Chapter 5
Rya~
If nothing else, no one could ever say that my acting skills weren’t superb.
When Koen’s friend had mentioned taking one for the team, I’d been mortified.
Though you’d think that I’d be used to it by now, I couldn’t remember the last time that someone had been so blatantly rude like that, and so it’d been a bit of a shock, especially since I’d had no idea why Koen had chosen to come over and talk to me in the first place.
I mean, pity was the obvious answer, but still.
Luckily, Dalton had arrived just in time to save me, though it was a good thing that he hadn’t been early enough to hear what Koen’s friend had said.
Unlike a lot of these preppy assholes, Dalton wasn’t afraid of a good fight, nor was he scared of getting arrested.
He was also very protective of me, but that was also out of pity just as much as it was out of love.
At any rate, now that Dalton was here, Koen could go back to his friends, no longer feeling the need to be charitable.
If he didn’t play pool, then there really was no reason for him to hang out over here any longer.
With his good deed done for the day, it was time for him to head back to his side of the tracks with his black hair, grey eyes, and perfect face.
“Since you were cheating, you get to rack them first,” Dalton announced, making me smile, despite how I’d just been insulted not five minutes ago.
I turned towards Koen, praying that he couldn’t see right through me. “Well, I’m sure your friends are wondering where you went off to,” I joked. “Plus, it’d be great if you can let Leandra know that Dalton’s here, so that she’s free to make other plans if she wants.”
He looked a bit surprised, but then he quickly recovered. “Oh, yeah...sure.”
I smiled to soften the obvious dismissal. “It was nice meeting you, Koen.”
“You, too,” he replied before giving Dalton one of those universal male head nods.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Dalton asked, “What was that all about?”
I started racking the billiards, hoping that he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it, but I knew him too well. “I think he was feeling sorry for me,” I answered. “A couple of his friends invited Leandra to go join them, so I think he was just trying to be nice.”
“Because, of course, she had to go,” he scoffed.
“Stop it,” I chided. “I told her that it was okay.”
“And she could just as easily have said no, Rya,” he argued. “Instead, she left you sitting alone, so that random dick could fawn all over her.”
“That’s not fair, Dalton,” I said as I rounded the table to give him room to break. “She knew that you were coming, and she also knows that you don’t care for her much.”
“It really blows my mind that you can defend her like that when she has absolutely no regard for you,” he replied coldly. “In all the time that we’ve been hanging out, I’ve yet to see her think about anyone other than herself.’
While he was wrong about what was inside Leandra’s heart, he wasn’t wrong about Leandra’s behavior.
For whatever reason, Leandra let Dalton bring out the worst in her, and so she acted accordingly whenever he was around.
She acted like a flighty blonde, and she never made any effort to correct Dalton’s assumptions of her.
“I also think you’re wrong about Casanova,” he went on.
“What are you talking about?” I asked as the jerkoff sunk both a stripe and a solid.
“Solids,” he called just to punish me for practicing without him. “C’mon, Rya. The guy looked like he just lost his dog when you dismissed him.”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” I muttered as Dalton began cleaning up the felt. “He was just being nice.”
Just then, Leandra came flouncing over with a big smile on her face, and a part of me wondered if she did it just to piss Dalton off. Again, no matter what she put off to the public, Leandra was a pretty sharp cookie, and so it wasn’t like she wasn’t self-aware.
“So, it’s Ivan and Netti’s anniversary, and they’re the couple at the small table,” she said, rattling on as if we knew these people. “And the other guys are Teddy, Joseph, Aaron, and Koen. The other two girls are Natalie and Casey.”
“And we care, why?” Dalton drawled out, and though it was rude as hell, he wasn’t wrong to ask why we’d care about complete strangers.
“Because if Rya comes over to join us, then it’ll even out the numbers,” she announced.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dalton bit out.
Leandra’s blue eyes flashed with a bit of contempt as she said, “Oh, c’mon. It’s not like you can’t find someone here to entertain you, Dalton.”
“While that might be true, I didn’t come here for pussy,” he said, not bothering to deny his sex appeal. “I came out to hang out with my friends. At least, that’s what I’d been led to believe.”
“Like you care if I hang out with you guys or not,” Leandra retorted. “If you did, then you wouldn’t always play pool, knowing that I don’t know how to play.”
“C’mon, Leandra,” I said softly. “That’s not fair. We’ve offered to teach you plenty of times.”
Ignoring that, she said, “I just thought that it’d be fun if you joined us, Rya. That’s all.”
I wanted to tell her about the earlier insult, but I knew that Dalton would lose his shit if I did, and I didn’t want to ruin the night like that.
However, I also didn’t want her to feel like I was choosing Dalton over her, either.
I considered them both my friends, and it really was a delicate balance with the two.
“Leandra, if I went over there, it would put too much pressure on everyone to hook up, and that doesn’t sound fun to me in the least,” I told her, half-ass telling the truth. “I really didn’t come out for that anyway.”
She glanced back at the table really quickly before looking back at me. “It’s just...well, Koen’s been looking over here, so I just figured...you know...”
I wanted to laugh; seriously, I did. While she was playing matchmaker in her head, she had no idea that he was looking over here out of guilt and/or pity.
However, that was one of the best things about Leandra, if you asked me.
She wasn’t a malicious person, so it never occurred to her that other people might not be just as genuine.
In fact, it was only Dalton who seemed to bring out the worst in her.
“He came over here earlier to remark on how well I play pool, Leandra,” I told her. “He’s not interested in the way that you think.”
“And even if he was, Rya’s not going to ditch me for dick,” Dalton added, almost making me wince at the coldness in his voice. “I mean, how rude would it be to make plans with me, then leave me to go hang out with perfect strangers?”
“I didn’t ditch her,” she argued, shooting him a glare. “Rya said it was okay for me to-”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said, refereeing the two. “There’s no need to point fingers about anything when we’re all just here to have a good time.”
“Well, she can go have a good time with her new friends, and we can have a good time playing pool,” Dalton replied, and I could tell that he was annoyed enough to mean it.
Turning back to Leandra, I said, “Lea, it really is okay. Go ahead and have a good time.”
She looked upset, but I also knew that she was going to do her best to pretend that Dalton hadn’t hurt her feelings. “Yeah, no...that sounds good.”
As soon as she left to go back to the other table, I turned to look at my best friend. “Was that really necessary, Dalton?”
“Was offering you up like some kind of last-resort solution necessary?” he countered.
“That’s not what she was doing, and you know it,” I chastised. “She was just trying to include us.”
“Include you,” he corrected. “As far as she was concerned, I was free to entertain myself with some random woman.”
“Can we just get back to the game?” I asked as I shook my head.
Dalton grabbed some chalk before walking around the table, but before he got ready to take his next shot, he said, “Maybe she’s not wrong about Casanova.
Between coming to talk to you and continuing to look over here, it’s very possible that he’s interested in a little more than you just teaching him how to play pool, Rya. ”
I couldn’t help but choke out a humorless laugh.
Yeah, right.
“Okay, let’s suspend reality for a second and say that he is interested in...in some quality time,” I said. “His last name is Wilder, Dalton. As in Wilder Technologies.” Dalton’s brows immediately shot upward. “As in the son of Ashford and Patricia Wilder. As in-”
“Okay, okay,” he chuckled softly. “I get it.”
“Yeah, exactly,” I drawled out.
“Well, better for me,” he replied with a grin. “I get to kick your ass in pool and avoid any complications tonight.”
It really was on the tip of my tongue to point out that he was just as complicated, but I didn’t.