Page 35 of Grinch Girl

With supreme effort, I managed not to look at the area of his body currently causing him distress. I licked my lips and flickedmy hand between us. “This is weird.” His eyes snagged on my fingers, as if even they held some sort of erogenous appeal.

“Indeed.” He sighed and shifted his weight again. “Bloody inconvenient as well.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. He was always so self-assured and implacable. Seeing him uncomfortable was just fun. But maybe I’d take pity on him. “If competence is what makes you so hot and bothered, I have good news.”

I thrust my fingers into the holes on my bowling ball. “I’m an absolutely terrible bowler. A few gutter balls and your lust will be history.”

Nate’s teeth flashed and his laugh filled lane five. “Let’s hope that’s the case, J-Bird.”

I went right ahead and started the game with a gutter ball and got a three on my second turn. Nate fared only slightly better with a total of six. Our second frames went only slightly better. I got a total of seven, Nate eight. “You’re terrible too,” I said.

“I’ve always thought this was the most stupid of sports.” Nate huffed.

He arched an eyebrow at me. “Surprised you’re not better though, as this is one of the only things in this town to do.” He scanned the alley, which was quickly filling with both locals and tourists. A small crowd was forming behind lanes one and two, where I assumed much better bowling was happening.

“I used to come with my mom sometimes when I was really little,” I admitted. “She loved it.” I closed my mouth then, surprised at the memory, and even more surprised the words had escaped in the first place.

“Why did you stop coming? Did she suffer a bowling-related injury?” he teased.

Another gutter ball. A cartoon on the electronic scoreboard made fun of me. I thought of not answering, but it seemed oddto let his question just hang in the air. “My mom is recovering,” I said, glancing to the bottles of vodka at the bar. “When I’m with her, we don’t go places that serve alcohol.”

Well there, that should do it. If my shitty bowling hadn’t already killed the vibe between us, this depressing topic certainly would.

Nate paused midstride, the bowling ball falling to his side. “That must have been difficult,” he said softly. “Dealing with that kind of illness when you were a child.”

I met his eyes, taken aback by the sincerity in his voice—and his choice of words. A lot of people around here didn’t think of addiction as an illness. A lot of people thought of it as a moral weakness or character flaw.

“I was lucky. Through most of her bad times, I lived with Greta—Bella’s grandmother,” I explained when he looked confused. Although, I hated that descriptor. Greta might not have been my blood relation, but she was mine too. “When I got old enough and I had the money to help my mom, I did.”

Nate opened his mouth, but Diane had appeared at our lane, and I turned gratefully to them.

“Goodness,” Diane said, eyeing our scoreboard. “You two are certainly in last place.”

“Shocking,” Nate said.

“Bella and Michael have won the first round,” she announced. “But only by two pins over Jim and Nicole. My money’s on them for the second game.”

I looked over to lane one, where Bella and Michael were giving each other an ecstatic high five. Bella’s cheeks were bright pink, and Michael gestured wildly at the scoreboard with his cup of beer. He whooped again loudly. Next to me, Nate frowned. “He is much too excited about this. They both are.”

In lane two, Jim and Nicole’s heads were close together. He was looking into her eyes while she nodded and smiled. “IsJim’s hand on Nicole’s hip?” I asked Diane out of the side of my mouth.

She winked at me. “It seems that being on a team together is something they’d forgotten they were rather good at.”

I took a moment to check on our other couples. Tripp was looking at his phone, while Mabel and Brian talked across their lanes. Hmmm. Could just be a friendship forming, but if I was Brian’s ex and I was still interested, I’d be getting a little nervous.

Diane sauntered away, the camera capturing her running commentary on the state of play. “Better luck on game two!”

“Let’s do something different,” Nate said suddenly. He grabbed his ball and went to the head of the lane. But instead of rolling it the normal way, he turned so he was facing me, his back to the pins. Then he spread his legs wide and bent over and rolled the ball between them.

His ball moved slowly down the lane but much straighter than when he’d rolled it the normal way. So straight, in fact, that it mowed down eight pins. I jumped to my feet and clapped. “That might have been your best roll yet!”

“Your turn—same way. Backward and through the legs,” he announced.

And that’s how we played our entire second game. Each frame we took turns coming up with a new way to throw the ball. In the sixth frame, right-handed Nate got an honest-to-goodness strike when he bowled with his left hand. We cheered so loudly even the intensely focused Bella and Michael looked over. In the eighth, I bowled with my eyes closed and threw my ball into the next lane and hit Tripp in the ankle. Nate laughed so hard I worried he’d pee his pants.

Jim and Nicole won the second game by three pins over Bella and Michael. The four of them were so much better than everyone else that the rest of us decided to forego the third gamein order to watch the tie-breaker match between lanes one and two.

Flush from our own unconventional game, Nate and I watched as Michael rubbed Bella’s shoulders, giving her an inspirational pep talk for the third game. Jaws clenched and eyes narrowed, they looked like boxers headed into a fight with a zillion-dollar prize and hefty new belt. “How can two such attractive people be so competitive about this weird game?” Nate wondered aloud.

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