My ball creeps toward the gutter.
“Don’t do that,” I coax. “Be a curveball.”
The ball wobbles at the lip of the gutter. I cross my fingers on both hands.
It falls in with a definitive whump.
Dammit.
Sighing, I head back to the seats at the end of the lane, glancing at the scoreboard.
I’ve got sixty points. Eli’s still ahead of me, with sixty-six points. Lydia’s got fifty-five, and Naomi’s at forty-two.
Kevin, who is wearing borrowed socks with pugs on them because he thought it was okay to wear bowling shoes with no socks, has almost a hundred and fifty points. It turns out that he was on his high school bowling team. I didn’t know high schools had bowling teams.
I’m not annoyed that my summer intern has nearly triple my score.
But I’m really annoyed that Eli’s beating me by six points.
“We could ask for bumpers,” Eli says, sitting in the plastic seat behind the scorekeeping computer, his ankle crossed over his knee.
“Would that help you?” I say, grabbing my beer and taking a long swallow.
“Bumpers don’t help if you’re not throwing gutter balls,” he says.
Lydia stands and grabs a bowling ball, frowning at the lane in front of her.
“Follow the arrows on the lane with your fingers,” Kevin coaches, both of them ignoring us. “And make sure you follow through.”
“You’re six points ahead, Loveless,” I say, sitting down on another plastic seat, facing him. “Don’t get cocky.”
“Cocky? That was an offer made from the goodness and generosity of my heart, Tulane,” he says. “I’m not even winning. Kevin’s kicking all our asses. I just hate to see you upset like this.”
He leans back on the plastic seat, hooking an elbow over it. He’s got that half-smile on his face, the one that reaches his eyes more than his lips. The one that makes them sparkle from within.
They sparkle with the joy of being the most difficult man this side of the Mississippi, but they do sparkle.
“Bless your heart, you sweet thing,” I say, taking another sip of my beer. “Always thinking of others.”
Eli knows exactly what I mean by bless your heart. His smile widens to a grin.
“All we’ve got to do is ask,” he says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m sure they can set ‘em up in no time flat.”
“I’m starting to think you want them,” I say, mimicking his position, one elbow over the chair next to me. “What is it, Loveless? You think you can work the angles or something? Bounce balls off the sides better than you can throw straight?”
I drink some more beer, trying to stay cool and cover the tangle of weird emotions crawling around inside me. That results in an empty beer cup, and I spin it between my fingers, still keyed up and nervy.
“I just want to even the playing field a little,” Eli says. “Obviously it won’t help Kevin, but it might make things a little better for you.”
I get up and walk to the pitcher of beer on the table behind us.
“As if you’re not six points ahead of me,” I call back, refilling my flimsy plastic cup. “As if my next turn couldn’t completely wipe that smile right off your face.”
“Not unless we get bumpers,” he says, twisting around in his chair, one eyebrow raised. “Then, maybe —"
“They only give bumpers to kids,” Kevin says, walking back from the lane as the machinery clears the pins. Lydia follows him, pointing at Eli.
“You,” she says.
He gets out of the chair, and I sit down in it, watching him as he selects a bright orange bowling ball from the return mechanism.
He strides forward. I drink some more beer, acting casual. He winds up, crouches, and releases the ball down the lane.
I watch his butt and keep drinking so I can pretend like I’m not watching his butt.
When his turn is over, he’s gotten another seven pins. Now he’s thirteen points ahead of he, but if my bowling math is right, if I get a strike or a spare for the next two rounds in a row, I could catch up by the end of the game.
He comes back and pretends not to notice that I took his chair. He’s perfectly casual, sitting in the row of plastic chairs, watching me with a smirk on his face because he’s throwing a ball at the floor a tiny bit better than me.
His eyes don’t leave my face. I pretend like I don’t notice, but I feel like there are heat rays on my skin. I’m practically melting under the intensity of his gaze, and I don’t even know if it’s bad melting, like action figures under a magnifying glass in the sun or good melting, like chocolate in your mouth.
“What?” I finally ask.
“Want to make it interesting?”
Isn’t it already?
“How?”
“Ten bucks to the winner,” he says, lifting his eyebrows ever so slightly.