The One That Got Away Read Online Free Page A

of shit,” he yelled over the noise of the party. “Why the hell did he say we were running low on beer? We have plenty. Get your asses back here, you’re missing the party.”
    I hung up the phone and turned to Eamon in confusion. “Danny says we have plenty of beer. Tell me again what we’re doing here?”
    “Ahhh, I’m busted,” he said. “I never thought you were lowon beer. I just wanted to hang out with you.” And as I stood there, blinking in breathless surprise, he dipped his head and kissed me, right in the middle of the drink aisle with his arms full of the national beer of Texas.
    —
    It is still the best first kiss I’ve ever had. Better even, it pains me to admit, than Noah’s, which transpired enthusiastically but somewhat drunkenly against the side of the pool table where he’d just spanked me three games in a row. And everything that came after it was just as good.
    —
    Grinning like fools, Eamon and I paid for our Lone Star and climbed back into his dirty old Jeep, where we kissed some more. He kissed me at every stoplight on the way back to the house. Including one time when we got too absorbed to notice the light had turned and broke apart, laughing, when the driver behind us leaned on his horn. “Worth it,” Eamon muttered. He carried the misbegotten beer inside and kissed me again, in the kitchen. We kissed for a long time, and then, reluctantly, he pulled away.
    “So, I gotta go home and sleep,” he said, the wry tone of his voice indicating exactly how unsexy he thought that to be. When, actually, I loved that he took his training seriously, treating his body like the precision machine that it was. “But do you want to hang out next weekend?”
    I didn’t pretend to have other plans, the way my girlfriends would have advised me. The way I might have if it were anybody else. Instead I simply said yes, my heart banging inside me like the clapper of a bell.
    —
    I have over forty emails saved from the seven days between when we met and when we went on our first (and only) actual date. Playful, teasing, flirtatious emails. Emails that said, “I can’t wait to see you” and “The only thing stopping me from driving over there right now is six A.M . practice” and “I spent my entire psychology lecture this morning thinking about you, instead of psychology.” In the three or four months that it took me to process him out of my system, I must have reread the messages fifty times. Attempting to convince myself that I hadn’t been a fool for believing our connection was something special, while trying to understand how someone who seemed to be so into me could have just evaporated into thin air. But there was no explanation.
    For our date, he took me to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema down on Sixth Street. He refused to tell me what movie we were seeing, or why we had to arrive at the theater half an hour early, but by the time we got there, there was already a crowd of people out front, chattering excitedly. The theater was located in an old brick building with a huge Art Deco sign out front announcing its name and a vintage neon marquee blaring light down on the sidewalk. The movie turned out to be
The Princess Bride
, a selection which delighted me, but the crowd seemed to view the familiarity of the movie as license to recite the lines along with the actors. After a few minutes I turned to him in frustration, expecting him to commiserate with me, but instead his eyes were creased with humor.
    “It’s a quote-along,” he explained. “The louder the better.” Then, to demonstrate, he cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, along with the entire theater, “Do you know what that sound is, Highness? Those are the
shrieking eels
!”
    This crazy little jet of pure happiness bubbled up inside me at the perfection of it, the perfection of
him
, and I leaned over in myseat, so quickly I nearly upended my bottle of Dos Equis, and laid one on him. I didn’t care that I tasted like