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“You don’t know the half of it.” I sink my last ball and turn to his machine with my hands on my hips. “Don’t tell me you’re quitting?”
Nick smiles with half his mouth. “I’ll admit I’m not used to being this bad at anything.”
“Okay,” I say. “Give me one of your balls.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” Nick cracks.
My face heats up and I roll my eyes. “Oh come on. You know what I mean.”
Still chuckling like a ten-year-old, Nick puts one of the Skee-Balls in my hand. “Here you go. I give you full consent to have your way with them.”
“Well they’re about to go in some holes so… I guess get ready for that,” I say, fighting and failing to hold back laughter.
“That sounds hard to maneuver,” he replies, his grin utterly shit-eating.
“You’d be surprised,” I say. I lift the ball up and stand in front of the machine. “It’s actually all in the wrist.” I let it fly and it lands in the center. “Smooth and steady.”
Nick picks up one and stands where I was. He pauses, aims, and lets it go in a pendulous motion. It hits the ramp a bit more slowly than mine but actually goes straight for once. It falls into the lowest point ring, the ten, but I whoop like Nick just scored a touchdown.
He does too and turns to me, fists in the air in celebration. We high-five and then, before I know what I’m doing, I hug him. Instantly I’m enveloped in that warm scent of cinnamon and manliness. He’s broad and strong beneath that suit, his muscles tensing at my touch.
I leap back just as quickly as I’d gone in, looking up at him with wide eyes. God, I give myself permission to have fun and look how quickly I forget all boundaries. If Nick is put off by my familiarity, he doesn’t show it. Instead, for an instant, he looks at me the way he did in the club: like he wants to ravish me. My chest tightens at the thought, but then his face relaxes into a smile and he shakes his head.
“That’s unlike me,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I got ten points. The bare minimum isn’t worth getting excited over.”
“All progress should be celebrated,” I say. “Otherwise isn’t life just a grind?”
He nods slowly. “It often is.” Then he chuckles and says, “But though my competitive side wants to sit here until I beat you, I’m not going to put you through that.”
“Not sure there are enough hours in the night for it anyway,” I say, wiggling my eyebrows.
At that, the timer on his game finally runs out, and a single ticket spurts out of the machine. Nick rips it off, looks at it, and then sheepishly hands it to me. “For the octopus effort,” he says.
“Every bit helps,” I say, adding it to the stack I pulled out of mine.
“Okay, I’ve been embarrassed enough for one night,” Nick says. “So how about you let me show you my moves now.”
The way he says it makes me giggle. “Your moves?” I repeat. “Please, please be talking about Dance Dance Revolution. I would literally die to see that.”
“No way,” Nick says. “That one was a little after my time. I was thinking more along the lines of the pool table by the door.”
I playfully roll my eyes. “I should have guessed it was the cool guy game. Tell me, do you ever allow yourself to look like a dork?”
A blinding smile and a shake of his head. “I’m never tested the theory, but I’m not sure that’s physically possible,” he says.
“Ummmm… I don’t know about that,” I say. “We might have to run some tests. Ever use a Shake Weight?”
“Leave me out of your experiments, crazy woman,” he says, backing up and turning, slipping his hands into his suit pockets as he pretends to shield his heart from me. He jerks his head back toward the tables. “Come on. I think I deserve to show off a little.”
“Just to warn you, I’m quite bad at pool,” I say.
“It’s just balls in holes,” he says. That teasing smile that is usually so hard to get out of him is now permanently plastered on his face.
“But balls and holes and sticks,” I clarify. “And I have some problems with the latter.”
