His shoulders slumped. Stay strong! “Okay, babe,” he grumbled after a moment.
I looked to the… playing area where I would soon have to throw the thing into the other things. How many balls did I get to throw? The other people were only sending one ball at a time. That didn’t seem right. I had two hands. And also two feet.
I watched for a few moments, but yeah, everyone only sent one ball down the hallway at a time. Maybe they were all doing it wrong? I glanced at the people I came here with. Lydia smirked at me as I realized this might prove challenging.
I turned back to Luke. “If I don’t knock them all down, I’ll throw my shoes at the pins,” I decided sensibly. “That’s what the shoes are for.”
“That’s… well.” Luke thought about it, then nodded. “Okay, as long as you’ve got a plan.”
There was that whole thing where he wanted to keep me from hurting myself and others, so normally he wouldn’t agree to me wildly throwing things. However, if there was a competition, all bets were off. Unless the contest was betting and then bets were totally on.
Luke and I were pretty competitive. Normally that competitiveness was directed at each other, but we got to be on the same team this time. The only thing better than beating my boyfriend at something stupid might be defeating other people with my boyfriend. At something stupid.
“Now you two are fine?” Lydia questioned. “I was almost having a good time.”
That made it even better.
To further annoy Lydia, my boo and I stood close together, doing the flirty thing where one person knows how to do something and the other doesn’t—or one person says they don’t know how to do something—so the other person has to get all close behind him and demonstrate by pressing their bodies tightly together.
Luke put his arms around my waist, and his breath tickled my ear as he laughed quietly, and we pretended this was somehow teaching me bowling. I flung my arms in all directions and then he showed me the correct way to move them or just a way where I wouldn’t poke his eye out. Could be either one.
He was warm and my chest felt like it might burst, happiness overload, as I kept saying,wait, huh? Show me one more time.And every time I felt him shake his head and laugh into my skin but then he obeyed.
Not only would I get to cross bowling off my list at the end of tonight, but I’d alsoadd be weird in a bowling alleyand cross that off too.
We stood together for as long as we possibly could, but then we were getting weird looks by people other than Alicia and Lydia. I actually did want to try this bowling thing, so I didn’t want to get kicked out. Had I ever been kicked out of anywhere? Maybe I could add that to my list.
When it was my turn to bowl, well, Luke pretending to instruct me hadn’t been very informational. I could do this? There was a child bowling two lanes over, how hard could it be? You just threw the thing at the other thing.
I walked up to the line, looked at the pins and looked at the ball. Looked at the pins. Looked at the ball. Looked at the thing. Looked at the other things. I swung my hand back and launched the ball.That went well,I had a moment to think, before my whole body went with the ball.
Then I was on the floor, having thrown myself along with the ball, which was spinning uselessly a little ways ahead of me. My wonderful boyfriend helped me up even though he looked embarrassed on my behalf, but I didn’t get mad at him because at least he still helped me up.
“Next time? Let go of the ball,” Luke advised. Good note. He kept his eyes down and didn’t look at anyone that might be watching. I followed his lead. Technical difficulties, whatever, nothing to see here, show’s over.
“What if I throw it overhand?” Life hack! Bowling hack.
“Let’s work on underhand first,” he said.
I would get mad at him for killing all my fun, but he was probably just doing that thing he did sometimes where he didn’t want me to die. That came from a place of love, so I let it slide.
* * *
Bowling. Was. AWESOME.
Winning helped. Winning was the best. The girls were trailing in our metaphorical dust. The floors here were really shiny and clean, so there was no actual dust. Aside from the first time where I didn’t let go of the ball, I’d only slipped like three times because the shoes helped somewhat with the slick floors-- oh. That’s probably what the shoes were really for.
Luke and I were totally gracious winners.
Just kidding, we were so stupidly obnoxious, the worst winners ever. Hey, we won at being bad winners too! Alicia and Lydia got more and more annoyed while losing harder and harder.
One magical time, I almost got a strike!
A lot of times, I got less than almost a strike.
“Okay, you’re up,” Luke told me, handing me my ball.
I started with the pink one for little girls because it looked like fun, but I was using a regular black ball now because I was a man, grrr, and I wanted to win dammit.
