I shake the hand she offers me after removing one of her gloves. “Nice to meet you too, ma’am.”
Liz’s smile is uncannily similar to her son’s. “Call me Liz, please.”
I would love to return her smile if I weren’t feeling awful about my part in this situation. “Liz, I… there’s something I have to tell you. Maybe I’m not that good a friend to Tucker, even though I swear I didn’t mean to shoot him.”
“That’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.” She laughs after I come clean, adding the detail Tucker left out of his story. “And if you two ended up dating, it would make for one hell of a meet cute.”
If my mom said something like that to someone I just met, I admit I would be very embarrassed.
Not Tucker, though. “If I have any choice in the matter, Taryn and I will definitely date.”
Liz’s smile widens. “Let’s get my son stitched up then, and hopefully you can go back to whatever kids do these days on a date.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GOODNIGHT KISSES
COLSEN
I’m not surprised when Taryn comes out of the emergency bays area wheeling a semi-passed out Tucker in a wheelchair.
“That bad, huh?” I ask the pretty girl I haven’t been able to take my eyes off of since I saw her at Joe’s.
“He passed out as soon as his mom removed the dressing I applied and he saw the blood and the needle. Then he freaked out and tried to escape. Then begged his mom not to do the stitches.”
It doesn’t surprise me at all. “Did you have to wrestle him so he could be treated?”
She shakes her head. “No, but Liz had to give him a sedative. Something strong enough to take the edge off.”
Tucker wakes up at that moment. “I got the good stuff.” He giggles, shaking the bottle of pills in his hand. “And more for later. Party time.”
Oh boy. I suppress a chuckle of my own when my best friend falls asleep again. His head is lulling from side to side and his mouth is open. “What did she give him? He’s slurring his speech like he’s wasted.”
“Not entirely sure, it was a pill. But it was necessary; there was no way he would have let her stitch him up otherwise.”
I offer Taryn to take over pushing the wheelchair as we exit the urgent care center and walk the short distance to the parking lot just outside the pier.
“Come on, buddy.” I shake his shoulder, trying to get Tucker to wake up enough to cooperate at least a little so that I can help him into the backseat of my SUV. “Are you ok staying with him while I return the wheelchair?”
I’m quick to return the chair to the urgent care center. When I came back to the pier and crashed Tucker’s impromptu date with Taryn, I didn’t know what to expect from tonight.
One thing I didn’t anticipate when I envisioned the conclusion of our night was to have a two hundred and twenty-five pound goalie drugged out of his mind passed out in the backseat of my car.
That pretty much takes Tucker out of the running for who gets to give Taryn a goodnight kiss; but he’s still cockblocking me even in his unconscious state. There’s no way I can try to take things any further than a short kiss on Taryn’s doorstep with my best friend in a chemically induced sleep waiting in my car.
Unless…
“Hey Taryn, do you mind helping me get Tucker into bed? Unless he wakes up, it’s going to be hard to open doors and such while keeping him from crashing down. Then I could ask our roommates to keep an eye on him and drive you home? I can come back for Tucker’s truck tomorrow after practice.”
Tucker chooses that moment to snap out of his sleep just to chime in. “She’s coming with us. Taryn promised to tuck me in.”
He’s asleep again, face down on my backseat.
“It’s ok.” Taryn says softly, turning in her seat to look at Tucker. “I’ll feel better once I know he’s safe in his bed. I feel terrible about this whole thing.”
I take her hand in mine. Taryn’s hand is so small compared to mine, and once my skin touches hers, a wave of sensation washes over me. “It was an accident, pretty girl. It’s my fault too for assuming you knew about recoil. Besides, I know Tucker. He isn’t going to hold what happened against you.”
Her green eyes are hopeful. “Really?”
