“I never doubted it,” he replied, pulling her in for a kiss with his arms around her waist and his hands resting on her ass.
I cleared my throat as I grabbed a pool cue from the rack on the wall. They broke away from each other, looking at me shamelessly as he kept feeling her up.
“What’s up, Butch? Enjoy your time in the clink?” Blade asked, earning a light slap against his chest from Kat.
“Be nice,” she said. “He’s a hero.”
That was the first time I’d ever been called that.
“A hero?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Well, that’s what Cherry called you when I talked to her earlier.”
“That’s not why I did it.”
“Aw, you’re making him blush,” Blade said. I rolled my eyes.
“Fuck you.”
“I think you mean to say thank you for getting your bike.” Blade finally released Kat, and she picked up the chalk, rubbing it onto the tip of her pool cue.
I nodded. “Yeah, that is what I meant.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. We clasped hands and patted each other’s backs briefly.
“Enough with the bro hug.” Kat looked at me with a challenge in her eye. “Are you planning to take on the winner?”
“How much do you want to put on the game?” I asked.
“Fifty bucks?” she offered, pulling some bills out of her back pocket and slapping them down on the edge of the pool table.
“Deal.”
I added my own cash to hers and racked up the balls. Leaning low over the table, I took the first shot, scattering the balls and knocking two in.
“Looks like I’m stripes,” I said. My next shot didn’t knock any balls into the pockets, so it was her turn.
Blade took a seat on a nearby barstool. There was a shelf that ran along the wall surrounding the pool tables, so we had a place to set our drinks, and he was sitting against it, watching us play. Or rather, watchingKatplay.
As Kat took her turn and Blade’s intense gaze followed her every move, I felt like I was intruding on something intimate, even more so than their groping session. There was a heat between the two of them that stirred a shocking jealousy within me.
I didn’t want Kat. She was hot, but not my type with her bad girl vibe. The source of the feeling was about the emotional connection they had. I knew what it was like; I’d felt it before.
Kylie Pierce was my high school sweetheart, the girl that I was sure I’d be with forever. I had been crazy about her, the way that I could see Blade was crazy about Kat. But teenagers didn’t know shit about real life and things went south pretty quickly after high school ended. We’d moved in together right after graduation, with big plans to end up married someday. Then she’d gone to community college while I started working at a quarry to support us. We’d been together for almost two years at that point, but all of a sudden, we were from different worlds. She was meeting new people and partying with friends while I worked my ass off and fell asleep alone most nights, practically passing out from exhaustion.
I should have seen the breakup coming, I realized in hindsight. But I was so damn busy working, doing it all for us, that it had been a shock to be dumped. Kylie moved out of our apartment, deciding to stay with some friends that she’d met on campus.
She was dating someone else a week later.
Since then, I’d kept things casual with women, telling myself that I didn’t want to be in that kind of relationship again.
Now, as I played pool with Kat, I couldn’t help but think that maybe Ididwant more out of a relationship. They weren’t just a happy couple. Theyfit.Like pieces of a puzzle. The relationship completed the picture of their lives.
I shook my head at myself. Since when was I so sentimental?
It had to be a byproduct of spending the day behind bars. It was making me soft.
Kat was a good player, but I’d grown up with a pool table in my basement, and I spent a lot of time down there, so I was even better. At the end of our game, I pocketed the hundred dollars that was on the edge of the table.
