I Bet You by Ilsa Madden-Mills
Penelope
Cadillac’s is a tradition with Waylon students. A dimly lit laid-back place, the walls are lined with photographic memorabilia from old cars and Marilyn Monroe and James Dean headshots. There’s even a signed photo of Elvis on the wall, and it makes me laugh, recalling my ridiculous conversation with Connor. Some claim the original owner was a onetime movie agent who retired to Magnolia in his 60s. That was years ago and I don’t know who owns it now, but it’s a fun place to hang out in, a diner with a long bar and eating area, pool tables, and an arcade in the back with video games and bowling. The diner section is my favorite with its 50s-style car-shaped booths and jukebox.
Tonight’s crowd is starting to gather, lined up at the bar for the Sunday five-dollar steak and potato deal.
“I look ridiculous,” I say with a pout as I follow Ryker to the pool tables.
He also changed clothes, pulling from a gym bag he keeps in the car. As soon as we walked in, he hit the restroom and changed into athletic shorts, a Waylon shirt, and a ball cap. I admit, I’m a bit fascinated by the way his hair curls around his hat. It makes me want to whip it off and run my fingers through it.
“You look great,” he says rather grimly and then mumbles something else, but I can’t make it out.
“I can’t hear you,” I say, double-stepping to keep up with him in my heels. “Why are you being so surly?” He’s been this way since we walked in the place, and my gut tells me it’s because the first person we ran into at the door was Archer.
My eyes drift over to the section of seats where he is now, and sure enough, the asshole is watching us. Anger returns as I recall how scared he made me the other night. Our eyes meet and his are beady and watchful. I frown. I don’t know what his and Ryker’s deal is, but it makes the hair on my arms rise.
Ryker keeps trucking, his long legs stalking to the wall where the pool sticks are. He’s standing there, studying our choices, and I take the moment to appreciate his broad shoulders and the way they taper down to his perfect ass.
He tosses a look at me over his shoulder. “See something you like?”
“No,” I huff.
“Right. I forgot.” He grabs two sticks. “You don’t like football players.”
I exhale.
“Come on,” he says, and I follow him across Cadillac’s until he stops at a table in the far corner.
“I’m starting to feel like a little puppy following you around,” I say as he puts the balls in the rack, arranging them by solids and stripes.
He grunts.
I sigh.
“Nice table,” I comment. “It’s very green.”
I get no comment, so I try again, determined to get him in a good mood.
“Is it actually called a pool table? Or should I say billiards table?”
He looks at me. “Either.”
I put my hand on my hip. “I’m going to call it The Table of Very Green Fabric.”
I see a ghost of a smile cross his face, and I’m giddy. Success.
He walks back around and stands next to me. He looks down at me, and I see when his eyes go to my chest and linger. Yeah, he mentioned my nipple color earlier, and it got me excited, but then we come in here and he’s a stone wall, all brusque and businesslike.
Isn’t that what you want? Distance?
I’m not sure anymore. Maybe I want to be his distraction. I chew on my lip.
“You listening, Red?”
I start, realizing he’s been going on for a couple of seconds.
“Right here with ya.” When I’m not daydreaming…
“In a standard game, you put the eight ball in the middle of the rack.” He points to said item.
I follow his finger. “Huh. The rack is an equilateral triangle.” I glance over at him, and he’s got that damn eyebrow cocked. His dimple flashes.
“I suppose so.”
“Okay.” I nod. “This is good. Math is good.”
He chuckles. “I never met a writer who loved math so much.”
I tap my head. “Smart women are the best. Have you ever dated a girl who even knew what an equilateral triangle is?”
“I never asked them.”
“Because y’all were so busy having sex?”
He shakes his head at me. “You don’t have a very high opinion of football players, do you?”
A long exhale comes from me.
“What?”
I glance up and he’s studying me intently.
“The truth is my mom got pregnant with me when she was dating my dad. Instead of sticking around, he went off to the NFL.”
He thinks. “Could she have gone with him?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think she wanted to. She never said she did. I guess they just didn’t love each other enough.” I sigh. “She loved it here. She was devoted to her students. She was smart and beautiful and kind…”
“Like you.” His gaze finds mine.
I nod.
“I’m not your dad, Red. You have to give people a chance. We’re not the same.”
“Of course not.”
“But I’m a douchebag because of him?”
“No,” I say softly. “Never in a million years.”
He leans in closer to me and I feel the heat of his body. He touches my cheek. “Good. Then that’s progress.”
My heart skips a beat at the intensity of his gaze, at the electric current that stretches from him to me. The string between us is tight, an undercurrent of fire and ice mixed together. I wonder what it would look like if he were mine. If he loved me…
Someone walks past us to get to the jukebox, and the moment is broken.
He takes in a big breath, looks down at the pool table, and continues. “Er, I guess we need to finish this.”
I nod.
He looks back at the table. “Whatever ball you get in a pocket, that’s what you are, solids or stripes. If you make one of each variation, you get to choose. If you shoot the eight ball in a pocket, and it’s not the last ball, you lose. I’ll show you.” He steps around me and leans over with his cue stick, his shoulders taut with athletic grace. The muscles in his forearms ripple as he aims and strikes a red ball hard, sending a solid into a pocket on the right.
“You look good doing that,” I murmur.
He takes a swig of the beer he ordered when we walked in and sets it down on the table next to us. “Just point and shoot. We can work on technique—enough to get you through a few shots with Connor.”
His jaw seems to grind at the thought.
“Ryker.” I’m tired of this. Of him helping me get Connor.
But his profile is hard. Implacable. “Come on, Red. Let’s do this thing.” He tilts his head toward the table.
“Maybe we should just forget it.” I toy with the weight of the stick.
“No. I want to show you how to impress him,” he says.
“I don’t want to impress him anymore.”
There, I said it. I mean it, but Ryker isn’t having it.
He scowls. “That was the objective since the kiss at the bookstore. For you to go out with him. You need to do it. So you know.” He studies my face.
Know what?
I don’t ask. I’m scared of the answer. Because once I say it aloud—I want you, Ryker—then it’s real, and I have to deal with it.
I take a step closer to the balls and chew on my lip as I concentrate. Since I’m right-handed, I hold the base of the stick with my right hand and attempt to line it up for a shot that will put a striped ball into a left pocket.
“You look like you’re going spearfishing.” He sets his beer down. “Let me show you.”
He walks back to where I am and stands behind me as I’m bending over the table, his hands covering mine. My body tenses and my knees go weak at the feel of him, and my ass may have twitched a little to get closer to him. I’ll never own up to it if he asks though.
“Everything okay?” I ask as he just stands there.
“Yeah.” He clears his throat, and in a slow movement, he demonstrates the correct way to line up the shot with the stick. “A good basic technique is to put your index finger on the top of the stick and curve it.” His hand strokes my pointer finger, arranging it in the correct form. “Like this,” he says. “Hold it tight. You have total control of the stick.”
But my body is out of control. The heat from Ryker sears my skin, and he smells like a tree I want to climb. “Okay.” My voice is mangled.
He eases back and his hand lingers on my left side. “This arm will never move. Use your back and shoulders.”
“Back and shoulders,” I repeat, but my mind is hardly on pool. It’s on the way his hand glides to my waist and rests there. “Spread your legs as wide as your hips and keep your feet at a 45-degree angle. You need a good stance if you want to get in a good shot.”
“Good shot…got it,” I manage to say as he leans into me. I can’t see his face and I’m dying. I want to see what he looks like when he looks down at me.
My hand trembles.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Mmhmm. Just getting stiff from being bent over.”
“I assure you…being stiff is totally worth it when you get the stroke right.”
I blink. Stiff…stroke…oh God.
He continues talking in that very deliberate way of his, seemingly unaware that his words are like sex on a stick. Shit—sex on a stick…pool stick. I’m losing it.
“All right. Next, line up the tip with the cue ball, aim for one of your balls, and shoot.” He takes a step back to give me room, but I pause. “Just hit it, Red. Aim for that blue stripe and get it in the pocket.”
I close my eyes and put everything I have into the shot, shoving the pool stick straight at the cue ball.
In retrospect, I guess I shouldn’t have closed my eyes.
When my eyes open, it’s as if everything slows down—you know, the kind of moment that happens in a flash yet it seems to take tiny steps to get there? I see Connor coming from the arcade part of Cadillac’s with a group of guys, mostly chess club types. He’s laughing at something as he tosses back his beer.
He never sees the ball coming for him.
I want to yell for him to duck, and I guess I could have, but it wouldn’t have mattered because it happened so fast.
Please don’t hit him in the headis my mantra as the scene plays out.
First, it hits a retro Lucille Ball sign functioning as a fancy-looking light above the pool table next to us, and for half a second, I think it’s going to miss Connor—but then it ricochets off the light and slams into his crotch.
He goes down like a sack of bricks, and his beer flies through the air before shattering on the concrete floor. Shards of glass shoot everywhere, and beer splatters on the wall behind Connor.
My stick falls out of my hand. “He’ll never have babies.” Ryker is next to me in an instant, and I look up at him. My mouth opens and closes. “Holy shit. You think he’s okay?”
“I don’t know. Let’s go see,” he says, a grim look on his face.
We walk over to them and dread fills me.
Connor’s friends are bending down, and there’s a flurry of activity from the staff as they walk over to where he’s still on the floor. A girl in a 50s-style pink dress and apron is carrying a broom and a dustpan and focuses on getting the glass swept up while a managerial-looking lady is bent over Connor.
It’s not until we’re right in front of the scene of the crime that I realize I’ve grabbed Ryker’s hand at some point. He glances down and then looks at me, his eyes questioning. He lets my hand go.
Connor is pulled up by one of his buddies and the manager. His hat is cocked sideways and there’s a red spot on his cheek, and I wonder if he landed on it.
He maneuvers to stand, his face pale as he winces.
“You okay, man?” someone calls out from a neighboring table.
“Hit me in the upper leg,” he mutters, looking around at the circle of people who’ve gathered. “Damn. Hurts like hell.” He cranes his neck toward the pool tables. “Who shot it?”
My eyes flare and I barely keep myself from squeaking.
“Not sure,” his buddy says.
The manager pulls up a chair for him and says something about getting some ice and an accident report.
I lean over to Ryker and whisper, “At least his manly bits are okay.”
He nods.
Connor eases down in the chair then looks up and sees us, his eyes bouncing back and forth.
I wave at him.
“You should go check on him,” Ryker says, and I nod and take the few steps to Connor’s side.
I pat him on the shoulder. “Hey…you. Are you okay?” He blinks as if confused, and his eyes go from me to Ryker, who’s behind me in the background. Connor comes back to me and takes in the jersey and high heels I’m wearing. “You’re wearing Ryker’s jersey.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t know you were here.” He pauses. “You told me you were busy all week.”
I nod, choosing to not comment on that. “Are you going to be able to walk?”
“Yeah, yeah, just…it got the drop on me, ya know?” He laughs as one of his friends claps him on the back.
He grimaces and rubs his inner thigh. “I’m fine. Probably just a bruise. Where did that ball come from anyway? Did you see?”
Great.We’re back to that again. I bite my lip.
One of his friends points to the far back table where we were playing. “I think it came from that direction.”
I laugh. “But you’re okay, so that’s good, right?”
He nods. “So, you guys came together?”
“Just as friends,” Ryker says as he takes a step forward to join us. “I found her in the rain with a flat tire.”
“Oh.” Connor’s head turns back. “That sucks.”
I nod.
Ryker continues. “As a matter of fact, I need to run, but I think Penelope wants to stay.”
I scowl and turn around to stare at him. “What? No, I should go too.”
“I can take you home,” Connor says. I turn back to him, and he’s got a hopeful look in his eyes. He pauses as I frown. “Only if you want to stay…maybe we can play a game after I sit here a bit?” He chuckles in a good-natured way, and I feel horrible all over again for being the shooter.
“I think I’m done playing pool,” I say.
“Oh,” Connor says, his voice unsure. “We can grab some beers?”
“No, I really think I should go—”
“Yes, she’ll stay,” Ryker interjects, cutting me off.
Color rises in my cheeks, and I turn to him as Connor is distracted by one of his buddies who’s come over to hand him an ice pack.
“I can answer for myself, Ryker,” I hiss.
“Don’t be stubborn,” he says.
“You’re the stubborn one.”
His teeth grit as we stand there and look at each other. “You should stay.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to be with Connor.” There’s an uncertain look on his face as he takes his eyes off mine and looks at him.
I’m distracted as Connor seems to catch his breath and stands up. He talks to a waitress and points over at me.
“I’m going, Penelope,” Ryker says adamantly.
“Wait—”
Connor joins us, his gaze on me. “Come on, the waitress said she’d get us a table before they’re all gone. You staying?”
Before I can say yay or nay, Ryker has pivoted around and stalked away from us.
He pauses near the door when Archer calls his name and says something. Ryker says something back and the crowd that hears him goes silent, their glances bouncing between the two football players. I inch closer to see what’s going on, part of me wanting to see if Ryker is okay, but before I can, he’s gone, slamming the door so hard behind him that the glass wobbles.
Archer turns back around, his eyes shifting from me to Connor, an expression of satisfaction on his sharp face. He lifts his drink in my direction; I give him the middle finger.
