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It fully clicks with me now. We’re getting hustled. These guys probably sit around all night waiting to challenge people over the table and then goad them into putting money on the line. Nick knew what they were doing and tried to back out of it, but I fell right into their trap.
Nick still looks like he wants to leave, but, after glancing longingly at the door, he relents.
“Fine,” he says. He rolls his cue idly on the table, watching it move and not looking at the Asshole. “How about ten bucks?”
“Ten? What kind of money is ten?” a guy from the table jeers.
“Fine. Twenty,” Nick says.
“Man, with that watch on I know you’ve got a lot more than twenty in you,” the Asshole says. “Let’s make it interesting. Say a thousand.”
A thousand? The money is nothing to Nick, but still I’m shocked by the balls on these guys.
Nick frowns. “I don’t carry that kind of cash,” he says.
“There’s an ATM in the corner.”
Finally Nick looks at the guy. I hope he’s calculating something behind those mysterious brown eyes. But he just says, “It doesn’t make much of a difference to me. But I’d feel bad taking your rent for the month.”
There’s a bit of the Nick I know.
But the Asshole just smirks. “I’m willing to risk it,” he says.
“Or,” Nick says, as if working around to an idea, “we could play for something a little more abstract.”
“What are you thinking?”
“If you win,” Nick says slowly, “I’ll give you my watch. Believe me, it’s worth a lot more than a grand.”
The Asshole’s eyes bug out of his head at the offer. Nick lifts his wrist and tantalizingly waves it. I don’t know much about watches, but it’s clearly the kind of luxury brand that makes Rolex look like something you’d get out of a gumball machine. The Asshole’s eyes follow it like a cat’s.
“And if you win?” the Asshole asks, almost as an afterthought. His eyes are still glued to the watch.
“Well,” Nick says casually, “if I win then I get to punch you in the face as hard as I can.”
That tears the Asshole’s attention back to Nick. He furrows his brow and sizes up Nick, taking in his height and thick arms and big hands. But on one of those hands is that gorgeous, shiny watch, and Nick is still playing around with the cue, still not meeting his eye.
The Asshole smirks back at his friends. “All right. Bet,” he says. Nick reaches out a hand and they shake on it.
As the Asshole goes back to the table to shed his coat and talk shit to his friends, I turn to Nick.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t mean to get you tangled up in this.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, but he doesn’t look at me.
“Will you be able to beat him?” I ask, worried and still thrown by how Nick’s acting. For once all of his body language doesn’t exude confidence. Maybe he’d exaggerated his ability before. Actually, he probably did after I wiped the floor with him at the Skee-Ball machines. And now I’ve set him up to get hustled and embarrassed by a guy who probably plays pool all day long. And on top of that lose him his watch!
Nick just shrugs.
My stomach is in a knot that would challenge Maniac McGee as the guys chalk up their cues.
“I’ll be nice and let you break,” the Asshole says to Nick.
“How kind of you,” he says flatly. But he goes up to the head of the table and adjusts where I placed the cue ball.
I don’t want to look, but I also can’t tear my eyes away. All of my prayers rest on this opening shot, the test of just how badly this is going to go.
Nick looks at the balls for a moment, taking his time.
