Chapter 54

Father Mikey was taking the slumbering John to his downtown Dallas hotel, so there were only seven men seated in armchairs around the coffee table at the moment. A bottle of vodka and seven shot glasses rested on the table. Jimmy explained the rules of the game. Someone would say something they had never done, such as "I never learned to ride a bike." If you had learned to ride a bike, you had to drink a shot. "But make it more interesting than bike riding," Jimmy insisted. He took the bottle of vodka the waitress had brought them and began filling the shot glasses. "Mikey's not here, so I know all you prudes are going to have to drink with this one." He put the vodka bottle down and announced, "In high school, I never had sex with fewer than three girls."

Everyone drank except Eric.

"At a time?" Eric asked incredulously.

"No!" Jimmy laughed. "I meant total of course! Now drink up."

"So if I can also say that I never had sex with fewer than three girls total," Eric asked, "I don't drink, right?"

"We're talking in high school," Jimmy clarified. "Not college. Drink up."

"He can't," Dale said. "You could double that number, and he still couldn't drink. That's why he was confused and thought you meant at one time. Three sounded so paltry to him."

Jimmy looked at Eric in awe. "Can I touch the hem of your garment?" he asked. "Will your powers transfer to me?"

Eric chuckled.

"How many girls in college, then?" Jimmy asked. "Wait, how many at one time?"

"In college I had all the woman I could handle," Eric said, smiling.

Dale smirked. "You still do."

Jimmy grinned. "So you're saying I should look forward to meeting Mrs. Eric Taylor at the wedding?"

"You come anywhere near Mrs. Eric Taylor at the wedding," Eric said, grinning with pride in his wife and with happiness because he was actually having fun, "and I'll send Father Mikey over to settle things as Christ Jesus intended."

All of the guys laughed. Eric wasn't used to making men laugh. He made his wife laugh, and sometimes he even made his daughter laugh, but he'd always been thought of as the serious one around his friends and co-workers.

"Okay, your turn, Damien," Jimmy said.

"Well I know you're all drinking on this one," the range owner said. "I never had sex with anyone but my wife."

Everyone drank except Joe, the Dallas cop.

"Really?" Dale asked.

"I was sixteen when we started dating," Joe said defensively.

It was Dale's turn. "Well, everyone's drinking on this one. I never lost my virginity until I was 19."

Everyone drank except Mark. "Don't tell anyone," Mark said. "I was a late bloomer like Dale."

Eric was seriously starting to feel the alcohol now. He'd had too much bourbon before the game even started. The room was beginning to move. Father Mikey appeared to enter the room almost sideways. He sat down on the arm of Dale's chair, since all of the armchairs were taken. "Anyone else need a ride home yet?" he asked.

"Not yet," Damien said, "but I'm getting there. We're playing I never. You in?"

"I take water shots," Father Mikey said, and stood, grabbed an empty bourbon glass, and filled it with an ounce of water.

"Well, you're up," Jimmy said.

"I've never had sex in the past eleven years."

"Screw you!" Dale said. "That's not a fair one!"

"I don't know," Mikey said. "All y'all are married except Jimmy. So somebody might not have to drink."

Joe laughed. "Some weeks it feels like that," he admitted.

"Do another one," Jimmy insisted.

"Very well." Father Mikey contemplated Dale. "Our goal should be to get Dale and no one else to drink. So...I never had sex in an elevator."

Dale, and no one else, drank.

"Were you going up while it was coming down?" Jimmy asked.

"It was stuck," Dale said, "for an hour."

"Who was this? Cindy?" Mark asked.

"Emma. She was an NYU French professor."

"Why does Mikey know about this and I not know about this?" Jimmy asked.

Dale smirked. "Mikey is my confessor."

"So, you guys just got stuck in an elevator," Jimmy asked, "and she couldn't resist you? What were you doing at NYU?"

"Nothing so exciting," Dale admitted. "We'd already been dating for two months at the time. I met her when I audited a class there. I needed a refresher. It was her class."

Joe was up next. "Man, I've got nothing. I married my high school sweetheart."

"So did Eric, apparently," Jimmy said. "And it sounds like he still has stories to tell."

"Just try to think of something Dale has done, but none of us have done," Father Mikey advised Joe.

"I never rescued two women from a a hostage situation."

Dale drank. "Oh boy," he said. "Wowza." He blinked.

"Eric, you're up," Jimmy said, "and make it interesting this time. And get just Dale to drink."

Eric was too buzzed at the moment to worry about his brother's sensibilities. "I've never had a woman come up to my hotel room and tell me her air conditioner was broken," Eric said, "and then just turned on the TV."

Everyone laughed.

Dale flushed red.

Eric felt guilty.

But then Dale picked up his shot glass, raised it in his brother's direction, and said, "Touché."

[FNL]

Eric only vaguely remembered walking to Dale's condo from the cigar lounge. Mikey, he knew, had guided them, and it was possible Eric had put an arm around the priest's shoulder and told him that he loved him as David loved Jonathan. Eric remembered that the clock said 2 AM when he fell onto the living room couch, and he knew that it said 10 AM when he woke up still in his clothes.

As he was sitting up, he felt something on his arm. He lifted it up to find the pink fuzzy handcuffs dangling loosely around one wrist. At least the other cuff wasn't locked to anything. He tried to work it off but somehow ended up closing it tighter instead.

Eric looked up and saw Dale standing in the living room, also in his clothes from the previous night, his hair a wild mess, looking at the handcuffs. "How did that happen?" Dale asked.

"I don't know," Eric said.

"Mikey probably did it after you passed out."

"You have the key, right?"

Dale walked to the kitchen bar that opened onto the living room and opened a big pink box. "Mikey left us donuts." He glanced at the coffee pot on the bar. "And it looks like he set up the coffee." He turned it on. "And he left us giant bottles of water."

Eric needed food badly. He guzzled the water, ate donuts, and drank coffee at the kitchen bar with the handcuff still dangling from his wrist. "You do have the necklace with the key, right?" he asked as he ate.

"I don't know where the necklace is," Dale said.

"I can't go home to Tami with this on my wrist!"

"Why not?" Dale smirked.

"She's going to think you had strippers and that this was part of the show."

"No, she's not. She trusts you. And what the hell kind of shows have you been to where you got handcuffed by strippers?"

"Well, I don't know exactly what they do. Just get this off of me!"

Dale laughed. "Relax. I have several keys. I don't need the necklace. I'll go get my universal key in a minute."

There was a knock on the door. Dale went to answer. Eric heard Tami's voice and Dale saying, "You didn't have to come get him. I was going to bring him home for you."

Eric slid off the bar stool, sat back down on the couch, and shoved his handcuffed wrist under the throw pillow he'd slept on last night.

"Hey, sugar," Tami said as she came in and glanced at the jukebox and the pinball machine. "You ready to come on home?"

Eric looked desperately at Dale.

"Why don't you let him stay a little longer?" Dale suggested. "I wanted to do some wedding planning with him."

"Wedding planning?" Tami asked skeptically. "With Eric?"

"I'll bring him home later. It's Saturday. You don't need him, do you?"

"I do actually need him," Tami said. "I need him to help me re-paint the living room like he said he would last week. We've got to get the house ready to put on the market in June."

"You know what, I'll help you both do that tomorrow. I don't have to go into the office Sunday. I'll come over and help you paint. Let him stay a bit."

"I already drove all the way out here. Julie's already started taping the edges while I came out here. She's getting it all set up. Are you that hung-over, sweetheart?"

Eric's head did hurt, but the donuts and coffee and water had helped.

Tami came and sat next to him on the couch. "How late did your party go?"

"Uh…pretty late."

"That's a pretty design," she said, and plucked up the throw pillow from off his wrist. She looked at the pillow for a second and then noticed his wrist. She set the pillow slowly and coolly on the coffee table. "You want to explain why you were hiding the handcuffs, sugar?"

"I'll go get one of my universal keys." Dale disappeared down the hall toward his bedroom.

"Babe," Eric said, "would you believe me if I told you the priest bought them at an adult toy store on the way to Dallas, and then he put them on me while I was sleeping?"

"No."

"Okay. Then I won't tell you that."

"They're very pink," Tami said. "And fuzzy." She took her cell phone out of her purse. "I got a new phone with a camera yesterday." She snapped a picture of him in the cuffs. "That's going in the memory book." She smiled and then laughed. "You have a good time, sugar?"

"I actually did," he admitted, grinning with relief that she seemed amused instead of upset. "I thought it would be awkward, but I had fun."

"As far as you can recall."

Dale returned and unlocked the cuffs for him.

Tami took the cuffs. "They're collecting props for the spring musical at the school where I work. They're doing West Side Story, and they might need handcuffs. Mind if I keep these, Dale? I'm sure you have plenty of your own."

Dale grinned and extended her the key. "Sure. Take this too. Be careful not to lose it."

As she was slipping the key and handcuffs into her purse, Dale winked at Eric.

Tami stood and draped the strap of the purse on her shoulder. "You ready to get going?" she asked Eric.

Trying to suppress an image of Tami cuffed to their bed, he rose to follow her.