Off Season

Chapter Five

Three nights later, Meredith Jones had just swallowed half of her vodka martini when she heard my description of Harrison Shaw. She choked on some of the liquid, coughed once to clear her throat, and stared at me with wide eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Ally.”

“I’m not.”

“Apollo? He looks like that?”

“Well, the spawn of Apollo. Not Apollo himself.”

She answered my joke with a dutiful laugh. “Come on. He’s hot, but that hot? Really?”

“Yep. More gorgeous than you think. Trust me.” I fiddled with the stem of my red wine glass and leaned back on the couch we had commandeered at Ovation, a downtown bar and nightclub where the pretty and connected in Cincinnati mingled after the workweek and on weekends that didn’t have an event or charity function to attend.

“I guess I just always see him with a helmet on,” she said.

“You know how people like Tom Brady?” I sipped my pinot noir. It taste bitter, flat, and overpriced. “It’s like that. Dead on. It’s something you’ve really go to see to believe.”

“People like that are always hotter in person.”

“Vance knows him,” I said, referring to my playboy brother who’s most meaningful accomplishment in life was sleeping with all of the willing members of Delta Gamma Upsilon sorority his freshman year at Ohio University. “He told me Harrison works out at Cincinnati Sports Mall, and I guess they see each other a couple of times a week.”

“Maybe I should join there.” Meredith laughed once and then her eyes scanned the crowd at the bar. For a Friday night, Ovation didn’t have much of a selection. Guys in suits. P&G types with too much money and very little time. One or two downtown hipsters and a couple of old money scions I knew too well from the my dad’s client base as a financial planner. A few meat heads who belonged somewhere else and looked like they overused the word “bro”.

Boring.

“Harrison’s such an idiot, though,” I said. “Even if he is hot. He’s a… he’s… Shawshanked? Really? He couldn’t think of a better trademark?”

Meredith blinked at me. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Ever looked it up in the urban dictionary?”

“Nope.” Meredith set down her now empty martini glass, now covered in smudged red lipstick.

“Don’t.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“If it’s the urban dictionary. I promise you, it’s bad.”

Meredith shifted her weight on the sofa and pulled her mass of black hair off her shoulders. “Okay, I’ll bite.”

“Hold on,” I said as I opened my small beaded DVF handbag.”Let me show you.”

Once I found my iPhone, a few punches of the keypad took me right too the web page I wanted. Of course, it probably helped that I had the damn thing bookmarked.

“There,” I said as I handed the phone to her. “Read this.”

Meredith took the phone from me and looked down at the screen. “Oh my god. I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that a professional player took that as his trademark, or the fact that no one has told him what it really means.”

I shrugged. “Maybe they have.”

“Forced anal sex with no lube? Really? Gross.”

“Not something I’d ever want to happen to me.” I wrinkled my nose. “Gross.”

“He has to know what it means.” She handed my phone back to me. “Has to.”

“I don’t know. He went to Stanford, but that doesn’t mean he’s smart.”

“Did he graduate?” Meredith frowned. “No, I don’t think he did.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t know the Stephen King reference.”

“That’s right, he did write that story, didn’t he? I need to read more.”

“True that.”

We both laughed and clinked glasses in the way only good, old friends can. I’d always known Meredith. Thank god for friends like her.

“Anyway,” I said. “I’ll never see him again, but I’m glad he helped out Miracle Meals, even if he benefited the most.”

“Why are the hot ones always stupid or unattainable?” Meredith said.

I laughed. Truth. Total, undeniable, truth. 

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