Page 63 of Never Stop

I looked to Gary. “Am I going to be mad about what the girls are doing?” The question slipped from my lips before I remembered I didn’t want to know.

He grinned. “Nah, it’s harmless.”

“Going to a strip club is harmless. Doesn’t mean I like it.”

“They aren’t going to a strip club,” Avery chimed in.

“Youknow what they’re doing?” I pointed my finger at him as I asked.

“Of course,” Avery replied sarcastically.

“Well then,” I murmured. “So are one of you going to spill?”

They looked at each other as they spoke in unison, “Nope.”

“Great.” The waitress placed our beers in front of us, and I took a long swallow. “Still don’t understand why you assholes won’t tell me.”

“You’ll thank us.” Avery grinned.

I rolled my eyes and flagged the waitress over. I needed another beer.

Or five.

After we ate and had a few additional beers each, we paid our tab and then went to the back to claim our table we had reserved. I was feeling good. The beers had helped me stop wondering what the girls were getting involved in.

As we stepped up to our table, I ran my hand along the top, feeling the green fuzzy felt beneath by fingertips. I kept going to a back wall the cue rack and chose a stick that I thought would work for me. Walking back, I noticed some people had pool stick cases on the floor and obviously used their own because they were serious players or thought they were. I smirked as I stepped up to our table and grabbed the blue chalk to increase friction. The chalk would help the ball still go straight in case I didn’t hit the white cue ball in the center.

“Why are you smiling?” Gary asked, sitting in a chair by the table. He was playing the winner of our game.

I shrugged. “People seem serious around here.”

Avery and Gary looked around at the other tables, and then both chuckled. “We were almost like that,” Avery said.

I laughed. “I never needed my own fucking stick to kick your ass.”

He glared at me. “Do you want to put money on this?”

“Yeah, twenty bucks a game.” I smiled.

“Twenty? That’s it?”

“I have a honeymoon to pay for. How about every game is double or nothing?” Gary suggested. “Like, I’ll put up forty the next game and then the next person will put up eighty to play winner and so on?”

“And when do we stop?” I questioned.

He shrugged. “When we feel like it.”

Avery nodded slowly. “All right, but we stop at five hundred if it gets that far.”

Gary laughed. “Like you guys can’t afford a few grand.”

I rolled my eyes. “Five hundred it is. Winner takes all.” Avery began to put all the solid and striped balls in the triangle shaped rack.

“Great, I’ll break.” I went to the opposite end of the wood table, lined up the cue ball and hit that fucker causing all fifteen colored balls to scatter.

I had an extra five-hundred dollars to win.

“Could you have brought someone who sucked at pool?” I laughed, looking at Avery. We were a few games in. I’d won against Avery, Gary beat me, and I was about to play Gary again since he was kicking Avery’s ass.