Unknown number. Connecticut area code.
She sighs. Figures. She’s been calling businesses in Hartford all week for the Whalers gala silent auction—breweries, restaurants, a day spa that put her on hold for seventeen minutes listening to flute music—so an unfamiliar number isn’t suspicious.
She swipes to answer, putting on her cheerful-professional persona.
“Naomi Piccolo, Hollis Group.”
A deep, male voice on the other end growls, “I need you to touch my stick.”
She jabs the red button and launches her phone onto the coffee table with a clatter.
Gross.
“Not tonight, Satan,” she mutters, turning back to her noodles.
Her phone buzzes again. Same number.
She hits decline. It immediately rings again.
“Oh, for the love of tofu.”
Naomi grabs her phone again, her pad thai now abandoned, and answers on the third buzz with full menace in her voice. “Listen, perv, if you call again I will sign you up for every multilevel marketing scheme known to man. You’ll be getting ads for tummy tea and leggings until the heat death of the universe. Do not test me.”
“Don’t hang up.”
The voice is steady. Deep. And irritatingly familiar in a way that itches her brain.
“It’s Garrett.”
Her mind blanks, mentally thumbing through every awkward first date, bad Tinder match, and one-night flirtation she’s had since university.
Garrett? Did she ever date a Garrett?
Nothing.
The silence hangs long enough for her to hear sirens whine in the distance. Then the voice comes again, flatter this time, with a note of strained patience. “Tall.”
Naomi blinks. “Oh mygod.”
There’s a rustle on the other end, like he’s shifting the phone from one giant bear hand to the other. “I didn’t mean for it to sound like that.”
“Like what, exactly?” she fires back.
A pause. Then a full, tortured exhale. “Jesus. You’re making it weird.”
She barks out a stunned laugh. “I’mmaking it weird? You cold-called me at dinnertime and asked me to touch your dick.”
“It’s my hockey stick,” he growls. “But nice to know where your head’s at.”
Naomi sputters, nearly launching her chopsticks across the room. “Well, what the heck was I supposed to think when?—”
“I need you to touch the stick again,” Tall cuts her off.
He sounds completely serious, which is ludicrous. She squints into the dimness of her living room, where her throw blanket is bunched up like it’s also confused. “I beg your what?”
“You touched my goalie stick in the tunnel,” he says, calm and deadly serious. “Do you remember?”
“Vividly,” she says flatly. “You treated me like I’d cursed it with black magic.”
