Tristan’s mouth curves.
I untie the apron.
The game alley at full operation is Jack in his natural habitat, which explains a lot about Jack. It’s loud in a specific way. Layered noise, the mechanical sounds of the games underneath the human sounds ofpeople playing them, the space where everyone is in competition with something and enjoying it.
Jack moves through it all with proprietary ease, nodding at the staff running each station, adjusting something here, checking something there, all while maintaining a running commentary that I am trying not to find as entertaining as I do.
“Ring toss,” he says, stopping at the station I’d analyzed the first morning. “The correction held. Want to try?”
I look at the setup. He did fix it. The center bottles are repositioned and the throw angle is genuinely winnable from the outside approach now. It still requires accuracy but not the geometric impossibility it was before.
“What do I win?” I ask.
He reaches under the counter and produces the small trophy from the other day.
I look at it. Then at him. “You put it as a prize?”
“I thought about what you said. About knowing what things actually are.” He sets it on the counter between us. “You want to try for it?”
Something catches in my chest. I pick up the rings. My first throw is testing the angle, weight, the physics of this setup. It catches the center bottle and doesn’t land. I adjust.
Second throw lands.
“Nice,” Jack says.
I don’t look at him because his face right now is doing something that I don’t need to see clearly. I throw again.
The third lands.
“You’ve done this before,” he comments.
“I’ve done a lot of things before.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It keeps being true.”
He comes to stand beside me. Not behind, not opposite,beside, with the confidence of someone who doesn’t observe personal space as a firm boundary but does it without aggression, so it reads as closeness rather than encroachment. I’m aware of his arm near mine. I throw again.
The fourth lands.
“Okay,” he says, “that’s… you’re actually good at this.”
“It’s geometry.”
“It’s also instinct. You can’t teach that part.” He pauses. “What else are you good at, besides the obvious naked activities?”
“Lots of things.”
“Name three.”
“Reading people. Leaving at the right time.” I pause. “Spatial memory.”
“Spatial memory,” he repeats. “Like, once you’re in a space you know it?”
“More or less. I can walk a floor plan once and it’s there.” I throw again. “Useful for knowing where the exits are at all times.”
He’s quiet for a second, and I feel him looking at me with that version of his attention that’s deeper thanthe playful surface, the part that’s actually quite sharp.
