I break the rack. The crack echoes through the bar with three balls dropping smoothly into pockets.
Pool makes sense to me. It’s geometry and controlled force. If you calculate the angle correctly, the ball goes exactly where it should. If you miss, it’s because you misjudged something, not because the ball had a mind of its own.
Full control… if you know what you’re doing.
"You’re very good at that." An unfamiliar woman's voice says, walking up to the pool table next to me.
I don’t look up as I sink another stripe. "."
I don’t tell her that my father used to make me play with him for hours until I beat him before he’d let me rest, before I could play with other kids my age, before I could do anything. That’s why I got good at survival, acceptance, a son trying to be good enough for his father. I never was, though, even when I beat him over and over again.
He was training me to be the next mob boss. To obliterate an opponent. To be someone who would need to know how to read a shot, how to strategize, to always be thinking several plays ahead of whoever I was up against. Pool was never about the game. It was about strategy and outplaying your opponent. It took me years to realize that it was never about a father and son playing together.
My mother, before she passed, thought it was love. "He’s trying to make you strong for the life ahead. In his way, he’s protecting you."
What she didn’t know was that she was the only thing he had ever loved… and after her death, he resented her for it."Love only makes you weak, son."He texted me on the day she died.
I step back as Steve, my opponent, lines up his shot. A fisherman from Alaska who doesn’t talk much but knows his way around a pool table. My kind of competitor.
She steps closer anyway. An attractive blonde with expensive taste, based on her luxury clothing and a confident posture. The kind of woman who belongs in places like this and knows it.
"I’m Annabella," she says. "Are you always this serious when you play?"
"Yes."
She laughs as if I’ve flirted instead of warned her. "Mind if I watch?"
I shrug. She doesn’t need permission, and I’m not interested enough to deny her.
She leans against the edge of the table while I finish the game, asking the predictable questions. Where are you from? How long are you staying? Are you here alone? I answer in half-truths and minimal syllables.
"A hockey player?" She asks when I mention what I do for work and that I play for the Seattle Hawkeyes.
"That’s right," I say, pretending to believe that she didn’t already know who I am before she walked over here.
Then she smiles. "My room has an incredible view from the balcony. You should see it."
There's the proposition. Direct, efficient, and right to the damn point—the kind of attention I’m used to. Normally, I’d appreciate it, but tonight… I don’t.
"Can’t," I say, lining up the eight ball. "Early morning."
"How early?" she asks.
"Lift opens at eight. I like to be first in line."
She smiles with amusement. "You’re that serious about skiing?"
"I don’t do anything halfway."
It’s not an overly confident comment… it’s the truth. If I’m going to do something, I’m not going to do it half-assed.
"I’d like to see what else you don’t do halfway," she says.
I glance at her and then, quick enough, at Steve to see his eyebrows lift in response to Annabella's forward comment, though his eyes are on his next shot.
She studies me for a moment when I watch Steve instead of engaging with her.
"Tomorrow night, then," she counters.
