of the soccer field and into the infinite possibilities of the best relationship of Skipper's life. Skipper can't dream of a better family than Richie—but Richie's got real family entanglements he can't shake off. Skipper needs to convince Richie to stay with him beyond winter ball so the relationship they started on the field might become their happy future in real life!

Leseprobe

Winter Ball

By Amy Lane

Through a miserable adolescence and a lonely adulthood, Skipper Keith has dreamed of nothing but family. The closest he gets is the rec league soccer team he coaches after work—and his star player and best friend, Richie Scoggins.

One brisk night in late October, a postpractice convo in Richie’s car turns into a sexual encounter neither of them expected—nor want to forget. Soon Skip and Richie are living for the weekends and their winter league soccer games—and the games they enjoy off the field. Through broken noses, holiday decorating, and the killer flu, they learn more about each other than they ever dreamed possible. Every new discovery takes them further beyond the boundaries of the soccer field and into the infinite possibilities of the best relationship of Skipper’s life.

Skipper can’t dream of a better family than Richie—but Richie’s got real family entanglements he can’t shake off. Skipper needs to convince Richie to stay with him beyond winter ball so the relationship they started on the field might become their happy future in real life!

To Mate, especially this time, because Mate is like Skipper. He didn’t imagine himself a leader, but he became one because he loved the game. And to my three kids in soccer, because it’s part of their blood, and my one who took karate instead, because he still knows that feeling of belonging that a sport can give you.

And to Mary, who, when I pointed out that this story was Cinderella from the prince’s point of view and that Winter Ball was almost a pun, almost cried. Because yes. Everybody should have his or her own fairy tale, just for them, and a Happy Ever After.

Illuminate the Goal

SCOGGINS WAS at it again.

“Offsides? I wasn’t offsides! You assholes wouldn’t know offsides if it walked up and bit you on the—”

“Ass?” Skipper Keith supplied dryly. “C’mon, Richie, you’re gonna get a red card. Can we just play some fuckin’ soccer?”

Scoggins rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath, but he settled down. Skip had always held that sort of power over Richie, and everybody on the team knew it. “Yeah, fine, but that redheaded linebacker shoulders me in the ribs one more time, all bets are off.”

The redhead was nearly six eight. Slow as a drugged and lumbering milk cow, yes, but effective. Nobody wanted to go up against him for the ball, and Skipper had his own bruises that no shin guard could protect against.

“I’ll take him,” Skipper said, because he was bigger than Richie, for one, and because he knew it wasn’t personal for another. Richie Scoggins’s hair was as red as the other team’s defender’s, and his temper—holy shit, was it hot.

They lined up for the ball, and Scoggins took center and made the pass. Skipper suddenly had a clear run up the field, the westering sun in the chill October evening casting an ethereal path to the god of the goal.

Skipper and Scoggins, they were true believers.

Dribble, dribble, pass, dodge, dribble—they’d been playing together since tech school, when Skipper walked into a computer class they’d shared with a flyer for rec league adult soccer. They’d both had jobs. Neither one of them had time to play for the school team, but rec league? Thatthey could do.

Six years later, they worked their separate jobs and did this: practiced and played soccer every Thursday evening, essentially with the same guys they’d played with since tech school.

Knowing the team comforted Skipper. Winning with them exhilarated him.

“Scoggins!” he called, seeing his way blocked, and Scoggins was right there, ready to take the ball. Skip pulled back to avoid the offside charge and let Scoggins go for it, hauling ass, dodging the big Scottish warrior to his left, wily little Menendez (the traitor who used to play for their team) on his right, and he kicked! Very nice—he lofted the ball up, up, and up….

“Goal!” Scoggins screamed, arms above his head. “Goal! Goal! Goal! The Scorpions have won again!” Not technically true—they still had some time left, but just as Skipper opened his mouth to say that…

…the ref blew the whistle to end the game.

Much cheering ensued: hugging, hand-clasping, backslapping, butt-slapping, and sweaty male bodies hopping around to keep warm in the chill. Finally they grabbed their sweatshirts from the sidelines and walked off the slightly swampy middle school field with the irregular grass, and up the rise to their cars.

Where they proceeded to break a couple of rules by digging into the ice chest in the back of Richie Scoggins’s Honda Accord.

The party was equal opportunity—the fall rec league season had ended with this game. There was nothing left but the tournament over the weekend (where the Scorpions would probably get slaughtered, because they were up against a lot of guys who’d played in college instead of tech school and who practiced three times a week instead of just one) and the inevitable question.

“Yo!” Menendez threw out, wiping his face with the back of his hand. In the daytime, he worked up in Folsom at Intel, but down here in Citrus Heights, he used words like yo. “Are we doing winter ball this year?”

“I don’t know,” Skipper threw back. “You gonna play with us?”

Menendez grimaced. He’d signed up late this quarter and had gotten put on the Dirty Dogs. That big Scottish warrior had hogged the ball a lot. “I am if we sign up this week!” he said, hauling his fingers through his curls. “Man, tell me we can play ball again. I know all you guys got family, but soccer’s, like, the only thing to get me through the holidays!”

Scoggins tapped Skipper’s back gently, and Skipper nodded. Yeah, Scoggins had family, but Skipper had met them more than once when he’d gone to pick him up for the movies or to go out on a Friday night. Some family was worse than no family.

Which was what Skipper had. His parents had split when he was twelve, his dad was incommunicado, and his mom had died of liver cirrhosis right after he got out of school.

“I feel ya,” he said, then looked around to the other twelve guys he played with. Skipper’s real name was Christopher. The team called him Skipper because that first quarter, their coach had bailed, and Skip had sort of captained that ship.

“What do you say, guys? We only need ten and a goalie, so if some of you got kids and in-laws and shit this Christmas, you can bail.”

Three of them did bail, but that left Cooper, McAlister, Thomas, Galvan, Owens, Jefferson, Jimenez, Singh, Menendez, and Scoggins—so, one for sub.

There was a round of high fives and a toast with everyone’s mostly empty beer, and Skipper made a mental note to start the paperwork the next day.

“I’ll remind you,” Scoggins said as the last of the guys wandered away, leaving them alone. Full night had fallen, and Richie shivered. He was the only one who hadn’t brought a sweatshirt.

Skipper had parked right next to him—their two silver Honda Accords bore the butt prints of pretty much every guy on the team at this point—and he reached into the back of his car and hauled out his black zip-up hoodie, then threw it at Richie because he hated to see Richie cold.

Richie didn’t get a lot of mothering—or fathering for that matter—even though he pretty much ran his parents’ junkyard business. He showed up, did the accounts, got bitched at for not helping on the jobs, and kept the business afloat. Someone needed to take care of Richie. Skipper had seen that even when they were in school. Richie was a good guy—would stay up late to help friends study, always brought the beer or the chips or the water bottles, and didn’t mind being coskipper to a group of guys who just wanted to fucking play.

“That’s fine,” Skipper muttered, yawning. “You remind me. Tomorrow’s gonna be our team building anyway—”

“Where you going?” Richie asked, entranced as always by Skipper’s few corporate perks.

Skipper had tried to tell him that the tech firm he worked for wasn’t particularly glamorous, but for Richie? Anything that didn’t involve working with your parents was absolutely top-of-the-line. In a way, it gave Skip a good perspective—everybody got frustrated at work. It was important to remember that he was doing something he was good at, got promotions and raises regularly, and his boss didn’t have the legal right to call him a dumbshit just because she married his father.

“Bowling,” Skip said, finishing off his beer and rounding up the empties. There was a can collection bin by the school. So far nobody had complained about the neatly bagged beer cans once a week, and Skip was going to keep his fingers crossed. He liked this league, but the one beer after the practices or games gave him a social group he just didn’t get at work, so it was a risk he was willing to take.

“Bowling?” Richie sounded tickled. “Seriously? Can I come?”

Skip looked at him: five foot eight of wiry, fierce competitor, and suddenly he sounded like a little girl. “Can you come what? Bowling?”

Richie nodded. “Yeah. I got nothing better to do with my Friday night, and my dad and Kay used to go. I was pretty fucking good, you know?”

It was the first time Richie had ever said anything even remotely pleasant about his parents. “You break up with whatserface?”

“Melanie? Yeah. She’s history.”

Richie was still bouncing on his toes and blowing on his fingers. Skip motioned for him to get in his car. “I’ll sit, we can shoot the shit, ’kay?”

Why not? Skip had the keys to the gate and the coaching paperwork in his car. They could stay there a while before anybody got upset about the two cars parked in front of the middle school.

Richie nodded gratefully and they hurried up and slid in. Skip had to shove the car seat back to accommodate his legs—they’d both bought their cars right out of tech school because of a graduating student discount, but sometimes Skip dreamed of the next-sized car up. Six foot one didn’t feel that tall until you were sitting in the front of a compact car.

Richie’s car was comfortably rumpled. There were a couple of fast-food bags under Skip’s feet, but not too many, and a gym bag and a towel in the back. Skipper had given him a reusable aluminum mug for his coffee in the morning, and that sat in the cup holder, needing to be washed.

Richie turned the key just enough to power the stereo, and then fiddled with his phone until an alternative mix came up. Milky Chance’s “Down by the River” played, and Skip relaxed into it, loving the song and the feeling of autumn that came with it.

“So,” he said after the dance of opening chords washed over him, “Melanie.”

Richie let out a sigh. “She’s not… I mean, she was nice, and we had fun and all, but….” He shrugged. “Not… you know….”

Yeah. Skip knew. Most of Richie’s relationships went like this. He met a girl, they went out on a few dates, saw some movies, ate some dinners, even went to the occasional concert, and then, just when it got to be serious, after the first couple of sleepovers, the relationship ended.

“Man,” Skip said, “it’s not fair to these girls, you know? I mean, you want no strings, find a girl who wants no strings too. There’s no shame in that.”

Richie blew out a breath. “Yeah. Well, it’s not even that I don’t want strings. In fact, I want strings. I’d love strings. I got these dreams, you know?”

Skipper looked at him avidly, his bony cheeks and full lips fully visible in silhouette, illuminated by the sodium lamp outside. “No,” he said, fascinated. “Seriously. Tell me about the dreams.”

Because they were guys, right? They talked about soccer and their shitty jobs and Richie’s terrible parents. They went to concerts and out to movies and out for beers after the games, and hung out at each other’s places playing Xbox and planning the ultimate LAN party that they were both fairly sure would never happen because they were too busy with soccer.

But they didn’t talk about their dreams. Did men talk about their dreams together?

Did Skipper have any dreams besides playing next to Richie?

Richie blew out a breath and grabbed a bottle of water from the flat behind Skip’s seat. The movement brought them in contact, and in the darkened car, Skip was suddenly very… aware.

Very aware of Richie’s small, freckled body.

Skip had seen that small freckled body ripped with muscle, sheening with sweat, charging across the soccer field in the sun. Richie’s shoulders were burned from doing that too much, but you could count every rib and every muscle group, because there wasn’t an ounce to spare on Richie.

That body was right next to Skip’s in the car’s small confines, and Skip had a hard time pushing back an uncomfortable… thing. Ruthlessly he stomped on it until it was of manageable size to hide, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still there.

Richie turned and handed Skip the water; then he grabbed another one for himself.

This time Skip was just inches from his neck.

Richie smelled like sweat, and Skip found himself wondering: if he licked that pale strip of skin in the moonlight, would it be salty? Would Richie crack him across the face with an elbow, or would he shudder, sigh, and melt? Skipper thought that if Richie ever put his lips on Skip’s neck, Skip would probably shudder, sigh, and melt.

Right now, as Richie leaned back in his seat, Skipper was trying really hard not to shudder.

“So,” Skip said, keeping his voice even with an effort. “Melanie? Dreams?”

Richie cracked open his bottle of water and drank deep. When he was done, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and let out a breath. “I want strings,” he murmured to himself. “I do. I just… you know. I sleep with the girl, and the next day, she’s all vulnerable, and I’m all nice to her, and I think, ‘I can do this. I can take care of this girl. She’s a nice girl, and we had fun,’ you know?”

Skip thought back to his last relationship. It had been a while. Oh yeah. Amber of the brown hair and the tight T-shirts and ass-enhancing jeans.

God, she’d been fun. A wicked sense of humor, a filthy mouth, and an obsession with rimming Skip until he came.

Not even thinking about the rim job could make Skip hard, and that was sort of unnatural. That had been part of the reason he’d broken up with her. Yeah, he’d given the requisite reciprocation in bed, but it had felt very… very much like he was filling out an invoice and rendering payment for services performed.

Amber had really loved sex, and Skip hadn’t. It felt like a cheat, really, being with a girl when she was going all out and Skip was going through the motions. Amber had cried the last time they’d been in bed together. I get in bed feeling all sexual and attractive, and I don’t know what you do, Skip, but you make me feel slutty and ashamed.

That was no good.

So Skip got it. He got what Richie was saying. “Yeah,” he responded into the quiet. “I get it. You think, ‘Nice girl. I like her a lot.’”

“Yeah!” Richie looked at him, big green eyes shiny and colorless in the light. “You do. But something about touching them—you know. Guys at school going off on boobs—I remember that. I remember being so excited when I got to see my first boob. I’d been jerking off, like, three times a day, just because that thing sprang up and I needed to keep it down, right?”

Skipper stared. “Jesus, Richie, were you going for a record or something?”

“What? Three times a day?”

“Yeah. It takes me too long to get hard—I couldn’t do it. But you were saying about girls….”

“Well, I thought I’d be so excited, seeing boobs, and Sierra Donovan showed me hers. I totally expected, like, super boner, you know? But there she was, shirt pulled up, boobs… boobing… and I got… nothin’.” He shivered at the memory. “I went through the motions, used my mouth, was real gentle, she even let me put my hand down her pants, which was good, ’cause she came and she walked away happy.”

“But you?” Skipper asked. He shifted in his seat, because embarrassingly enough, imagining Richie, a teenager, stroking someone else’s naked flesh was actually making him a little hard. Usually that didn’t happen unless he was alone in the dark, touching himself.

“I… I didn’t get a stiffie until I got home that night,” Richie said thoughtfully, gazing at his hands on the steering wheel. “And… and it’s like that with all the girls. It’s gotta be in the dark and it’s gotta be closing my eyes and just feeling their hands on me. But in the morning, I look at them and….”

“Yeah,” Skipper muttered. “I get that too.”

Silence fell. The heater wasn’t on, and Richie shuddered, probably because the car was cold inside. Skip went to pull his sweatshirt over his head, because he always ran a little hot.

“No!” Richie protested. “Skip, man, you don’t gotta give me the shirt off your back.”

Skipper paused because taking the sweatshirt off was awkward in the car. “That’s good,” he mumbled through the folds of fleece. “’Cause I’m stuck.”

Richie laughed and slid his hands up Skip’s arms, trying to untangle him from the damn sweatshirt, and Skip struggled and fumbled, trying not to clock Richie in the face or anything. It was a short tussle, but that didn’t stop Richie’s hands from skimming his ribs, his stomach, his chest, his neck. Little touches, impersonal probably, but by the time Skip had wrestled off the damned sweater, he was sweaty, breathless, and, irony of ironies, hard.

He wadded up his sweatshirt and shoved it in his lap.

“Hey!” Richie laughed, grabbing for it. “After all that effort, I’ll take the frickin’ shi—” His hand brushed Skipper’s crotch, and they locked gazes. “…irt?”

Skip closed his eyes, leaned back his head, and moaned. “Please don’t think I’m weird,” he mumbled. “Please. Just… you were talking about sex and then—hey!”

Richie stroked his dick through his shorts again, and everything in Skip’s body tingled.

“Sorry,” Richie mumbled, but he didn’t sound sorry at all. “That’s just….” He took one finger and started at Skip’s groin, then ran a touch up the length of the thing as it was mashed to Skip’s body under the soccer shorts and Under Armour. Richie got to the tip and his finger caught on the ridge through three layers of clothing, and Skip moaned again, closing his eyes.

“If you’re so sorry,” he whispered, “stop touching it! I’m embarrassed enou—”

Richie caught Skip’s hand and brought it to his crotch.

Before Skip even knew what he was touching, his hand closed around a hard cock pushing against Richie’s underwear just like Skip’s was.

Skip’s eyes flew open, and he and Richie regarded each other tensely in the dim light. For a heartbeat Skip thought the moment was over—Richie pulled back just a notch, and his hand relaxed on Skip’s prick.

And something in Skip must have really wanted the moment to go on, because his hand tightened. Richie closed his eyes and parted his full lips….

Skip wanted to taste him more than he’d ever wanted to taste anything in his life.

That first brush of lips was so soft it almost didn’t happen, but it did, and Richie didn’t jerk away or protest or complain, so the second one went a little harder.

Richie’s lips were a little rough, but Skip teased the seam of them with his tongue, and when he opened his mouth, the inside felt softer, like a girl’s, but with this incredible heat.

Skip was cold—he’d given up his sweatshirt, and he wanted that heat.

He pushed forward, swept his tongue in, felt Richie’s response. A shudder racked him, taking no prisoners, and he clenched his hand around Richie’s cock, almost like he was holding on for dear life.

Richie moaned and fumbled at Skip’s soccer shorts. Skip sucked in a breath, and Richie’s clever little hand slid inside and then beneath the Under Armour, which he flipped down with a tight elastic thwack. Skip’s cock sat exposed and quivering in the sensitizing chill.

And then Richie slid his hot, rough hand over the cap and squeezed the shaft.

Skip whimpered into his mouth, helpless.

Richie pulled his head back. “Grab mine,” he commanded.

Skip angled his body so he could use both hands to strip Richie’s shorts and Under Armour down under his ass. He held Richie firm with one hand on his hip and then snuck a peek to make sure he was giving Richie’s fireplug dick a firm and hearty handshake.

Richie moaned and his cock pulsed in Skip’s hand.

Skip closed his eyes again—he had to, because the shudder that rocked him at the feeling of warm flesh in his palm, that was too big to endure with eyes wide open.

A breath of air caught Skip’s leaking cockhead, and the frisson of yearning that shook his body alarmed him on some level. I need. I need I need I need….

He didn’t think he was the kind of guy to need. Amber had called him cold—he was pretty sure most of his girlfriends could agree with that. But Richie’s mouth was hot and open, and his cock seared the skin of Skip’s palm.

Richie’s hand started to jerk almost spasmodically, but Skip felt the rhythm he was trying for. He whispered, “Sh… sh” against Richie’s cheek and took that small, bony, rough hand in his own and taught him to stroke, a little slower, a little smoother…. Oh! Oh yeah!

“Skipper,” Richie begged, and Skip moved his hand back to where it belonged.

Hard and a little slower, smoother. Richie’s every moan, every whimper, drove Skipper up another notch into the unexpected inferno of passion that had opened up in Richie’s Honda Accord.

The music changed from Milky Chance to Mumford & Sons, and as the guitars and banjo and keyboard raced to a pinnacle, a sharp, pounding drive in Skipper’s stomach told him he was going to do the same.

Richie gasped, and a spurt of hot precome scalded Skipper’s fingers. Skipper wanted… wanted… oh Jesus… he wanted so much from this moment, from Richie, from….

He moved his hand off Richie’s hip to his jaw and positioned him for a kiss, a wild, passionate plundering. Richie kept stroking his cock, every callus a delicious bout of friction, every hard-handed squeeze exactly what Skipper needed.

Uh… uh… oh God, Richie’s calluses caught on Skip’s ridge, and it felt so… so good… so….

His entire body tingled, even his elbows and his scalp, and then his taint and his ass and his nipples and… tingling, tightening, cranked until breaking, and… oh… oh… oh….

Richie came for real, his body arching and bucking until he broke the kiss and his come, sticky and creamy and practically boiling with the heat from that furious little body, ran down the backs of Skipper’s fingers, made his grip messy and smooth, and that did it. He arched his ass off the car seat, closed his eyes, and let the tingling take over his entire body, let it ride him, saw stars, and came.

He kept his eyes closed while his breathing adjusted. When he opened them, Richie was right there, his face inches away, his mouth swollen with Skipper’s kisses, cheeks reddened from Skipper’s stubble, eyes wide and shiny and shaken.

Skipper probably looked the same.

They stared at each other for a weighted moment. Skipper let go of Richie’s cock at the same time Richie let go of his.

“Here,” Richie muttered, reaching into one of the fast-food bags. He pulled out a handful of napkins and gave some to Skip. Skip looked at them dumbly. Richie, using gentle movements, took his own napkins and wiped off Skipper’s cock.

“Oh,” Skipper said, feeling dense.

“Here, Skip, lift up your hips.”

Skip did, and Richie pulled his shorts up.

“Thanks. Do you want me to—” He gestured vaguely with the napkins, and then realized Richie’s come was still running from his hand.

He stopped, mesmerized, and then, almost like he couldn’t help it, he moved his hand to his mouth and sucked on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

It was salty and bitter, just like Skip’s own come (boys tasted, just because), but something about how raw it was, tasting Richie like this, rocked Skip, cracked him open to the core, and he shuddered, almost pulling his knees up to his chest, because his groin ached fiercely, and he almost thought he could come again from the taste of Richie’s fluids on his hand.

He opened his eyes and Richie was close in the confines of the car. He took Skip’s hand and searched for the places Skip hadn’t gotten, then started licking, very slowly, very deliberately, until Skip’s fingers were clean.

Skip whimpered again. Oh hell. He wanted. He most definitely wanted again. But shouldn’t they say something? Do something? Oh God, he and Richie had just kissed and given each other hand jobs and…. Skip’s whole body screamed at him.

We must do this again. We must do this again.

“Richie,” he gasped, breathy because Richie’s tongue was still wiggling on the back of his knuckles. “Wh—” What do you want to do? What did we just do? Why haven’t we done this before? What are we going to do now? What does this all mean?

“Bowling,” Richie said, like he couldn’t catch his breath either.

“Bowling?” Skip’s chest hurt with the unspoken questions.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Richie said, nodding like Skip was slow and not catching on.

“Wh—”

Richie’s thumb was covered in ejaculate, and he shoved it into Skip’s mouth. Skip closed his lips around it, flattened his tongue, and sucked hard. His own come filled his senses, and oh, how bad did he want Richie’s again?

“Tomorrow,” Richie repeated, like he was insisting. “We’ll get dinner. I’ll come to your place and watch movies afterward. Tomorrow.”

He was nodding, so Skip nodded too.

He pulled away from Richie’s thumb, scraping the underside lightly with his teeth.

“Tomorrow,” he said breathily. He couldn’t seem to get a good lungful. His whole body refused to cooperate.

He needed to get out of there.

He leaned forward and pecked Richie chastely on the lips, then grabbed his sweater, which had fallen to the floor, and bolted out of the car. He paused with the door open, feeling bereft, feeling relieved.

“Tomorrow?” he asked, suddenly needing to hear it again.

“I promise,” Richie said, searching Skipper’s eyes intently.

“Good.” Skipper nodded.

Richie seemed to see what he’d been looking for, because he smiled, and Skipper shut the door, tugged on his sweatshirt, and hopped into his own car as Richie turned the ignition.

First Kickoff

“YOU GOT a girl comin’ tonight?” Clay Carpenter looked at him funny, and Skipper uneasily pulled out the collar of his green polo shirt.

“No,” he said shortly, tossing his squishy brain-shaped stress ball in the air and keeping an eye open for his phone line. He and the other IT guys all had a rhythm down—you exercised, threw shit in the air, fiddled, fidgeted, and fucked off, right until your phone line rang, and then you did all of that and answered boring questions about how Grok make computer go.

“You shaved. You’re blond—I don’t see stubble until a week after you shave, and you have a jaw out of a DC comic book. There’s no reason for you to shave. What’s the fuckin’ deal?”

Skipper turned to eyeball Carpenter, who was, as usual, out of standard dress code in a baseball jersey and sweats. Carpenter was a big guy—order the extra-special chair big—but he was also dry, funny, and he had a fondness for adorable kitten videos. Skip had once watched him spend a quarter of his paycheck on Doctors Without Borders when an earthquake hit Nepal, because he’d seen something in the disaster footage that had broken his heart. (Skip had never asked what, but he’d pitched in $100 himself, just to make Carpenter feel better.) Skip brought him soy lattes and bran muffins in an effort to help him slim down, but when Carpenter let out a bellow and a screech against his never-ending diet, Skip would go out and fetch his cheeseburger too. He was a friend, not a judge, and whatever Carpenter’s deep-seated emotional issues with food, he was a genuinely good man.

But Skipper wasn’t ready to talk about the night before, even to Carpenter.

“No girl,” he muttered. “Just Richie.” On the field, he was Scoggins. In person, as a person, he was Richie.

To Carpenter, who was a friend, he was Richie.

Odd how Skip had never thought of that before.

Carpenter smiled and paused, then pushed the Talk button on his phone. “Yes, ma’am. Did you turn it off? And then on. Yes, ma’am, reboot it. No, ma’am, I don’t know why it works, maybe it needs a nap. Thank you so much for calling tech support!” Then he looked up at his screen. “Ooh! I gotta chatterer here. Why aren’t you getting any calls?”

Skipper shrugged. Inside he was thinking that he usually walked his clients through consolidating their data, reinitializing their routers, and making sure they had compatible browsers. By the time Skipper was done with a caller, nothing on their computer would go wrong again, ever,so he didn’t get a lot of repeat calls like Carpenter.

“I got no idea. Go, chatter.”

“Yeah, sure, but I’m glad your soccer buddy is coming—you guys talk geek. I need more geek talkers at the bowling thing. God, sports, why?”

Skipper didn’t have an answer—he wasn’t on the social committee—but he actually thought bowling wasn’t a bad idea. Of course, he didn’t have a bad back and swollen feet either—Carpenter probably wasn’t particularly comfortable bowling.

“I dunno, but feel free to talk Halo and Titanfall to your heart’s content.” Oop! There went his phone. “Tesko Tech Business Services, this is Skipper Keith, can I help you?”

He paused for a moment while a courteous, educated voice washed over him. Then he tried not to let his eyes bug out.

“No, sir, I’m not having one over on you. I didn’t even know there was a dog called a skipper-kee. How do you spell that?”

Seriously? He did something totally alien then and picked up a pen, making careful note of the letters as the person on the other end of the line spelled them out.

S-c-h-i-p-p-e-r-k-e.

“Skipper Kee. Huh. Who knew. Well, in my case, my soccer team calls me Skipper, but my first name is Christopher and my last name is, well, Keith. So not ‘key.’ So, you know. Not a schipperke.”

He had to ask the caller to repeat himself twice for the next part of the conversation.

And when he replied, Carpenter couldn’t stop laughing.

“NO!” CARPENTER howled as the bowling balls crashed into pins all around them. “Richie, I shit you not! You should have heard him.”

Skipper groaned, and Carpenter held his fist to his ear, thumb and little finger extended, before he did a passable imitation of Skipper.

“No, sir. I can assure you that no part of this Skipper Keith is black and fuzzy and aggressive either. Yes, that probably is a shame. Did you have any computer needs you wanted me to take care of?”

Richie looked up at Skipper and howled with laughter, clapping and stomping like Carpenter was a regular comedian.

Well, it did make a pretty good story, and frankly, Skipper had been so worried about seeing Richie again that he was grateful that Carpenter had been so eager to share. He’d paced in the lobby of the bowling alley, not caring that he looked like a nervous boyfriend, and as soon as Richie broke through from the chilly outside to the overheated inside, Skipper relaxed for the first time that day.

As Richie had drawn near and filled out the paperwork, Skipper got a whiff of cigarette smoke, and he bumped Richie’s shoulder with his elbow and scowled. Richie had shrugged, staring at his receipt like it held the secrets of the universe.

“You know,” he mumbled. “Rob and Paul smoke, my folks smoke, I take my break with them—I was nerv—”

And then Carpenter interrupted, which had been a blessing. Skipper hadn’t wanted to have the “nervous” discussion with Richie when for the first time that day, Skipper wasn’t nervous, and a curse because, well…

The story ended quite uncomfortably.

“So that’s the best part?” Richie hooted, taking a swig of his beer.

“Nope!” Carpenter crowed. “The best part was this: ‘I’m sorry sir, but you’re not allowed to access porn from your work computer. No, sir. No, any porn, sir, not just gay porn.’” Carpenter grinned at Skipper, his broad, bearded face maniacal with glee. “No, sir, I think it would be a very bad idea if I came to your office and helped take down your firewall just for kicks.”

“No!” Richie sputtered, and Skipper shook his head at Carpenter, threatening dire consequences.

“No, seriously?” Richie was so excited he set his beer down and stood up, hopping on his toes while they waited for the fourth person in their game to finish botching his spare. “He totally hit on you? I mean, you guys all work in one building—that’s insane! What? Did he think you’d get there and start stripping like a Chippendales dancer?”

Skipper’s whole body twitched in horror. “In front of a stranger?” he squeaked, and then he saw Richie’s eyes on him, wide and mesmerized.

“I’m up!” Carpenter groaned, pushing himself to his feet with a sigh. He got his ball from the carousel as Wayans slunk back, dejected by the three-pin spare he’d missed.

Richie just kept looking at Skipper, lips slightly parted, hunger so transparent on his face that it was all Skipper could do not to just kiss him, taste him, tobacco and all, to answer that need.

“You’re thinking about it,” Skipper murmured under the sound of the balls and pins and the echoes of the alley.

“All night, I thought about it,” Richie replied. Carpenter’s whoop yanked them out of their own little world, and they stood up with Wayans to applaud Carpenter’s strike—something he’d never done before.

Their team placed somewhere in the middle, but everybody knew the best part was pizza and beer afterward, so nobody complained about the score. Tesko Tech was a big enough company that the IT department didn’t have to share team-building time with any of the actual execs, so everybody at the pizza parlor knew each other—and Richie, because plus-ones were welcome and Skip asked him to these things a lot.

So it wasn’t a date.

It was guys out with friends, cracking jokes and sharing work stories. Carpenter had a good one about the four-year-old who called because her mother had gone into the garage to do laundry and she thought that mommy had gone into the computer screen.

“How’d she know the number?” Richie asked, entranced.

“Apparently Mom had it taped to the computer screen—she’s sort of a frequent flyer.”

“Oh Lord,” Wayans muttered. He passed a hand the color of teak wood over his shaved head. “I’ve got this one woman—I swear, she sounds just like my mother. I almost asked her if she grew up in New Orleans too. But it’s like she’s read a manual—a manual