I pointed a finger at them. “What’s going on?”
For a moment there, they hadn’t looked like the hopeless, thoroughly defeated losers they were. They looked like they were sharing a private joke together. Historically, private jokes tended to be at my expense. I would and do regularly rewrite history, but I wanted to know what was going on more.
“You’re up to something,” I told the pair of girls.
Alicia looked confused while Lydia looked guilty. “Sure you’re done celebrating?” My bestie asked.
With amazing willpower, I stayed focused on the topic. “Foul,” I said, gesturing to them again. “Foul on the play.” Man, I am a natural at sports.
“Yeah, that’s not how it goes,” Luke said. Doesn’t he know by now he’s not allowed to disagree with me? Even when I say stuff in my head and not out loud? Does he not even pay attention to the imaginary rules in my head? “And that’s not actually part of bowling.”
Like I’d let a little thing like logic stop me.
“Foul!” I insisted. “Bowling guards, seize them!”
“What the hell, Ryan? Why would that be a thing?” Luke wondered. He wasn’t focusing on the right thing, but him sounding confused and exasperated and a bit fond wasn’t the wrong thing either; I didn’t wanna live in a world where that would ever be wrong.
“They cheated,” I said, gesturing to the ladies. Send them to the dungeons! The bowling dungeons. No, I was thinking of a monarchy again and not a sport. Oh, crowns. This sport should definitely have crowns. That’s way better than the shoes and dumb bowling shirts.
“I don’t wanna be rude,” Luke said. “But if they’re cheating, that’s another thing they aren’t good at in addition to bowling.”
Nice burn, baby. Now I held my hand up to him and he dutifully fist-bumped it.
“You don’t want to be rude?” Alicia asked skeptically. “You slid on the floor and told me to suck it two rounds ago.”
“Oh, but not, like, in a sexual way,” Luke said, worrying about being offensive to our asexual friend.
Alicia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, because that was the only problem with it.”
When playing baseball, Luke was Mr. Sportsmanship. I loved when he let out his competitive streak, especially as he put his hands in his pockets and looked bashful now that the high of defeating our foes had dimmed a bit.
My best friend Alicia was the actress. Lydia couldn’t always keep up a lie under scrutiny. Probably because people were usually too afraid to challenge her.
“Are you losing on purpose?” I asked the weak link.
Luke gasped. Oh, boo. Thanks for finally arriving at the point.
“No,” Lydia responded with a scoff. Her brow furrowed and she looked annoyed, adding just the right amount of disbelief and exasperation. Her mistake was that she kept going. “We’re just… bad at sports?”
“You’re asking me, not telling me,” I pointed out, crazy smile forming on my face as Lydia fidgeted under my stare.
This was fun. I was a cop interrogating a punk suspect while for some reason my boyfriend was there watching intently while I worked. Maybe it was Take Your Boyfriend to Work Day. Was that a day workplaces had? Totally should be.
“It’s all us being for real bad at bowling,” Lydia tried.
I don’t know if this was an interrogation technique, but she was terrible and I grinned at her terribleness, which just made her try to be less terrible, and she only succeeded in being more terrible instead. Terrible.
“The balls are just so heavy?” she continued to my eternal delight. “And we’re women?” She made a face. “We are women,” she said firmly. “With weak,weakarms that like baking and pink.” Her look there said she regretted everything coming out of her mouth and needed to evaluate all of her life choices that led her to being this dumb; I recognized that look on her face so well because she frequently made that face at me because she was mean.
“What?” Alicia asked quietly.
“In my head, that worked, but now everyone’s mad at me.” Lydia’s face scrunched up in impotent frustration. Nice try lady, that adorable little face only worked when Lukes did it.
Alicia seemed to go for it. “I would be mad,” she told her girlfriend. “But I had a really good time.” They shared a fond smile while everything inside me protested and wanted the bowling guards to seize them at once.
Become real and seize them, bowling guards!
Luke made a noise and stared at them with his mouth open for a second, unable to find the words.
