“You’re up!” Hayden brings me back to the action on the lanes, and I stand, wiping my hands along my hips. I have no clue what I’m doing.
“Green ball, I’m gonna make you my bitch,” I say, wrapping my hands around the ball June used. I bring it toward my stomach, masking the strain I feel because this shit is way heavier than I thought it was.
“Just remember, your goal is straight,” June encourages, clasping her hands together like she’s praying. She’s probably hoping I don’t launch this sucker at her feet.
“Need help?” Hayden gets up from his seat, and I can imagine how this whole scene plays out, with him standing behind me, holding my arms and helping me push the ball forward from between my knees like a child. It’s a cliché romantic scenario but I’m having none of it. Hayden is sweet, and comforting. But we are not doing the romance thing. And I won’t be handled like a baby.
“I got it!” The words come out forcefully, and his slight flinch tells me I might have offended him.
I work to soften it.
“If you help me, nobody is going to believe I got this strike all on my own.”
Hayden’s mouth curves on one side and he sits back down with a nod and a chuckle, knowing that I’m talking shit I can’t back up. This is my way.
My focus returns to the line of pins sixty feet or so away from me. This ball in my hands feels twice as heavy as it did before, when I tested it. No matter. It’s just a rock. And I just need to push this rock on the floor with enough umph to knock over one of those things at the end. Easy.
Doing my best to mimic the approach everyone made before me, I hold the ball in front of me and stretch my palm as wide as it will go, inserting my fingers in the damn holes that I can barely reach. After I line up my ball with what I estimate to be about the middle, I slide my slick bowling shoe-clad feet along the floor toward the line where the lane officially begins. My arm drops to my side, swinging as my hand clenches with every bit of strength I have not to drop this heavy fucker on my feet. The ball rocks back then swings forward across my hip and I let go when my body is lined up with the pins as good as it’s going to.
“Ohhh, shit!”
Lucas’s exclamation registers in my mind a fraction before I realize what I’ve done. My arm did not swing straight at all. Far from straight, actually. More of a veering extremely to the right. And the ball slipped out maybe a little later than I planned, causing it to fling rather than roll. Not that it matters, because it bounced two full lanes over, careening into the gutter of lane six, then swishing its way toward the dark pins still guarded by that thingamabob that lines them up.
I want to repeat what Lucas just shouted, but all I can seem to do is stare at my results with my mouth gaping open. The ball is slowing, and by the time the slow drawled “fuuuuck” leaves my lips, the green sphere that I was so sure I could handle is stalled in the middle of lane six’s gutter.
“Here.” Tory’s tone isn’t his usual tongue-in-cheek, and I’m sure my expression shows how surprised I am by it when I turn to face him. He’s holding an orange ball, an eight stamped in its surface. His eyes dip and see what I’m noticing, so he shifts his hand and covers the number completely.
“It’s just a ball. That one isn’t made for you. This one is, though.” He isn’t laughing, and that’s odd. No jokes about how I can’t even handle throwing a ball straight. Tory D’Angelo must truly be broken because he’s not even picking on the low hanging fruit to tease me. His low-key demeanor is unsettling.
“Ohhh-kayyyy.” I cock my head slightly in trained suspicion. Tory breathes out a short laugh through is nose.
“Fingers go in the holes,” he finally says through a crooked grin.
“Double entendre in that statement?” I plunge my fingers in and hook my thumb in the final hole, lifting the ball from Tory’s palm in a brisk, confident movement. It’s lighter, and the right fit.