It was my turn and we were stripes. I lined up my shot with the fifteen and sunk it into the corner hole.
“Don’t be coy,” my father said, clapping me on the back as I was trying to line up my shot into the side pocket. “You obviously intend to marry her.”
I didn’t. But either way, it wasn’t his business. “We’ll see.”
Samuel scoffed. “Yeah, maybe she’ll say no.”
I flipped him off and watched as he winked at me.
I took my shot, barely missing, making it Samuel’s turn.
I stood back from the table, circling the pool cue between my hands, back and forth.
“Don’t fidget so much,” my father said, as if I could stop it. “Its a sign of an un-calm mind.”
He was interrogating me, what did he expect?
“Anyway,” he continued. “What do you think of her intentions?”
“Intentions?” I parroted.
“Well, we know she’s from a more… modest background. Do you think that’s what she cares about?”
“No,” I snapped. I instantly regretted it. Showing any kind of vulnerability gave him room to sink his claws in further.
“Are you sure? She said she worked at a coffee shop? Seems like you’re an easy ticket to a step up.”
My jaw clenched. I didn’t mind when he talked about me that way, but I wasn’t going to sit here and let him talk about her that way.
“Juniper has her own plans. She’s developing an app in her spare time, not that I need to explain any of that to you. She’s not just using me for my money, and any further insinuation about it is an insult to her and I would suggest you stop.”
The room turned silent, everyone looking at me. No one talked back to my father, at least not directly. We all just took it to the chin, sometimes making jokes along the way, but never actually saying anything. But this wasn’t about me, this was about her.
Arthur had his same blank glance. Samuel looked a bit nervous, and my father had the same hard stare I was used to.
I approached the table, lined up my shot, and sank the eight ball into the left pocket. The sound of the clinking balls rang through the room, echoing off the walls.
I set the cue on the table in the way I knew my father hated. “Looks like we lost,” I said before turning and heading up the stairs, taking them two at a time until I was walking through the lobby.
I didn’t need to stand there under my father’s scrutiny, questioning my girlfriend.
I stopped. Shewasn’tmy girlfriend, though. I didn’t like the insinuation my father tried to make about her, but she wasn’t my girlfriend to defend, at least not for real. And therewasmoneyin play. A lot of it in fact, but that was a mutual agreement, not some ploy on her end.
If anything, we were here because of me. Because I wanted my family off of my back. But now things felt wrong. It felt as if this very solid line we’d drawn in the beginning was being blurred by the minute, and I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. Or what she actually wanted.
“There you are,” Samuel said from behind me.
I turned on my heel to face him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Fine.”
He scoffed. “Sure. Let’s get a drink.”
I followed him to the bar on the other side of the resort. It was the main one, with floor to ceiling windows that looked out over the ski slope. Thank god it’d just opened and was mostly empty.
I ordered a Negroni while Samuel stuck to a hard cider.
