Page 20 of Keepsake
“I’m not good, either, but a table’s free. Feel like a game?”
“I do. Let’s find out which of us is the least awful.” I slid out of the booth, bringing my beer along with me.
Zach got busy racking up the balls while I ogled him over the rim of my glass. I’d bet anything that Daphne Shipley sat up nights writing poetry about Zach’s arms. He was all golden skin and shapely muscle, from the biceps visible at the sleeves of his T-shirt to his broad, sturdy hands. He also had an economy of motion that I admired, steering that big body calmly, with no wasted efforts.
I’d always had a thing for men who worked with their hands. It probably began as a rebellion against my ridiculously intellectual parents. But there was something really sexy about tactile abilities… My gaze lingered on Zach’s thick fingers as they positioned the balls in the rack, then lifted it nimbly away.
“Want to break?” he offered, chalking a cue.
I shook my head, still under his spell. His T-shirt stretched against his pecs as he lined up his shot.
A moment later the cue ball made the familiar smacking sound into the balls, sending them in every direction. Zach sank the number two and then followed up with a successful sink of the four, before missing the next one.
When I circled the table to line up a shot, he stepped back gracefully out of my way. This was the most social Friday night I’d had in months, and all because of the easy company. I sank a stripe, and then another one. Then I missed, too.
“So let’s hear about this zebra,” Zach said as he lined up the next shot.
I laughed, surprised that he remembered. “Okay. I was trying to hitch a ride through Kentucky, on my way to the Carolinas. And nobody wanted to pick me up. And it started to rain…”
“And nobody wants your soggy, wet self in their car,” Zach broke in, sinking his shot.
“Exactly. So I’m standing there, and my cardboard sign is starting to get soft, and things are looking pretty grim. Then this horse trailer pulls over on the shoulder. So I put on my happy, harmless girl face. You know the one.”
He lifted his eyes from the table. “Sure. I’d like to think I’ve perfected my happy, harmless guy face.”
“Show me. I want to see it.”
“Right now?” His eyes crinkled in the corners as he smiled.
“Yep. Right now.” Maybe that was flirtatious of me, but it was fun to draw Zach out of what seemed to be a natural reticence.
He laid aside his pool cue and stuck one thumb in the air. Then he smiled a smile so plastic it made me double over with laughter. “Hey,” he complained gently. “I’m out of practice.”
I grabbed my beer off the ledge at the side of the table, took a sip, then offered it to him. He’d already finished his.
“Thank you,” he said, sipping and setting it down.
“Let’s see…” I scanned the table for my next shot, but I didn’t have much to go on. “Back then I had my happy face down to a science. Or so I thought. But for a long time nobody stopped on that rainy roadside. And then this truck stops, and the window opens. The most pinched, grumpy old man I’ve ever seen looks out. And he says, ‘I don’t pick up hitchhikers.’”
“Ouch.”
“Right. And my happy face is starting to sag. And then he says, ‘But I need a little help with my horse. She’s skittish back there.’”
Zach’s eyes grew wide. “Please tell me you did not ride inside the horse trailer.”
“Oh, but I did. I really wanted to get to North Carolina.”
“Why?”
Our conversation paused for a second so that I could try to sink the number eleven. And—goddamn it—I scratched. “Ugh.” I straightened, remembering that rainy day by the side of the road, and the weight of the pack on my back. During college, there was always some adventure waiting just around the corner. And I wanted all of them. Whatever the risks, I went for it. In fact, my fearlessness was a point of pride. Back then I’d thought that bad experiences only made for good stories.
Until Guatemala, where one experience was so bad that I couldn’t even remember the end of it.
“I don’t actually remember where I was headed. It must have been spring break. Nashville for a concert, maybe?”
Zach shrugged.
“Well, getting there seemed important at the time. So I followed this man around to the back of his horse trailer. He says, ‘You gotta stand at her head. Stay away from the back of ’er. And if she’s grumpy, she wants a carrot.’ Then he opens the door and there’s a zebra in there.”
