Page 15 of Falling for Mindy

“We figured that,” Hamilton said, “You were extremely young when you launched your successful business. You couldn’t have been playing video games or picking up cheerleaders up until then.”

“If I could have, I didn’t know how,” he laughed.

“I had a great high school experience. I was a running back and the team went to the State Championships three years running.”

“So you had your pick of girls?” Drake said.

“Absolutely. And I had a great bond with my teammates. It was nice catching up with them at the reunion a few years ago.”

“Don’t you have another reunion coming up this year?” Aaron said, liking as always to remind us that we were old men compared to him, “Your twentieth, maybe? I don’t know. Twenty years ago I was—”

“In diapers?” Drake laughed.

“I would’ve been learning to drive a stick shift, getting my license. And no, twenty years ago I was not in diapers. I learned to go in the potty way before then,” Aaron said.

“You were a star athlete too, weren’t you?” Rick asked rather miserably.

“Yeah. I played basketball, baseball, ran cross country. All of it.”

“Football?” I said.

“My school didn’t have a team after my freshman year. A kid got injured on the field and the board just did away with the program for a while,” he shrugged. “But he lived, the kid that got hurt. That was what was important. I see that now. Back then, I was pissed. Because I wanted to play football, you know,” he said.

“You got that Friday Night Lights dream going on?” Hamilton said.

“Nah, I was convinced quarterbacks got all the hot cheerleaders.”

“Are you saying you didn’t get hot cheerleaders?” I tormented him.

“There may have been a cheerleader or two. But not the ones that looked like princesses, the ones who just seem like a different breed. Shiny hair, always energetic and they don’t seem like they’re ever clumsy or awkward…” he sighed, reminiscing.

“So who was the one that got away?” Drake asked.

“There was more than one that got away,” he said, “but that was then and this is now. I got game now,” Aaron said without the slightest bit of irony. We all laughed.

“What kind of game?” Rick teased. “Yahtzee?”

“Nah, man. Candyland, and I’m the candy man right here,” he said, trying to make it sound lascivious.

“That old guy? Creepy as fuck. I played that game with my sisters as a kid, and I swear, old man luring children to a land made out of sweets, bribing them through dangers with candy—full on predator right there.” I said, straight faced. Aaron looked stricken.

I pulled out my phone and looked up a picture of the king from the game and showed it to him.

“That is not what I meant, and you know it,” he said.

We all got a good laugh and ordered another round.

We raised our beers and made a toast. It was damn good to be out with them, feeling like my old self and not stressing about anything.

CHAPTER 9

MINDY

I took a long drink of a really good margarita and licked a little salt from the rim. It tasted amazing, and Katie was by my side, having a G&T because she thought margaritas were for disgruntled housewives. I rolled my eyes.

“It’s a good drink. Taste mine,” I offered.

“No way. It’ll make me old. I’ll have a side part and ask to talk to the manager,” she laughed, and took a drink of her gin. “And this shit tastes like I’m drinking cologne. Ugh.”