Chapter 10 #2
It’s amazing how one story can change your whole perspective on a person.
I knew about the accident, but I didn’t know he lost his best friend and has been dealing with that for years.
He could have gone completely off the rails, having his life turned upside down in such a traumatic way but instead he grew up and became better for it.
I had believed what the press had said—party boy in drunk driving accident following a night out—but it wasn’t some drunk party goer; it was Jack’s Jess.
I don’t know how I would survive if Jess was taken from me, let alone continue to do the one thing we bonded over.
I reach over the table, grab his hand and trace my thumb over his, ignoring the electricity that shoots up my arm at the touch. He jumps slightly. Did he feel it too? My soothing gesture must work because when he looks up again his face is lighter.
“Tell me more about the two of you, I imagine you used to get in to all sorts of trouble and I want to know everything.” His face really does light up at that and he dives into a story from his past.
***
Jack
Nothing like a trauma dump on your first date… Smooth Jack. Smooth.
I couldn’t help but tell her about H, once I’d started it just all came out.
I haven’t spoken about him for a long time.
Christ, I don’t think I’ve told anyone about the accident, if you don’t count my therapist and Aimee.
The way she just sat and let me talk. When was the last time anyone has wanted to have a conversation with me that isn’t about football?
I wanted to tell her about H because I want her to know my past. I want to start this as I mean to go on and that means being fully transparent even about my shittiest days.
I haven’t told her everything yet. Haven’t told her that it wasn’t just H that I lost, but the other person that hadn’t made it out was his new fiancé, my other best friend, Jaz.
That it’s completely my fault that we were in that bar anyway.
I had forced them to celebrate their engagement, not just because I was happy for them but because I was so fucking jealous of what they had.
The thought of spending the night on my own whilst my best friends were never going to be alone again had made me desperate to find any faceless woman to bury myself in for the night so I could stop whatever I was feeling.
Now I know it was fear of being left behind of being alone, and now I’m more alone than I have ever been.
I will never fully forgive myself for my part in that night.
But I can either wallow in self-pity and do nothing with my life or play every game for Harry and Jaz.
We’ve been sat in The Lamb’s Head for well over two hours at this little table talking about everything, getting to know each other.
Conversation with Emily feels warm and safe, like I don’t have to hide behind my toothy grin and cocky laugh.
She’s opened up about some things too: being brought up by a single mum, how she is both jealous and not jealous of her friend Dan’s family life—jealous because she would love a stable family unit, not jealous because she loves sleep—and how she has absolutely no interest in progressing in her job, she’s happy as a floor nurse, management is not her style.
She has no siblings whereas I have an abundance of them. “Five kids is crazy!” she had said when I told her about them.
“Yeah, but mum was desperate for a girl after her three boys,” I laughed along.
“So how do you explain Olivia?” She had asked regarding my youngest sibling who arrived eleven years after Aimee was born, fully eliminating her role as the spoilt brat she had been fulfilling so well.
“She was dropped off by a stalk. There is no way my parents had sex on five different occasions.” This sent her head back and that dirty, infectious laugh I love barked from her mouth.
I’d been dying to be the one to make her laugh like that, ever since I first heard it across the field. It felt as good as I thought it would.
Turns out, Emily was a straight A student with no detentions in school, the complete opposite to the trouble me and H used to get ourselves into almost on a daily basis.
I finish telling her the story of how we genuinely, accidentally broke the glass on a fire alarm point, resulting in the whole school having to be evacuated and I am rewarded with a snort.
“We were in detention for three weeks straight after that one, a complete accident!” I grin.
“Accident.” She holds up two fingers on each hand and air quotes the word snorting again on her laugh which sends her howling.
She’s funny, as well as smart and so fucking gorgeous, I don’t know how I got so lucky to be here with her today. During our conversation the couple at the pool table have left. “You want a game?” I ask, pointing to the table, one eyebrow up.
She smirks, “You think your pride can handle losing to me?”
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem.” I wink.
She stands and walks towards the table and for a moment I am struck stupid in my chair.
I knew her arse would look mesmerising in those jeans, I just hadn’t had the privilege of seeing her from behind yet.
The jeans in question hug her hips and arse perfectly, tight enough that I’m concerned for her circulation.
In fact, I’m concerned about mine now as my gaze roams up her body and I see that her top is only held together by two tiny strings, tied into bows around her neck and back.
No bra. One pull on those strings and she’d be naked from the waist up.
All that soft skin on show, those perfect tits available from just the pull of two strings.
Yeah, my circulatory issue is definitely getting worse, and my jeans are making the issue painful.
Emily turns her head over her shoulder, catching me red handed gawking at her. “I think you’re drooling, Jack.” She smirks and flicks her head back making her hair bounce.
I grin and shake my head trying to refocus my brain. I’m fucked.
***
“Best of three?” she asks from the other side of the table, taking a sip of her diet coke. She switched to non-alcoholic drinks following her second glass of wine to ‘keep a cool head for the game’.
“That would insinuate you had won one of the games,” I parry.
“Yes, the first one.”
“You potted the black!” I grin.
“On a practice shot,” she says, which makes me laugh and I get a grin in return. “Okay, so I’m not as good as I used to be.” She shrugs.
“I’m starting to think you were never good.” She barks a laugh at my teasing comment. It’s so fun to be with someone you can take the piss out of and have them laugh back and not be upset.
“Maybe I need lessons?” She walks around to my side of the table and I turn to face her. “Maybe I need a big, tall man to lean over the table with me when I’m about to take my shot and show me what to do.” My eyes flare at the image she is portraying in my head.
I take a step closer to her so we are almost touching. “Is that what you want?” My voice comes out gravely. She tilts her head so she can look into my eyes, her face is so close, her plump lips looking kissable, it would be so easy to brush them with mine.
She lets out a shaking breath. “Your break,” she whispers and takes a step back and turns towards the table for the new game.
She watches me like a hawk the next few shots I take, trying to actually learn how to play? Or something else. She’s not a horrendous player, she’s just not exactly good either. She can see a line for the shots she wants to take, she just can’t hit the balls so they follow that line.
“You want to hit that a little to the left,” I instruct as she leans over the table to line up her next attempt. She looks over her extended hand at me and her hair falls in her face, cute. She brushes it away revealing a slight scowl.
“I wasn’t joking before you know, I really could do with the help from this end,” she says and my heart stops.
See the reason why I haven’t been going for the classic move of getting up close to her and showing her the shot, is for the same reason I have avoided being on the same side of the table as her when she has been leaning over it to take those shots.
That. Fucking. Arse. In. Those. Fucking. Jeans.
“Right.” I clear my throat and make my way around the table. Oh shit, it’s worse than I imagined. Worse or better? Either way, I am fucked.
She is bent over and stretched out across the pool table, her legs slightly apart feet tiptoeing in those strappy heels that would look incredible over my shoulders.
Her hips hinge just at the right height for her ass to be supported by the corner of the table.
Which would make a perfectly sturdy base for all the images in my mind to play out.
And that arse! Fuck. There is no other word for it apart from perfect.
She looks over her shoulder at me noticing my hesitation, “You okay?”
No. “Yeah,” I have to clear my throat again, my mouth suddenly very dry. I step up behind her, “Is it okay if I touch your arms?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I lean over her trying not to touch anywhere but her arms as I direct them into a better position holding the cue. “Like this,” I coach, my voice is lower than I remember it being before.
Together we aim the ball, I pull her right arm back and we push the cue forward tapping the white ball. We straighten as we watch it hit the striped ball we had aimed for sending it slowly rolling in to the middle-left pocket.
“YEAH!” Emilys hands fly up as she spins around to face me flinging herself into my arms. “I did it!” she exclaims as she does little happy jumps, threading her arms around my neck.
She stops jumping and stares up at me a huge grin across her face, I can’t help but grin back.
My hands are on her hips and I squeeze them tightly. God these are good hips.
Emily’s eyes are fixed on mine again, her pupils blown. Her smile has dropped to a smaller one, but the joy is still there. “Thank you for helping me,” she says.
“You’re very welcome.” My eyes are transfixed on her full lips and I watch as her tongue slides out to lick them, slowly sucking the bottom one in as it goes back. She bites it before it pops back out, shimmering.
Her body is pressed so close to mine and I am hyperaware of every inch that we touch.
Her breath tickles my neck just below my ear as she leans up to me.
“Can I take your hat off?” I am slightly taken aback by the question and it must show because she continues, “It’s blocking the light from your eyes, and I want to see the different colours in them. ”
The top of her cheeks go pink at her confession but I reply, “You can do whatever you like with me right now, Em.”
I pull her even closer, so our hips meet. I know she can feel my growing erection against her lower stomach because her eyes flare at the new pressure. I want her to know how much being this close to her is turning me on. I need her to know how sexy she is.
Keeping one hand wrapped around the back of my neck, she uses the other to lift my cap off my head and place it behind her on the pool table, then brings her empty hand back to smooth out my hair. “Is it as bad as I think it is?” I ask, aware that hat-hair is not the best look.
She just smiles and says, “It’s softer than I was expecting, I thought with the way you styled it that it would be crunchy.”
“I’m glad you like it.” I grin. We stare at each other again, as if sizing up an opponent, neither of us wanting to give away how we feel.
Fuck it.
“I’m going to kiss you now,” I state.
The two words that come out of her mouth are the best words I have ever heard in my entire life.
“Yes, please.”