“She’s told you that?”
“I haven’t spoken to her, but she emails every few days to berate my decisions. It doesn’t make much sense to me. She doesn’t believe I hold value unless I have the eye of a powerful man. Yet, men finding me attractive on the pages of a magazine is akin to prostitution. I quit trying to keep up,” I explain to him.
Grady’s quiet and tense beside me. I remind myself that he’s not Pierre, and that I haven’t said anything to cause him to be angry with me. Still, the thought tickles. What if he feels the same way?
Questions circle; more and more the quieter he is. By the time I pull into the parking lot of the aging bowling alley, my anxiety is getting the better of me.
“Say something,” I tell him, shakily.
“Wait there,” he says, exiting the truck. He walks around the front, coming to the driver’s side and opening my door. With gentle hands, Grady helps me out, placing me on my feet in front of him. Only an inch of air between us. His jaw pulses as he tries to release the tension he’s been holding. “I’m trying very hard not to hate every person in your life.”
“Not all of them are awful,” I say, feeling my own tightness release from my body.
He’s mad for me, notatme.
“Nobody deserves to be treated how you’ve been,” he tells me, brushing his hand over my cheek. “You’re not something to be bought and sold, Lou. You’re someone to be cherished.”
I almost ask why, because it’s not easy to believe. Not when you’ve been told you’ve had someone convincing you that you’re a commodity. A tool. A trophy. A possession. I don’t want to be any of those things. Some days, I don’t want to be me at all.
“Tonight, I only want to be someone to have fun with. Someone to laugh with,” I say.
“Deal,” he says. “Let’s go play with balls.”
“One of my favorite pastimes.”
“Playing with balls?” he asks, a brow raised.
“Yeah, I love balls,” I say, dragging out the words seductively.
“How much do you love them?” His hand settles at the small of my back, drawing me closer to him.
“I won the trophy for best juggler in my fourth grade competition,” I say, making him laugh while I ignore how much I like being pressed against him.
“I’m sure you were adorable in the fourth grade, but my balls just completely deflated,” he says. “I’ll teach you to bowl if you teach me to juggle.”
“You have another deal,” I tell him, and this time, it’s me who pulls him by the hand as I lead him into the bowling alley.
The noise inside is oddly welcoming. The laughter, balls hitting the pins, pins clashing into each other, and whoops of excitement push out anything from outside. As if I’ve entered a whole separate world. If a fighter jet flew overhead, we wouldn’t hear it.
Grady pays for a lane and shoe rental after I tell the kid working the counter my size.
“Not the most sanitary sport, I’ll admit,” he tells me when we sit to switch our shoes.
“Maybe not, but the shoes are cute as hell.”
“If you say so,” he says. “You start searching for a ball that feels right, I’ll program our names in.”
“How will I know if it feels right?”
“You don’t want the finger holes,” he says, holding up his thumb and two fingers, “to be too tight or loose. Make it heavy enough to get some power behind it, but not so heavy that you can’t get a good toss on it.”
“Oh, well. That sounds easy enough,” I say, crinkling my nose.
“Pick a few different ones, I’ll help you from there,” he says, suppressing a laugh. “Paige picks based on color; you could try that.”
“I just might,” I say, then head to the rows of balls.
Ultimately, I pick one that’s a sparkly neon green, and three others that are boring in color but I’m able to hold well. Grady goes first, making me stand next to him so he can describe everything he’s doing. When he easily tosses his black ball to the lane, I watch as it perfectly rolls down the center, striking the middle pin. All the others fall with it.
