Better tuck it away for another day.
“Do you play pool?” I ask her, wanting to get my mind onto other things.
She shakes her head. “I’m terrible at it, really.”
“So you’re saying I could wipe the floor with you.”
“Are you competitive abouteverything?”
I tilt my head back and forth, as if considering. “I mean…Yeah. Mostly.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Jack is fine.”
“Impossible,” she mutters. “Completely impossible.”
But she kind of smiles when she says it, so I don’t think she necessarily means it in a bad way.
“I do feel better being out of the apartment,” I admit. “Thanks for suggesting it.”
She shrugs. “Being cooped up in your apartment with nothing but your wayward thoughts isn’t good for anything.”
“Especially withmybroken-ass brain,” I point out.
She makes a face. “Your brain isn’t broken.”
“I mean, it kind of is.”
I’ve sort of come to peace with it at this point in my life. It’s just something that is.
“It’s notbroken,” she stresses. “It just works differently. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Huh.
It’s a simple statement, but the funny thing it does to my chest is a lot less so. No, what it does is downright complicated, because it makes me want to kiss her right here in this bar, and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want me to do that.
Before I can really contemplate whether or not it might be worth risking her ire, the waitress brings our food and drinks, setting everything out on the table in front of us as Abby eyes the cheese fries hungrily.
“I knew you wanted food,” I tease. “That’s probably the only reason you lured me out of the apartment.”
She reaches for a fry, scarfing it down. “Yeah, well, anything for my shitty great-aunt.”
A laugh tumbles out of me, the dry way she says it striking me as even more funny. Everything Abby does is sort of dry and matter-of-fact—but I eat every bit of it up, just enjoying seeing these little pieces of her that she rarely shows to others. To anyone, really.
“Sorry,” a voice sounds to my left. “Are you Jack Baker?”
I turn to see a small crowd of women all wearing pink sashes, looking at me expectantly—the one who spoke wearing a tiara that says “Bride To Be.”
“Hey,” I answer. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“Oh my God,” Ms. Bride To Be says. “You’re like, my fiancé’sfavoriteplayer. Could I get a selfie? I swear to God, he will die.”
“Oh yeah, sure,” I tell her, scooting over in the booth a bit so she can reach me.
She holds out her phone but can’t quite get us into frame, so I take it from her and hold it out a little further, smiling wide with her when I snap a picture. She gushes over it for a second before I offer an autograph, snagging one of the napkins on the table as one of her friends wrestles a Sharpie out of her purse.
“I watch all your games,” one of the bride’s friends says, a pretty brunette who until about two weeks ago, might have been my type.
