Seven Groomsmen from Hell (Love by Numbers 6)

“‘Oh, look at me. I’m a doctor. I’m good at math,’” Luke mocked.

“You have a business degree,” I growled at him. “Quit stalling and man up,” I said.

Luke peeked back at the guys, then over at Khloe, then back at me. “How do we tell the other guys without telling Kent?”

I clapped my hands and turned around and walked over to Kent. “Hey, Kent.”

Kent turned around and looked at me. “Yeah? Are you two about done making out over there?”

“Hilarious,” I said flatly, just as Luke was making his way over as well. “Luke and I thought it might shake things up to do things tournament style. Each of us pitches in $50 and the winner gets $400.”

“How will only one person win?” Kent asked.

“A three game style where the winners keep splitting teams until we’re down to two. I’ll explain it all, but it’ll be easier if I can write it out on a piece of paper.” I pointed over to where Khloe and Anna were sitting, feeling a bit of internal pride at the way Khloe jumped and turned her head away the second I did it. “Since we’re not allowed to go near Khloe, can you go ask to borrow a piece of paper and a pencil?”

“We could just keep score on our phones like we did the first game?” Luke said. I turned and looked at him and sighed. For an incredibly intelligent man, he could be really thick. He stared back at me for a moment and his eyes widened. “Oh, right, you’re a doctor so you prefer shittily writing things out.”

Kent snickered. “Good one.” He fist bumped Luke and then turned and rushed off towards Khloe and Anna.

When he was close enough to the women, Anna jumped up to kiss Kent and I knew he’d be distracted for a couple of minutes. I gathered the rest of the guys and explained my plan. Even though everyone was still trying to be somewhat solicitous of Luke being the first one to lust after Khloe, it didn’t take much to get them on board. Everyone was fired up to compete for the challenge to be Khloe’s first of the seven of us, or at least to be the first one shot down. It kicked the fire into us all that we needed to make the football games high stakes and adrenaline fueling. I explained that everyone was going to have to ante up $50 bucks if for some reason Kent won, but it was a small price to pay for the chance to go after Khloe.

Once Kent got back with the paper and pen from Khloe, I explained the modified rules to him, we decided we would play to 18 and then wrote out the brackets. The first round teams were decided completely at random. I used the bottom of the paper we got from Khloe to write all of our names on, and then let a couple of the onlookers draw two names from a hat for captains. Each captain then drew names randomly until we had two teams of four. Kent was the captain of the first team and drew Mason, Brett, and David, and Luke was captain of the second team and drew me, Bram, and Christian. A coin toss determined that Kent’s team was the receiving team and the game was underway.

It became clear fairly quickly that the teams were pretty mismatched. Even though Luke got saddled with the two “non-ballers” of the group, me and Bram, we worked together with Christian and Luke so well, that you wouldn’t know we weren’t professionals. Toss in the fact that Mason and David were used to working with Luke as the quarterback, so trying to play with Kent who was traditionally a defensive player was a bit of a struggle. We were more agile, younger, and more adept, and the match ended in a complete slaughter; 18-0.

For the next round, we followed a similar system. A guest watching us play picked two names at random to be captains, and then each of them picked one name at random from the remaining two winners. The captains then had their pick of the losers to round out their teams. The captains pulled were Christian and me, and Christian pulled Bram, which left me with Luke. Luke and I had gotten close over the course of our friendship and I was confident we could pull out a second victory, plus it would be delightful irony for it to be he and I in the final matchup.

Christian picked Brett and David for his team, which was just plain rude. It wasn’t as if Mason and Kent were bad at the game, but they were the ‘old cats.’ I was technically older than them both, but Kent was retired and a bit out of practice, and Mason was notably slower. Luke seemed thrilled to end up with them, however, and after we got into the game it was clear why. I was too fast, Mason was too big, and Kent was too smart. It didn’t matter what we decided to do. If we needed to throw it, Kent could be downfield in an instant, and if we needed to just charge through, Mason had the girth to make it happen. I ran feints most of the game, but it worked because I was always able to fool at least the accountant and leave one person open for Luke to work with. It was a closer game, but in the end, Luke and I ended up snagging our second victory 18-12.