Page 35 of Capture the Moment
Fuck it.
How bad can my aim be?
I shoot the first dart and I’m immediately met with stifled laughter and snorting from the five assholes behind me. Not only did I miss the dart board, I hit the wall right beside it, lodging a small orange dart on a poster of an old singer from the eighties. I can feel her before I can see her, Cleo claps a hand on my shoulder still trying to hold back her laughter.
“Shut up…” I sigh, looking down at the near snorting girl.
“I wasn’t going to say anything!” She guffaws, letting the laughter consume her fully as she bends over clutching her stomach. I can’t help but to chuckle at the sight of her so tickled at my failure.
We do two more rounds of Cleo winning and me losing so bad that I may have broken a few records for being the world’s worst dart thrower. After the final round of getting my ass handed to me, our friends disperse around the bar. Cleo and I make our way to the pool table a few feet away from the boards. Shesets her now watered blue drink behind the pool table and chuckles, looking me over.
“For you to be a big shot, hockey player, your aim is horrible,” she jokes, setting up our game.
“Says the girl who was basically bred to have good aim! I’m sorry my parents aren’t in the Hall of Fame or olympians.”
At this, Cleo grins and shrugs as she pulls out her phone. “True. We can’t all be excellent like me.”
We play four rounds of pool, the end resulting in a kick-ass tie and small videos of the two of us smack talking to each other behind our phones. Don’t let anyone fool you, Cleo Jones is the most competitive woman in the world. She plays dirty and flirts her way to victory.
She winked at me, thus completely ruining my focus and resulting in me losing horrifically in one of our rounds. We’re having so much fun simply being around each other letting our competitive nature take hold that I don’t even notice the amount of people gathered around us until a camera flash causes her to jump.
Cleo looks around the group of students surrounding us and shyly ducks her head away from the stares of the people around her. I’m almost at her side when Georgia pulls her away from the fray of people and seemingly escorts her back to our original booth, leaving me stunned and stuck in place.
I don’t stay frozen for long as I come back to my senses, and I follow them back our booth.
“What was that about?” I try, only to receive a nasty look from Cleo’s blonde friend.
“Too many people and way too many cameras.” Cleo sighs, and then places a hand on Georgia’s as if she’s telling her that she’s fine and can leave. Georgia takes the hint and does just that, stalking toward the dance floor where Ryan and Denver seem to be either arguing or making googly eyes at one another.
I’ll have to ask her about that later, but right now my focus is solely on the whirlwind of a woman in front of me.
One second she’s confident and competitive and the next, she’s hiding in her own little shell like a scared turtle.
“If we’re being technical, Princess, you won our deal,” I say, scooting into the booth beside her, daring to rest my arm on the top of the booth, just shy of her shoulders.
At my words, she looks up at me with a frown. “Am I supposed to tell you to leave me alone? I mean if you insist—"
“No! Absolutely not. How about I propose a trade?”
“A trade?” she echoes, skeptically.
“Mhm… Since you won, I’ll give you my prize of three wishes that can be called upon at any time as long as you don’t wish me away.” I shrug as if my heart isn’t about to burst from my chest.
What if she says no? What if she pushes me away before I even get close?
“Platonic wishes?” she asks, startling me for a second, my palms begin to sweat. Is she considering me?
Instead of showing her just how nervous I am, I feign confidence. “Whatever you want, Princess.”
Cleo turns to me, she looks me over with deadly calculation before sighing, leaning her head back into my arm. My heart beat stutters at the contact but I remain painfully still. There is no way that I’m messingthisup.
“Well,” she starts, looking up at me briefly before looking back down at her lap, “my first wish is for you to take me home.”
I’m shocked at her wish but not surprised, I didn’t drink any alcohol since we took my car to the bar. Before leaving, we let everyone know where we're going and that I’d be back later.
I gaze at her briefly only to catch her already looking at me. Throughout the night, she’d had a fair number of drinks but she seemed to sober up a little by the time we made it to my Jeep.
Cleo grins as we make eye contact, a small dimple forms in her cheek for the briefest of moments.
