Sasha lying low this week was the only thing keeping me out of her face.
Fuck! I got re-pissed every time I thought about it.
But not tonight. She wouldn’t ruin tonight.
Cal was in a good mood, driving me insane with his smiles and silent promises.
The bowling alley played club remixes loud enough my heart caught the rhythm easily. The wild thump kept time with colored spotlights streaking across us in a tangle, the madness too eerily similar to how Cal and I were together. Heavy, fast, a jumble of arms and snapped jaws … By the heat in his not-so-subtle stare, he thought the same.
From hours and hours of trying to hate him so deeply, I learned to read him so well. Every tick of muscle, every slight flutter of his lashes and twitch of his lips, told me all the dirty things flirting in his mind.
I smirked and mouthed,Later.
His chest swelled, and though I couldn’t hear it from the noise, he hissed on an exhale, gnashing his teeth and glancing away.
After we paid for our lanes, we moved to the shoe counter. When Cal asked for thirteens, he threw me a wink, to which I rolled my eyes.
Ty and Asher went to get drinks with Cara and her friend Kitty. The rest of us found our lane numbers and started plugging in names for the players. Cal entered his as BigC. He stood from the little station where the info was entered, a shit-eating grin on his face, then sat beside me.
“I saw it,” I muttered without looking his way.
Cal laughed, then startled when I grabbed his quads and smoothed my hand high enough to sit just below the growing bulge in his jeans. The others were hunched over the little kiosk, not paying the least bit of attention to us.
I licked my lower lip, then dragged it between my teeth. “Think I can get a taste of that Big C before the night is out?”
Cal nodded quickly. “Anytime you want it.”
“Y’all are so cute,” Asher said as he roped an arm around both of our necks. He had a soda in each hand, and we took them. “So be honest,” he whispered. “Was all the fighting just some alpha foreplay?”
Cal shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”
I scrambled from my chair before anyone could wonder what the three of us were doing and entered my own name in the list: OwnsthatBigC.
Nick laughed the loudest, then said, “Y’all won’t ever give this up, huh?”
Cal shrugged. “We’ve grown to tolerate each other enough.”
And that had been the general rumor. With the faculty breathing down our necks and no more fighting or pranks between the football and soccer teams, Cal and I, enemies, had drawn a thin truce to get through the year. No one needed to know how we maintained thattruce.
The subject changed rapidly and thankfully never came back to us.
Once everyone was settled with drinks and their names in the list, we got started. Right away, it was obvious no one was going to win against Nick or Michael. Both were sinking strike after strike.
“Good grief,” Cara cried. “Are you two in a league or somethin’?”
Jamie, who wasn’t playing but sat huddled on a chair, watching everything from the black hole that was all of him, said, “Michael used to play a lot with our daddy.”
Michael didn’t hit his strike the next time. He didn’t seem mad about it either. After his turn, he sat down, stretched his legs wide, and plopped an arm along the back of Jamie’s chair, who reached out, almost unconsciously so, and played with the frayed edge of a rip in Michael’s jeans.
Nick won the first round. Kitty came in last. Ty offered to help her with a few quick lessons.
Her score was even lower the second round.
Cal and I couldn’t stop laughing.
Ty tried his hardest to be nice, but it was painfully clear that his good intentions were wasted since the girl was deep in her crush on him and paying more attention to how close he stood to her than where she placed the ball.
During the third round, Cal and I snuck off, leaving them to play while we hit up the arcade room. It had the classics, and we messed around on Ms. Pac-Man. And by messed around,I meant I lamely acted as if I was doing something while Cal scoped the place for dark corners.
