Page 72 of Go Back to December

“Afraid if you stay I’ll beat you?” His face looks angelic, but his tone is a thousand percent Lucifer.

“Never.” I say it reflexively, but it’s true. Every place we were stationed during my father’s time in the service had a rec center, and every rec center had a pool table. It’s one game I know my way around.

“Never afraid, or I’ll never beat you?”

“Both.” I raise my chin. “You don’t want to challenge me at pool.”

“You can’t throw down like that and just blow out of here.”

He’s still doing the angel imitation with his pretty face, but there is no mistaking the hardness in his voice. What he’s calling me out on.

Bailing, flaking. Backing out.

And it pisses me off that he thinks he’s somehow earned the right to do that. He hasn’t.

What he has earned is a billiard beating.

I glance at the cozy table by the fire. “One game.”

Chapter Sixteen

“We’re not playing for those stakes,” Dooley complains.

“They’re fair stakes,” Baz says from his perch on the couch, braced leg elevated by a beat-up pillow. “You lose, you show Melody your license.”

“And if you win, I show you my license,” I offer.

“I’ve seen your license. And Baz already knows what’s on mine.”

“Fine, then we’ll play without.”

“You don’t play pool without stakes.”

“Don’t you?” I ask innocently, practicing my hustle.

Dooley doesn’t buy it. “We can’t have stakes for losing. There’s three of us. Two people are going to lose.”

“Fine. If I win, you show Melody your ID, and she shows you hers.”

Dooley lifts his head from his phone, a wiseass retort about to fly from his lips, but instead, he utters a stream of curses.

I follow his gaze to the door. And Luiza’s approaching figure.

When Dooley turns to me, mouth agape, I raise my hands in a universal not-it gesture.

Luiza places a finger to her lips, sneaks up behind the couch, and throws her arms around Baz’s neck.

He roars his outrage. She laughs fiendishly and flops into the nearby armchair.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Baz asks.

I’m wondering the same thing. Baz is thorny with Luiza. She barely spoke to him at Christmas, and her texts to him usually include something cutting or insulting.

“Hello to you too, asshole.” Luiza grins at Dooley and me. “Hi, friends.”

“Hey,” Dooley and I chorus with plastered-on smiles as we fuss with the balls that are already set at the table.

Baz scowls. “How did you know we were here?”