Chapter Twelve
Twelve
Adrian extends a hand toward the array of games. “You pick.”
I spin a slow circle, appraising the neon flashing lights, chiming interfaces, and glowing screens. As I scrutinize the options, I catalog the number of hours Sofi and I have spent on each, and weigh my probability of victory. The truth is, though, I have a clear favorite.
“How about Skee-Ball?” I ask.
Adrian’s eyes dance. “That works.”
Through the clamor of dings and flashes, we march toward the machine. Adrian punches a button and worn balls tumble forward. Thankfully, the coin slot has been disabled—otherwise I would have had to skip a snack or two this week to afford an hour on it.
Balls rattle to a stop with a familiar, satisfying clamor.
That familiarity, more than anything, is what I love about this game.
Success in Skee-Ball is about finding a reliable strategy, minimizing confounding variables, and then repeating that strategy with perfect fidelity. And I am nothing if not consistent.
“You want to go first?” Adrian asks.
“Please, go ahead,” I say, eager for a benchmark to work toward.
I settle just over Adrian’s shoulder—a spot with the best view—as he sets his foot so that his shin touches the alley.
He plucks up his first ball and pinches it with long fingers and practiced certainty.
With a straight wrist and flawless, upright posture, he drives it forward.
The ball rumbles up the alley, sails high in the scoring section, and plunges into the forty-point hole.
Well, then. Amateurs—and cocky men—will always go for the fifty or the hundred.
The hundred is the flashy one that looks the most impressive when you sink it.
And the fifty is the best of the smaller fish.
Yet mastering this game—like rowing—is about being consistently good, not getting distracted by always trying to be extraordinary.
Adrian sets his feet and lets loose another ball. It tracks the same arc as the last, and burrows into the same hole.
I raise an eyebrow. “You’re not giving this one away for free.”
Another plunk. Another forty. Another consistent performance.
“I told you I wouldn’t dare.” He glances at me. “Impressed, then?”
“Very,” I grudgingly admit as his next ball rolls forward, a hair off its arc.
It skims the edge of the forty cup and lands in the twenty instead.
Finally, something less than perfection.
“I didn’t expect this level of devotion to control from a guy who approaches his training programs like Jackson Pollock attacking a canvas. ”
Adrian snorts. “I’ll take that as a compliment, then.”
“The Jackson Pollock thing or the control thing?”
Adrian tucks his chin to glance at me. “I can’t imagine you have much reverence for an art form that principally relies on spontaneity and improvisation.”
“I do rather prefer order and consistency.”
“Rare exceptions notwithstanding,” Adrian says.
“Rare exceptions?”
“You know.” He raises his chin in my direction, suggestively implying something he doesn’t want to put into words.
My stomach tightens as I register what he means.
The rare exception: the only time I’ve lost control around him.
Suddenly, unwanted memories have again hijacked my mind.
Me: chugging a whiskey sour like it was water and slamming down the empty glass.
Me: turning loops on the dance floor with the fervor of a fidget spinner.
Me: tilting my face up toward my future coach, right before he sucked in a breath and stepped away.
I steady myself with a lungful of air. I need to put a stop to this conversation and all the messy emotions it’s dredging up.
“Clearly,” I say, reaching for crisp and businesslike, “that was a one-time-only mistake.”
Plunk. Thirty. “I thought you’ve been doing it for years?”
“What?”
“Your chin. I thought you’ve been tilting it for years.”
Oh.
Ohhhh.
That’s why he lifted his chin at me.
“Right,” I manage, trying to reorient. “That. Yes. I have.”
Adrian steps back without picking up another ball, studying me like he’s just found an oar with two blades. Upright, he’s standing close—too close. But I’m the one who staked this ground so I could watch his gameplay from the best angle. I can’t surrender it now.
“What were you talking about?” he asks.
My eyes drop to an oil spot on the rubber-matted floor, and I scuff my toe against it. I’m irrationally terrified that he can read my thoughts.
“I—Uh. It doesn’t matter.”
“Parker?”
I don’t want to talk about this.
But also, shoot. Maybe I need to acknowledge the awkwardness of our history? Of my behavior? Maybe this is how I can keep my blood from roaring in my ears and my heart from skipping every other beat when he gets too close.
I take a long, controlled breath. “The club. I was talking about the club in Italy. And. Look. I…I know I was a mess that night. I’m usually in better control of myself. But I hope you can forget about it.”
Adrian’s brows pull together. “What do you mean ‘a mess’?”
“Emotional. I’d just lost that race. Gotten dumped. I spilled my soul out to you by a bar top.”
The alley is still lit, score impatiently flashing, but Adrian’s looking at nothing but me. “I remember we had a conversation about racing and quitting. I don’t see why that is messy. In fact, I also shared some personal things with you the day we met.”
He’s still not getting it. “Right, well, also the other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
“You’re going to make me say it?”
He tilts his head in question, zero glint of recognition in his expression.
“I have no idea what I’m making you say,” he tells me.
“We danced.” My whisper is barely more than a hiss. “And then—and then I tried to kiss you.”
I burrow my face in my hands. This is not a conversation I want to be having with my coach, even a temporary one. Games still buzz and whirl around us, a melody of cheer that stands in almost ridiculous contrast to my haze of embarrassment. Still, Adrian hasn’t said anything.
When I peek out from between my fingers, he has one eye closed like he’s seeing double. “You mean before you ran away from me?”
“Because you turned me down!”
“Turned you…what?”
“You backed up.”
Adrian stares at me for so long it’s like he’s struggling to translate my words from another language into English. “We had both been drinking, Kath. I was trying to check in. To see where we were on, you know, consent.”
Oh. “Oh.” Really? “I thought…”
“You thought I was rejecting you?”
I nod.
Very slowly, with almost painful deliberation, he shakes his head, eyes locked on mine like he needs to see my recognition.
“No,” he says. “That night. Right now. I find you nothing short of extraordinary.”
A breath gusts out of me. Adrian’s gaze drops to my lips.
Something thumps over inside my chest, a heavy, rhythmic movement like a boat keeling to one side.
I’m suddenly aware of the already too-narrow space between us.
He’s so close I could touch him with less than a step.
So close I can see his chest rising and falling with each breath.
The Skee-Ball alley lets out a high-pitched ring.
I startle backward, glance up at the screen.
“It’s going to time out,” I say, voice disintegrating.
Adrian pauses, gaze tracing my face. Then he lets out a breath that sounds like half a sigh. He steps back. Turns to pick up his ball.
It rumbles up the alley, skips wide. For the first time, Adrian doesn’t sink any of the higher-scoring cups.
With his back turned, I release a shaky exhale.
Three balls later, a respectable score of 220 flashes in red above the alley. Adrian sank a few forties, and otherwise had an assortment of tens, twenties, and one thirty. He never went for fifty, not even once.
Now that I’ve had a moment to collect myself, I know how I’m going to beat him.
Yes, playing this game straight and consistent is the right strategy.
But winning is about taking the occasional risk.
You have to wait for the magic moment when everything aligns and success feels imminent.
This isn’t controllable—the opportunity either arrives or doesn’t. But when it happens, you slam the gas.
Adrian steps to the side. He doesn’t insult me by offering any technique advice, as Maxwell would have done.
He just wordlessly waits for me to fulfill my promise.
Despite my jitters and all the ways my new coach throws me off like a compass confronted with a roomful of magnets, I know my true north.
Victory.
I close my hand around the soft, almost leathery surface of my first ball and soak in that earthy smell. Then I set my foot and let the ball fly.
The ball skips off the edge of the forty pocket and buries into the twenty.
I allow myself a single moment of disappointment before I sink back into my racing zone—a state of mind that hovers above emotions, positive and negative, only achievable under the right circumstances.
With a clear mind, I grab another ball, loosen my wrist, and fling it forward.
It rumbles aloft, pitches off the edge and arcs, landing in the forty.
My chest purrs. And then I’ve grabbed the next ball, satisfaction forgotten, focused anew.
Thirty. Ten. Forty.
The next ball feels light in my fingertips. The neon lights fade, whirring sounds quiet, and the lingering smell of basement musk recedes. Anticipation pricks over my forearms. Magic.
I adjust my aim higher and loose the next ball.
It lands with a satisfying plunk.
Fifty.
I’ve stopped caring about the score. It’s just me and the alley. It’s the same feeling I get in a great race—when everything drops away. The world narrows to a pinprick and there are no competitors, no spectators, no finish line. It’s just me and the boat. And we’re dancing.
I sink another. And another.
When the last ball disappears, I step back. Above me, my score blinks in red. 250.
“YES!” My arms fly above my head.