Jonas finishes racking up the balls while Bailey stands by, chalking a cue.
“Us against them?” Jonas asks her.
She’s tall, at five foot eight, but he towers over her, his milk-chocolate hair falling forward around his temples in messy waves. Despite his inebriation, he looks more put together than the last time I saw him, down by the river.
“Sounds good,” Bailey replies.
Anders chalks up a second cue, seemingly resigned to his fate.
Jonas pulls a coin out of his pocket. “Heads or tails?” His eyes move between Anders and me.
“You can break,” Anders replies, unsmiling.
“Cheer up, bro.” Jonas pockets his coin and walks round to the end of the table. “You wanna break?” he checks with Bailey first.
“No, go ahead.”
“I’m crap at pool, sorry,” I say to Anders as Jonas sends the balls scattering all around the table. One goes in.
It feels slightly surreal that, two weeks after I first saw him playing in this bar, I’m his partner.
“We’re just killing time,” Anders mutters.
If Iwasenjoying this turn of events, I’m not so much anymore. He issounhappy to be here.
“You’re up,” Jonas prompts us.
Anders waves toward me deferentially. I walk up to the table and try to hit a green striped ball, missing the pocket by about half a foot.
I pull a face at him. He raises his eyebrows at me.
Bailey goes next, grinning as her blue spot goes straight in, then yelling with annoyance when the white follows it.
Anders has two shots. He pots a yellow stripe on his first and nothing on his next two.
“You lost your mojo?” Jonas asks him.
Anders shrugs and grabs his beer from where he’s placed it on the sill of the high-level window.
Every time Jonas or Bailey pot a ball, Anders evens things out on his next turn. I just do my best to hit one of ours each time.
“You really do suck at pool,” Anders muses toward the end of the game.
“Yep, so please can you hurry up and get these last couple in, because I need to go to the bathroom.”
We’ve been trying to pocket these last two balls for a while. I have a feeling Anders could clean up if he wanted to, but he’s trying to string this game out for as long as possible.
He walks round to the other side of the table, lines up his shot, and lifts his eyes. My blood zings as the green of his gaze locks with mine. I couldn’t look away even if I wanted to. He breaks the contact and shoots the ball straight into a pocket, just as he did the first time he caught me in a stare at this bar, and suddenly I’m remembering another detail from that night: Casey said that Anders was married, that he lost his wife in a car accident.
“Dammit!” Jonas complains when Anders pots the black ball. “Let’s go again.”
How could I have forgotten?
Anders sighs. “Guess I’ll go to the bar, then. What are you drinking?” he asks me.
“Rum and Coke, please,” I reply distractedly.
“Bailey?” Anders asks.
