Chapter Four #3
Grinning, she linked her arm through Simone’s and they went to the high top and hopped onto the stools. “No, I only know the bad wor–”
There was a crack, and Simone yelped as Elliot spun around to look behind him. Bennet had his cue between his fingers on the felt, and the balls were scattering and rattling into the pockets. Elliot saw probably three of them go down.
Dustin straightened and put the end of his cue on the floor between his feet. “Your turn. I’ll take dots.”
That cowboy-lookin motherfucker…
Elliot twirled his cue. “Sounds good.”
It went about as well as it could have.
Elliot miraculously hit a striped ball on his first shot, and it bounced close enough to the pocket that it looked plausible. Dustin sank a solid ball on the next shot, and Elliot remembered that was a dot. He’d played a little pool in Miami with his uncle.
Elliot walked slowly around the table looking for a shot. Well, pretending to look for a shot: he’d never understood the angles. He spotted a stripe sitting right in front of a corner pocket, and with a deep breath, he bent and aimed.
Sank it.
Containing his sigh of relief, Elliot stepped back from the table, to golf claps from Dreya and Simone, who were perched, pretending to be fancy.
“Easy shot,” called Dustin, from the corner.
“You scared, Grandpa?” Elliot shot back.
Dustin’s eyebrow ticked up. “Lotta game left.”
After that, things got serious. The old man was good, but not as good as he thought he was.
Another beer loosened Elliot up. He forgot the girls were watching and remembered a few things about pool.
He held onto a respectable second place as the game went on, and he had a good time chirping Bennet.
When Bennet’s eye caught his and Elliot’s stomach threatened to do the sideways thing again, he forced himself not to think about the cowboy movie.
There was a scene where they fucked in a tent that kept popping into his head.
Bennet won the first game, and came around the table to offer his hand. He smelled like leather, and he had just the faintest little crinkles coming in around the corners of his eyes.
“Good game,” said Bennet, as they shook.
“You tryna break my hand, dog?” said Elliot, and withdrew to go back to the girls.
Dreya’s glass was empty and she was staring across the bar with a glazed look. Simone was on her phone. Elliot had to do a little wave to get their attention, and they looked at him with distant smiles, like they’d forgotten what they were doing.
“You win?” said Dreya.
“Not this time.” Elliot did a humble shrug.
“Oh.” She turned and gazed across the room.
“Hey, but don’t worry Nena…” He took her chin between his fingers and turned her face back to his. “I’m gonna win the next one for you.” Dreya half-chuckled, and he glanced at Simone, who’d gone back to her phone. “You girls wanna go doubles?”
Simone lifted a shoulder, looking bored as hell. Well, whatever. She was Bennet’s problem. Elliot winked at Dreya and went back to the table. Bennet held out the triangle.
Racking was easy enough. Elliot remembered to put the balls in tight – tighter than a changa’s pussy, as Uncle Sal used to say.
“Okay, ladies,” he said, snugging it into place. He removed the triangle with a flourish and stepped back from the table and looked up. “Who wants to blow on my cue?”
Simone and Dreya weren’t at the high top.
Elliot frowned. His eyes went around the room and he spotted them near the bar, talking to two guys he hadn’t seen come in. Dreya was laughing at something one of them was saying – really laughing; not like she’d just half-chuckled at Elliot.
“What the fuck?” he said.
Dustin, who’d been watching Elliot rack, looked up and followed his gaze. He looked at the empty high top, then back at the girls, then set the end of his cue between his feet and folded his hands on top of it. “Hm.”
“They left.”
“They didn’t, actually. They just left us.”
Elliot tsked. “Fóquin satas.”
Dustin looked at him sharply. “Do I wanna know what that means?”
Dreya’s laugh came across the room, and Elliot worked his jaw and glared. He’d been so busy chirping Bennet, he’d forgotten the girls were even there. But they shouldn’t’ve left like that.
“Whatever,” he said. “Let’s just play.”
He turned angrily to go back to the table, bumping Bennet’s shoulder, and Bennet caught his arm. Hard. He leaned in and his voice went low and gravelly.
“Hey. Don’t act like a little prick. Those were nice girls.”
“Yeah? Then why did they leave?”
“Probably because we were boring the shit of them!”
Elliot scoffed and tried to go back to the table, but Bennet’s grip tightened. He leaned in, jacket creaking and the smell of leather coming with him, and all the hair on the back of Elliot’s neck stood up.
“Why don’t we try to remember our manners,” Bennet said, very quietly, “and let those girls enjoy their night. And you and me can have a nice, friendly game.” He paused, and then smirked, leaned in closer, and added, “I’ll even blow on your cue if you want.”
Elliot froze.
Bennet’s breath had touched the side of his face, and his dick had moved in his jeans.
Heat shot up the back of his neck, and inside his head he said, No. Fuck, as everything around him came screaming to a halt because his dick wasn’t supposed to do that.
It was just because he’d seen that thing about Arsenault and Webb today.
It was because he hadn’t eaten, and he shouldn’t have drank on an empty stomach, and because he’d remembered that video of Bennet getting up off the ice, which was his favorite video of Bennet – from the private playlist, which was private because there were so many videos of Bennet in there – and okay, he’d jerked off to an Instagram picture of Bennet shirtless in a locker room one time when he was fifteen, and also to the scene in the cowboy movie where they fucked in the tent, and then he’d stopped looking at things like that, and put whatever that impulse was in a box, and he’d locked the box, and he’d put the box in the trunk and his foot on the gas and he’d been going eighty ever since.
And now it was like the wheels had come off. He stared into Bennet’s eyes as the brakes failed and the windshield smashed and the dash crumpled and all the noise and light around them went away, and when it came back, Bennet had clapped him on the shoulder and was already walking away.
He went around the other side of the table and chalked his cue. “Your turn to break.”
Elliot’s dick was half-hard and his face was bright red, and he felt like the floor was going to slide out from under him. He stood numbly as the pieces of his world scraped themselves off the tarmac and staggered into traffic, bleeding and screaming for help.
Then he pulled his shit together and went to finish the game.