“I can drink to that,” he said, lifting up his beer.
She lifted hers and took a sip, then grimaced. “I don’t know that this is going to be my scene.”
“Well, what do you think? You going to dance?”
“Okay. I would like to dance.” She looked at the shot. And she picked it up, pressed it to her lips and knocked it back. She grimaced, pulling her teeth back and hissing. “Good Lord.”
“You did it,” he said, admiring.
“I did. That was awful. How do people do that all the time? For fun.”
“I thinkall the timeis maybe a stretch if we’re talking about functional people who aren’t college students.”
“That was vile.” But she grabbed the other shot and knocked it back too before he could say anything, making the same face and the same noise as she swallowed it down.
She shook her head. “Okay. Yes. I am out. I’m here to have a good time.”
“Want to play some pool?”
“Yes,” she said. “I do. But let’s play for money.”
“Sure. Some nickels.”
He could tell that the booze was going to her head, and they made their way over to the table in the corner that was mostly unused, because people were primarily focused on who they were going to go home with, rather than whiling away the hours playing games.
She picked up the pool cue, andapparentlyhe was so basic that he was held captive by the image. It was such a cliché. A beautiful woman holding a pool cue, running her finger along it, except Rue had no sexual intent when she did that, and his body still responded.Like she wasn’t his best friend. Like he hadn’t known her since they were little children.
“Let’s do this.”
She half stumbled as she bent down.
“Okay. You can break,” he said, setting the balls up and moving away.
She did break, inelegantly. “I need more to drink,” she said.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Hey, you’re my driver, right?”
“And you’re still a lightweight, right?”
“Hush, King. I came to indulge.”
He turned and headed toward the bar, muttering as he went. “I need to keep you from falling into the deepest recesses of a dark pit, though...”
He furnished her with more shots, which only made her a worse player, which might have amused him if he didn’t feel so damned tense abouteverything.
She was wobbly, like a baby deer, except her legs were hot, and he couldn’t help but think about it when he’d picked her up at the bachelorette party what felt like a whole lifetime ago. And his palm had burned. She’d been engaged. It had kept the rest of him from burning.
She was still Rue, so that ought to work.
It wasn’t working.
She went and got herself two more shots before they set up the next game and knocked them back before stumbling into position to break.
She shot the white ball, and it hit the corner of the colored balls at the center as it bounced out of the table and rolled across the room, up against the boot of a guy about their age sitting down enjoying a beer. Helifted up the front of his foot and trapped the ball beneath it.
“This belong to you?” he asked as he bent down and picked it up, holding it toward Rue.
