Scoring a Holiday Match (Mr. Match), Delancey Stewart [classic novels TXT] 📗

like, it only looks hard, right?” he said. “Watch. You just get a little bit of a running start, and then you do like a half-split kind of thing and just whirl the other leg around.”

“Have you done a backspin before, Trace?” someone in the crowd asked.

He shook his shaggy blond head. “No, you need a big open space and it’s gotta be kinda slick, and Mags won’t let me clear out the living room. But I’ve envisioned it, worked it through in my mind the same way I visualize a match. I’ve totally got it.”

“Let’s see,” someone called out.

“I need the right music,” Trace said, looking like maybe he was rethinking the backspin he’d promised. “Like some Run DMC or something. Old school.”

The DJ delivered, and seconds later the crowd was nodding and the singing about hotels, and motels and Holiday Inns as Trace backed up a bit, preparing for his ‘running start.’

The ridiculousness of the spectacle almost took my mind off Rose leaving, but there was a little part of my mind that was working around the hurt and disappointment I felt in constant circles.

Trace took his running start and then slid to the ground, one leg out before him. As promised, the other leg followed, putting the guy on his back, but there was no spinning whatsoever. For a moment, the room was still. Then Trace tried again, lying on his back and shooting one leg into the air in a half circle. No spin. Several guffaws erupted from the crowd.

“Fuck,” he said loudly, and then he tried one more time and a loud ripping noise followed as more people erupted in laughter.

“Oh great,” he bellowed, his hands going to his butt as he laid on the ground. “Mags,” he called to the beleaguered woman holding his jacket and rolling her eyes. “My pants busted.”

The crowd burst into all-out laughter as Trace got up. He was right. His tux pants were split down the back, revealing a pair of Christmas-themed boxers beneath.

“At least I’m wearing my good undies,” Trace called out, leaving the dance floor with the pretty woman at his side.

“Magalie puts up with a lot,” Max said, turning back to me. “So tell me again why you aren’t with Rose right now?”

I was about to explain everything when a woman in a tight green dress practically bounced over. I thought I recognized her as one of the Oceanside Stars players, and the woman who had whisked Rose off earlier.

“Why are you with him?” She asked Max accusingly, narrowing her eyes at me.

This wasn’t Max’s fiancée, Tatum, and yet this woman seemed angry. Jealous? I was confused, and didn’t have the energy to try to figure it out.

“We’re not together,” I volunteered.

They both turned to look at me, surprise etched along the slides of Max’s mouth.

The woman burst into laughter. “Together?” She recovered herself. “You’d actually make a really stunning couple,” she said. “But what I mean is, where the fuck did Rose go?”

I’d been asking myself the same question.

“Uh, she had to go.” I said. Who was this woman anyway?

“But you got her number and you’re going to see her tomorrow.” It wasn’t even a question. She was standing quite close to me, crowding my personal space.

“Ash, meet Tallulah.”

“Hello,” I said to the woman practically glued to my chest and glaring up at me. “No. I didn’t get her number and she didn’t take mine.” I felt sad as I said it.

“Yeah. Hi. I know who you are, and you’re supposed to be with Rose. It was working, I saw it. What the fuck happened?”

Tallulah seemed to have a special affinity for the “f” word and a weird sense of entitlement to my personal business. “She needed to go,” I repeated. “It wouldn’t have worked in the long run anyway.”

“What?” She pressed an index finger into my chest. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her finger pressed harder, and then her gaze dropped down to the finger, and she pressed her whole hand into my chest. “Wow. This is . . . Wow.”

“Lu.” Max pulled her away from me.

“Sorry,” she said to us both. “But all that—" she waved a hand to indicate my chest, “—is distracting.”

“Right,” Max said, amusement coloring his voice. “So listen, Ash. Lu and I set you up with Rose because we thought you might be a good match. If you say there was no possibility at all that things could work, we’ll back off.”

“No we won’t,” Tallulah protested.

“But if there was even a chance,” Max went on. “Then Lu will give you her number so you can call her tomorrow.”

“I, uh . . .” I prepared the lie in my mind. “I’d like her number,” my mouth said.

“Phone.” Tallulah held out her hand to me, palm up.

She was very demanding. I wanted to protest, but instead, I dropped my phone into her palm after unlocking it.

“There’s a crab here.”

I frowned. Crab? What?

“Your wallpaper. It’s a crab.”

“Oh yeah, that was a monster my guys hauled in right on the border of—”

“If a big crab is the familiar face you’re looking at every time you pick up the phone, this is more critical than I thought.” Her thumbs flew across the face of my phone., and then she held it for a moment more while she fished her own phone out of her bag and swiped a few times at it. I watched her, pretty sure she was doing more than just adding a contact, while Max smiled out across the ballroom like a king surveying his kingdom. “Here you go,” she handed it back a few minutes later. “Ros is in there—it’s Rose Gonzalez, by the way. You guys were so busy groping each other you probably didn’t even exchange full names.”

“Thanks,” I said, accepting the phone back. I tapped it to wake up the screen, and my breath left my lungs as Rose stared back at me. Tallulah had replaced my home screen photo and this one was much, much better. Rose. In a bikini.