CHRISTMAS AT O’NEILL’S - TEASER
“You want somethin’ to drink?” Crawford asked, walking around behind the bar.
“Uhh, sure.” Keane took a seat on a nearby barstool. “A water please.”
Crawford gave him an unimpressed look but pulled out a glass and filled it, silently sliding it across the scuffed wood.
“Thanks.” Keane took a sip. “So, um, how’s the bar business?”
“Pretty good so far.”
Keane sighed internally. Aaand that seemed to be the end of that conversation.
“The team’s doing good,” he blurted out, trying for something else they might have in common. “Uh, I play on the second D-pair.”
“Yeah, I know who you are. You took my spot.” Crawford grabbed a clean towel and plucked a glass from a plastic rack.
“Uhh,” Keane said. Technically that was true. Although once Crawford retired and Tanner Clayton got traded to the New York Rockets, Mickey Krause and Rafe Moon became the top defensive pair. “Well, I don’t know about that. Those are some pretty big skates to fill.”
Crawford polished the glass, then held it up to the light before sliding it onto the shelves below the bar top. “You’re still out of position more often than you’re not, but you’ll get there.”
“Here’s hoping,” Keane said with a laugh, holding up his glass in a little toast. “I—”
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out, frowning when he saw a text from Jesse. Trying to find a parking spot, be there in a few.
No prob, he sent back, then drained his water.
“Webby’s looking for a parking spot,” he explained to Crawford. “Mind if I use your bathroom while I wait?”
“You know where it is.”
Keane took that as a yes. He slipped off the stool, shrugged out of his coat, then walked toward the back of the pub.
He’d been to O’Neill’s a handful of times over the past few seasons when he was called up from the Concord Nighthawks. Since Luke Crawford had bought the place from Liam O’Neill last summer, there hadn’t been any drastic changes made, though there were a few new pictures on the wall—most of which featured the Harriers’ Cup win last season.
Keane peed, washed his hands, and when he walked of the bathroom, he came face to face with Jesse.
“Hey!” Jesse said brightly. “There you are! Okay, so we’re gonna have to unload quickly. There’s someone parked in the usual spot and I’m kinda blocking them in.”
“No problem,” Keane said, relieved that everything today had, in fact, not been some sort of bizarre prank. As he followed Jesse out the back door and was slapped in the face by cold drizzle again, he thought longingly about the coat he’d left on the bar stool.
Damn. Oh well. Too late to grab it now.
He flipped up the hood of his Harriers’ sweatshirt instead of going back inside. If Webby said they needed to hurry, he’d hurry.
Not only was Jesse his cousin’s partner, he was the team’s franchise goalie. If their goalie wasn’t happy, nobody was happy.
Keane and Jesse made a couple of trips, bringing in mysterious totes and bags from the double-parked SUV and depositing them inside the pub.
This trip, Keane stumbled a little blindly after Webby because he’d plunked a large black garbage bag on top of the tote and Keane couldn’t see past it very well. He was a few feet from the back entrance when he ran smack-dab into something, spilling everything onto the ground.
“Oww!” a man muttered. “Fucking watch where you’re going!”
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