Perfect (Second Opportunities 2)

"He's out and you're going to be out, too, if you keep this up."

"You wouldn't dare throw me out of this game!"

Zack slowly stood up. "You are making a scene," he bit out. "Sit down!"

"That wasn't a scene!" she flung back and to his disbelief, she kicked dirt on home plate so he'd have to brush it off and then on his shoes. "This is a scene!" she said furiously.

"You're out of the game!" Zack blasted back, throwing his arm up in the unmistakable gesture of an umpire ejecting a coach, and the balmy night exploded with boos and cheers and roars and applause as Julie marched off the field. "Play ball!" Zack yelled, gesturing the other team off the field, and returning to his crouch behind home plate. From the corner of his eye, he watched the stiff set of Julie's shoulders, the gentle sway of her hips, and the breeze tumbling her hair around her shoulders as she walked over to the bench and grabbed her sweater. He was going to regret his action, Zack realized. She was going to make sure he did.

Young Willie Jenkins was of a similar opinion. As Willie walked off the field past Zack, he warned in his gravelly carrying voice, "You're in deep shit, Zack."

Julie's team lost 4 to 3. When the losers and the losers' parents gathered at a local restaurant for the meal and drinks that Zack had understood were a ritual after every game, Julie was there waiting for them. She had words of consolation and approval for all her boys and nothing whatsoever to say to Zack when he tried to hand her something to drink. The other adults seemed willing to forget that his call had cost their team the game, and several of them offered to buy him a beer, but Julie deliberately turned her back to him and continued talking to Katherine and Sara Mathison and some other friends of hers.

Left with no choice except to either try in public to soothe her ruffled feathers, which he sure as hell wasn't going to do, or else retreat to the bar where he saw Ted, Carl, John Grayson, and Mayor Addelson having pizza after the game, Zack decided on the latter. Ted saw him heading toward them and turned fully around, leaning his elbows on the bar behind him. "That was a bad move you made during the game, Zack," he said with a grin.

"Very bad," Carl agreed.

"Really bad," Mayor Addelson seconded, chuckling and tossing a handful of peanuts into his mouth.

"It was a good call," Zack said flatly.

"Might've been a good call," Addelson said, "but it was a bad move."

"The hell with it," Zack said, angrier than he would have believed possible because she was still ignoring him. "If she can't take the heat, she shouldn't get near the fire!"

For some reason, that simple, trite platitude caused all four men to guffaw with laughter.

Zack ignored them, his anger building steadily at the sudden realization of the absurd, undignified, unjust situation she'd stuck him in. He was thirty-five years old, he was worth over $100 million, and except for five years in prison, he'd spent his life eating in the finest restaurants, staying in the best hotels, and fraternizing with brilliant, talented, famous people like himself. Instead of that, he was now relegated to eating pizza while standing up in a crass restaurant in the thriving metropolis of Snake Navel, Texas, while being ignored by someone who should feel honored that he wanted to marry her! He had a good mind to march her out of the restaurant, lay down the law to her, and then take her straight to bed like any adult male deserved to be able to do with the woman he intended to marry. That wasn't a bargain he'd made with her father, it was malicious, petty revenge on the part of some Bible-thumping, arrogant, manipulative asshole…

Zack shoved away from the bar.

Mayor Addelson's hand landed heavily on his shoulder, and he said in a paternal voice, "Take some advice from a man who's already been where you are: Don't do it."

"What?" Zack snapped.

Ted leaned around the mayor and grinned at Zack. "Have yourself something cold to drink, eat a hamburger, then go home and take another cold shower and sit tight for another week. Someday, you'll look back on this and laugh."

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"We're talking about what is generally known around town as the Mathison Method of Premarital Misery," Ted said mildly. "It is my father's well-intentioned way of restoring the element of suspense and anticipation to the wedding night in an age where he feels couples are deprived of the magic because they grab it prematurely."

Zack's jaw tightened with fury in the mistaken belief that Julie's father had actually gone around town, telling everyone about the ridiculous bargain he'd foisted on Zack in retaliation for kidnapping his daughter. "What did you say?" he demanded.

John Grayson heard his question and leaned around Ted. "He's going deaf already." With an attempt at lewd levity, he added, "You know what they say that comes from doing?"

Ted took a swallow of his drink. "No, you go blind, not deaf, from doing that."

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"We're talking about you, my friend," Ted said. "It is not Julie who can't take the 'heat,' it's you. Just like it was us. Half the men in this town got talked into the same bargain you made, and most of us—the ones who stuck with it—ended up picking roaring fights over nothing with our wives-to-be."

The fury and frustration Zack had been feeling evaporated in a flash of stunned disbelief mixed with mindless hilarity at the absurdity of what he was hearing.

"Tell him, Mayor," Ted invited.

"It's hell. I've got ten years on you, son, and I couldn't believe how bad I wanted something partly because I agreed not to have it. It takes its toil on the women, too, only I am of the opinion their discomfort is lessened by their suppressed enjoyment of seeing the male of the species reduced to a state of desperate need of them. That last part about women," he added with a grin, "isn't my theory, it was a generalization that came from a professor of sociology I had during my second year at A&M. Where did you go to college, by the way? You've got the look of a Yankee, but the accent's a little off."

Still torn between annoyance and disbelief over the Mathison Method, Zack hesitated, knowing Addelson was trying to diffuse the situation, then he looked at Julie's pretty profile and considered the amusing fact that his sexual frustration was known by, and understood by, most of the other males in the restaurant, and he capitulated with an irritated sigh. "USC."

"What was your major?"