‘Speaking from experience, I beg to differ.’
‘You have my word. I’m average at best,’ he says, leaning into position again. ‘You’re probably going to kick my arse.’
He glances up and catches my eye, before he looks back at the table. There is the faintest smile on his mouth as he takes the shot – and misses entirely.
‘You did that on purpose!’
He straightens up with a faux-innocent expression. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘I don’t know! Because you want to give me some kind of morale boost? I don’t need you to go easy on me, you know, Sam Delaney.’
‘I would not dream of it,’ he insists, lying through his teeth.
‘Could you hold this please?’ I hand him my drink. He passes me a cue. Our fingers brush and my whole body ignites. I walk around the table to size up the balls, aware that he’s watching me but oddly unselfconscious, happy to soak up the feel of his eyes on my skin.
I bend to take the shot, aiming to pot a yellow into a corner pocket. I close one eye to see if that helps. When it doesn’t I try the other and find that’s even worse. I open both eyes, look at the target from all sides, then . . . miss completely. He has an inscrutable expression when I stand up and sniff.
‘I don’t want to give away my secrets, but that wasallstrategy,’ I tell him.
‘Really? Interesting approach.’
‘It’s all about lulling you into a false sense of security. . .’
‘Well, it’s definitely working.’
A laugh puffs out of me and I hit him playfully on the chest before he squeezes past behind me. His hands touch either side of my hips. It’s the briefest movement, over in a flash. But as he steps aside, I can still feel the hot imprint of his fingertips.
I have, by this stage, long stopped drinking, glad of my pledge to refuse shots even when I spotted Jeff lining up green concoctions on the bar that looked straight out of the Springfield Nuclear Plant. At some point, Lisa comes over to tell us they’re all heading back to the complex.
‘I think your brother needs a long lie-down,’ she says, crossing her eyes as if to demonstrate the point.
‘Okay! Look after him for me. We won’t be long behind you.’
‘Have fun,’ she adds, and though I couldn’t be certain, I’m sure she gives me a private wink, before heading down the stairs to find the others.
It becomes quickly clear that, whatever Sam claims, he’s as good at pool as he is at everything else. Yet both of us are entirely complicit in the charade that follows. Every time he pots a couple of balls, his next shot is inevitably some wild and inconceivable miss, designed for the sole purpose of letting me catch up. He continues to deny it, while I continue to inform him he’s a bloody idiot and that if he insists on carrying on like this, then more fool him.
A charade, yes, but a delicious one. What’s not to like when we have to squeeze past one another to take a shot? Which sometimes results in my brushing a hand against his waistband. Or when I lean across an end of the table in the full awareness that he’s trying hard not to gaze at my behind. Truth is, I feel like some sexy cowgirl in a music video, laughing, flirting, having the time of my life.
Then I reach a point when I’m completely snookered, surveying the table to try and find a way of even hitting a yellow. From the position of the other balls, I don’t believe it’s even possible.
‘I might as well give up now. I mean, there’s no way of even doing this.’
He’s leaning back on a shelf, forearms crossed, light dancing on his Adam’s apple. ‘Thereisa way.’
‘Enlighten me.’
He stands up and comes over, using his cue to demonstrate, like a lecturer on a whiteboard.
‘Tap that with enough force that it reaches this yellow over here.’
‘I don’t think I can reach.’
‘It’s tricky, I can’t deny it,’ he says, picking up his beer.
I glance up at him. I can feel my heartbeat in my throat. ‘Then why don’t you come over here and show me?’
There is something in the tone of my voice that makes his bottle freeze at his lips. It seems to surprise him as much as me. And the next thing I know, he is silently lowering it, putting down his cue and walking towards me, until he’s not just next to me. He’suponme.
