Fallon glared at him. “If you say she’s got a pretty face for a bigger person, I am going to stab you with the closest pointy object.”
“Look, I can’t help who I’m attracted to. I have dated all sorts of women,” he said, unable to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “It’s not that I’m excluding anyone, it’s just that I am drawn to who I am drawn to.”
And women who were never going to buy the lines he was selling were not one of them. He liked his balls attached and swinging under his dick, thanks very much.
“Bullshit.” Fallon sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “It’s that you take some folks off the list before you even give them a chance.”
“You want me to bang Lucy Kavanagh?” Where in the hell was this conversation going?
“No,” Fallon exclaimed. “I like her.”
He tossed his cards onto the table in frustration. “And you can’t like people I fuck?”
“If that was the case,” Fallon said, her voice rising, “then I’d have to not like almost the entire female population of Waterbury.”
And if Frankie needed any confirmation that he needed to take a time-out from women—all women—then this was it. Even his sister thought he was a man-whore and nothing more. He looked at his brothers, who had transformed their faces into carefully neutral masks, which told him everything he needed to know.
“How about everyone steps back and takes a deep breath,” said Finn, ever the peacemaker. “You two are getting pretty fucking worked up when you’re both right.”
Frankie and Fallon stopped shooting death glares at each other to turn their combined ire onto Finn. “What?” they asked at the same time.
“Sexual attraction is what it is. We don’t control it,” Finn said, talking slowly because he was obviously trying to pick his words carefully. “But we, as humans, do tend to separate the world into them and us, which can alter our perspective about who we should even consider as possible sexual partners. The research on physical attraction is actually pretty fascinating.” He looked from Frankie to Fallon to Ford, and they must have each had the same shocked expression, because Finn flipped them off. “What? I can read.”
There was a beat of silence, and then they each started laughing, the tension seeping out of Frankie’s shoulders as he relaxed back against his chair. His gaze caught Fallon’s. They were too much alike in a lot of ways, quick tempers, impulsive, embracers of chaos, and—yeah—adrenaline junkies. But they were both the kind of people who stuck up for the kid getting picked on. For him, it was probably because he was the oldest of the Hartigan siblings and that had been his role as long as he could remember.
For Fallon? Well, the world wasn’t always easy for a woman who didn’t conform to what was expected. She’d gotten so much shit growing up about her brash personality and tomboy ways that defensiveness was pretty much her starting point in any discussion. And that attitude showed up when she was going mama bear for her friends. He could understand that.
“Look, I know Lucy’s your friend,” he said. “I like her but not that way. I’m going because it will give me a break from my usual routine in Waterbury, and I could use that to get my head clear. And she deserves to rub her awesome life into the faces of those assholes from high school. It’s a win-win for both of us.”
She pursed her lips but didn’t call him an asshole again, so that was progress. “You’re sure everything else is all right?”
“Yes.” He grinned at her. “And my dick still works.”
“No, I mean this is a big change from your standard operating procedure,” she said, not even cracking a smile at his joke. “You’re a pain in the butt but you’re our pain in the butt, so we’re here for you if you need us.”
Like he’d ever doubted it. They might fight. They might call each other out. They might be loud and obnoxious and way too involved in one another’s lives, but they were family and that’s how they rolled—all in it together.
“I’m thirty-three,” he said, gathering up everyone’s discarded cards on the table and shuffling them. “I’m just ready for a change.”
Finn chuckled and took a sip from his beer. “Frankie’s going to Missouri to find himself.”
They all laughed, the equanimity of the Hartigan poker table back to normal. And that was about as much touchy-feely chatting as he could take, so he told Ford it was his turn to get fresh beers from the fridge and deal out the cards, figuring he could use the winnings he was about to make to pay for tolls on the drive to Missouri.