“Let me try.”
He passes the cue back. “Your elbow is like a hinge, it needs to stay more or less in this position.”
I jolt as he squeezes my elbow to demonstrate before letting go.
I can still feel the ghost of his touch as I practice moving the cue back and forth. This time, it more or less stays pointed in the same direction.
“If you can hit it here,” Anders says, leaning over the table and indicating a point on the left-hand side of a yellow spot, “it’ll go straight into that corner pocket.”
“I do understand the angles,” I tell him.
“Of course you do. You’re an architect,” he replies with a teasing grin.
My toes curl as I laugh. I try to focus and this time, when I take a shot, the ball goes in.
“Yay!” I cry with elation.
“There you go!” he replies warmly.
I’m about to offer up my hand for a high five when our attention is diverted toward the bar area. Bailey and Jonas are standing there laughing, as Dirk pours what appears to be tequila into two shot glasses. Jonas glances over at us and hastily averts his gaze, saying something in Bailey’s ear. She shoots us a guilty look and hunches forward over the bar top, and then the pair of them giggle conspiratorially as they pick up their shot glasses and not-so-surreptitiously clink them.
“Those bastards are doing sneaky shots without us,” I murmur.
Bailey downs her shot and starts coughing and Jonas puts his hand on her shoulder, almost pulling her over with the drunken weight of it. This only makes them laugh more.
Beside me, Anders sighs. “I think we’re in for a long night.”
We meet each other’s eyes and he presses his lips together, suppressing a smile.
I can’t say I’m upset about it. It seems these brothers could do with blowing off some steam.
15
We stay until closing time, when Dirk kicks us out.
“I’ve got to get my bike from the parking lot,” Anders says to me, calling after Jonas to tell him to wait.
“You’re not planning on riding it home, are you?” I ask with alarm, as I follow him around the corner of the building.
He doesn’t seem that drunk to me, but I’m pretty sure I can’t be trusted to make that judgment call.
“No, I’ll walk it back. It’s not street-legal so it’s bad enough that I rode it here in the first place.”
The sound of Jonas heaving his guts up causes us to come to a sudden stop, and at the same time, the back door of the bar flies open.
“Oh, you did not just puke on my hood,” Dirk says darkly, standing there with a bulging black garbage bag in his hand and glaring at the elder Fredrickson brother.
“Shit,” Anders mutters, because yes, it does indeed appear that Jonas has vomited all over the bonnet of a big red pickup, and from how shiny and clean it looks under the light of the streetlamps, I’m guessing that Dirk’s truck is his pride and joy.
“I’m gonna bust open a can of whoop-ass on you!” he hollers, his expression furious as he hurls the garbage into a nearby dumpster.
“We’ll clean it up,” Anders calls placatingly.
“You goddamn better!” Dirk shouts at him, brandishing his finger at us all. “Or you guys will be banned for the rest of the month!”
As soon as the door bangs shut behind him, Bailey and Jonas glance at each other and crack up laughing.
There’s only another week left of July, so they’re not taking the threat of punishment very seriously.
