“Okay you got me. Mom and Dad are still happily married after thirty years,” Devon stated with a shrug as he avoided her gaze. “But so-what?”
“I grew up without my dad. I have no idea who he even is and my mother…the first time I can clearly recall her forgetting my birthday was when I turned seven. That’s also the first time she disappeared for two days leaving me by myself. I was seven, alone and miserable until Tate showed up at my door, dragged me down to the pizza parlor and we ordered some disgusting pizza. I mean anchovies, banana, green pepper, pepperoni all mashed together disgusting.”
“Okay that sounds horrible.”
“It was but that was the whole point of it. Tate used his allowance to buy me this horrible mixture just to make me smile and it continued, all of it, my mother leaving me home alone, forgetting my birthday until she vanished. I had Tate, and his dad was the only adult male who’d ever offered me encouragement, the ones my mother brought around were interested in her body.” Mel sighed as she stopped and headed towards the living room. She picked up a photo album and flipped through it passing it over to him. “That was a week after Tate turned fourteen and three days after he’d cracked his hockey stick by hitting a junior in high school against his shoulder to stop him from doing something to me.”
“You were fourteen?” Devon asked studying the picture.
“Yeah, didn’t look it, did I?” She flipped a few more pages and coming to the picture from the pizza parlor on her fifteenthbirthday. “That was the day my mother took off for good. I was fighting off guys interested in the packaging already and I knew if it got out that she’d left I’d be sent to foster care. I wouldn’t survive intact if that happened and I refused to lose the one person who’d always been there for me,” she added glancing through the pictures from the two and a half years when she’d been fooling everyone. “Meeting Jordan changed everything, for the first time I had someone else that I could trust, and then his family accepted me without blinking. I don’t need to have something that’s solely mine, though I do in a way. I share the architecture with Jordan, and I share pool with Tate, but I love them both, just as I love both of my best friends.”
“You play pool?” he asked with a hint of a grin. “Any good?”
“Why, you play?” she countered curious if he’d forgotten her mention of it in class earlier in the year.
“I might, too bad that storm’s still littering the ground with hail or we could head out to the bar and play a round or two.”
“Who needs a bar when you have a cave,” she stated leading him towards the ‘man cave’.
“Now I get it.” Devon laughed looking around the space. “No wonder Tate hung out here so much.”
“I’ll admit I wasn’t sure who he loved more, me or this room,” she stated grabbing the sticks from the wall as he finished setting up the balls.
“Ladies first?” he offered.
“Nah, guests first,” she told him in order to judge how well he could play. He wasn’t bad she discovered as he sank three-fourths of his balls before he missed the shot glancing it off the edge of the hole.
“Not bad,” she told him as she leaned over to reach a long shot. She let the stick slide between her fingers and grinned when it sank, “But I’m better.”
“Want to bet?” he asked as she made another easy shot.
“What’d you have in mind?”
“If I win…you have to write our entire paper,” he suggested.
“And if I win you write it? I think I’ll stick to my half on that one,” she joked as a devious smile crossed her lips.
“What?”
“If I win, you have to wear a dress while putting up a wall in the building on campus under the watchful eye of my Tate.”
“You’re on because there’s no way I’m going to lose,” he told her and she had a feeling he’d been holding back but then again, she was the reigning champion of the tournament still.
“Want to start over or go to seventy-two?” Mel asked as she lined up the next shot.
“Seventy-two,” he agreed and she quickly finished the game thanks to his easy lineups.
“Sure you don’t want to call it off?” she stated as she went to break.
“Not a chance, you’re going down Melinda.”
“Mel, everyone who knows me calls me Mel,” she told him letting the balls slide around the table sinking three before she purposely missed.
“Ah, thanks for the shots Mel,” he stated sinking four before he realized his next shots weren’t going to be easy. She’d set up her shots to force his hand, and she conceded that he was better than he’d let on as he sank two of the middle level shots then the harder one before missing entirely on the impossible one.
She grinned before stepping up to the table.
“Such a shame you won’t get another shot,” she told him before finishing off the game and then the next five much to his surprise.
