Not Your Fault

by Cheyanne Young

  “I heard that!” Susan punches him playfully in the arm. Some of my anxiety melts away. I can handle being around Kris when I’m also with Susan and the rest of my coworkers. It’s not as if anyone here is a mind reader and knows about the thoughts I had while lying naked with my boyfriend just an hour ago.

  A waitress in black pants and a purple cleavage-baring tank top with the Fun Max House logo across the chest hands me an ice-cold beer from the tray in her hand. I thank her and drink half the bottle in one gulp. I’m going to be just fine. Kris Payne can suck it.

  The two-day shift workers, Jennifer and Geoff, play a game of pool so poorly that it looks like both of them are losing. They’re both college-dropouts who met each other at the gym, fell in love at the gym, got jobs and the gym, and then were married last spring. Thankfully, the wedding wasn’t in the gym. I’m doing a pretty good job of small talking with them about their shitty pool game, the glorious weather, and other pointless topics when a figure walks toward us from the pizza buffet.

  It feels like a rock hits my chest and got gets between my ribcage. The weight crushes my lungs and makes it hard to breathe. And all he’s doing is walking with a plate of pepperoni pizza slices stacked into a pyramid in one hand and a beer in the other.

  He wears black board shorts and a black T-shirt that fits over his chest as if it were tailor made for him. His five o’clock shadow makes me wonder what it’d feel like having it brush across my cheek. My knees go weak and I grab onto the side of the pool table.

  Yeah, okay…what did I say about him needing to suck it? I need to remember that. He abandoned me in high school. He means nothing to me. He can suck it.

  Gripping my own beer tightly in my hand, I repeat these words in my mind, all while keeping a smile on my face. No one needs to know that I’ve fallen off the deep end here, especially Kris. Jessica sinks the number eight ball and then throws a fit, arguing that she didn’t know that ball was an instant game-ending ball.

  “I think there’s a dirty joke somewhere in there,” Geoff says after his wife finishes her rant about sinking balls in the corner hole. Kris lets out a laugh and fist-bumps Geoff.

  “There definitely is,” Kris says, his eyes glancing over the group. “But I’m not gonna say any of them.” When his eyes meet mine, his smile falters for an instant and then he looks away. Just like that. A glance at me and a glance away. He didn’t let his eyes linger on the tight-as-hell black dress I chose from the this-is-too-sexy-to-actually-wear side of my closet. He didn’t notice my strappy sandals and forty dollar pedicure or how fucking amazing my makeup looks because I re-did it twice before I came up here. After all of my hard work, all he gave me was a glance. I don’t mean anything to him.

  I am an idiot.

  Turning my back to the group of my coworkers, I lean my butt on the pool table and watch the people playing pool at other tables as I sip my beer. Geoff convinces Jennifer to let someone else play him in the next game. With a huff of indignation, she sweeps past them, grabbing my now empty beer bottle in the process. I start to object and she wiggles it, emphasizing its emptiness. “I’ll get you another one,” she says as she shimmies through the crowd toward the open bar.

  “Hey boss,” Geoff asks as he reaches over me to grab the blue chalk thing. “If the whole gang is here tonight, who’s at the gym?”

  I turn around to hear the answer and I want to kick myself because the whole point of keeping my back to the pool table was to avoid looking at Kris. But now I see him in all his gorgeous glory, as he takes the chalk from Geoff and twists it over the end of his pool stick. I will not focus on how sexy his fingers look.

  “The gym is closed for the next forty-eight hours,” Kris says, stepping around the corner of the table to place the chalk back exactly where it was when Geoff grabbed it. His forearm gets so close to touching me, the hairs on my arms stand on end. I wonder if he did that on purpose. I wonder if he knows I’m lusting after him, like a fucking idiot, and he’s getting close to me just to screw with my emotions.

  After what he did ten years ago, I can’t put anything past him.

  I bet he dates super models. Not girls from small towns with boring jobs.

  I shouldn’t be thinking any of this.

  Susan and Geoff simultaneously ask him why we’re closing down for two days, and I’m just as curious as they are. In my five years of working at Carson’s, we’ve never been closed except for on Christmas.

  “I’m doing a bit of remodeling,” he says, waiting for Geoff to rack the balls and remove the triangle. “Well, not so much remodeling the building as having all that old equipment moved out. I ordered all new cardio machines, three squat racks and benches,” he says as he leans over the edge of the table to line up his first shot. He keeps talking, listing all the things he bought for the gym. I don’t hear any of it because I’m focusing on the veins in his forearm as intently as if I’m going to be quizzed on them later.

  God Delaney! Get a hold of yourself. What is wrong with you? You cannot lust after the guy who killed Tyler.

  I swallow. My mental chiding went too far this time. I don’t normally think of Tyler like this. I only think of the happy memories—that is the promise I had made myself all those years ago. I will think of happy things and nothing else. He deserves as much.

  “You feeling okay?”

  The voice comes from my right and it pulls me out of my thoughts, but not enough to look up from the green felt of the pool table. “Delaney?” This time I look up. Because this time Kris said my name.

  “Yeah?” my own voice sounds foreign to me. Kris steps closer to me and his hand touches my shoulder, as soft as if I’ll break.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost…or something.” He has to lower his head to look into my eyes, or to attempt to look into them. I stare at his Adam’s apple for just enough time to remember why I can’t look at him in the first place. Then I look away and see Susan and Geoff watching me as if I’d just had a seizure or something. For all I know, maybe I did.

  “I’m fine,” I say, instincts taking over, making me pull away from Kris’s unwanted hand on my back. “I just zoned out for a minute. I’m fine.” I say the second part more to myself. He nods and lifts his pool stick, going back to the game.

  Jennifer arrives with two ice-cold beers in her hands and I’ve never been happier to see her. “Refills!” she singsongs as she hands me one of the drinks. I take it and tell her thanks in an equally lame singsong voice. I don’t feel as cheery as I sound, but I know damned well how to fake it in front of Kris.

  With Jennifer back, some of the tension is gone, and I try to participate with the laughter and jokes and I feel like I’m doing an awesome job. Kris doesn’t talk to me for the next three pool games, and I’m not upset or offended—I’m grateful.

  One more beer and a shot of Patron later, I’m standing a little lopsided, using my pool stick for balance as Geoff sinks one, two, and three striped balls in a row, beating me. “You cheater,” I say, pointing my finger at him. He sweeps his arm out and takes a bow. “I’m not a cheater, m’lady. You just suck at pool.”

  “Don’t we all,” Jennifer says, raising her glass in a toast.

  Susan finishes the last of the cheese fries and jumps up from the barstool on the sidelines. “My turn!”

  I hand her my pool stick and walk toward the table with everyone’s empty beer bottles and what used to be a plate of cheese fries but is now a sad empty dish. Right about now, the amount of alcohol in my stomach decides to tell my brain that I’m drunk. I take a deep breath and fumble for the barstool. I could have sworn it was behind me somewhere…

  “Whoa,” Kris’s deep voice crushes through the sounds of arcade games and drunken laughter. “Unless you’re magic, you can’t float in the air.”

  “I’m sitting on the stool,” I mumble, reaching behind me for that damned barstool, but feeling nothing. I’m vaguely aware of his hands gripping my elbows, until I take a deep breath and smell his colo
gne. Then I’m very, very, horribly aware of his hands touching me. He’s holding me up, preventing me from drunkenly stumbling to the floor in search of a barstool that is not there.

  My hands grab his biceps as I let him steady me, bringing me back into a standing position. I look into his eyes. They’re blurry. “I think you want this,” he says, nodding to an area about three feet away, where that traitorous piece of furniture sits, mocking me.

  I think I say thanks, but I’m not sure. When I look in his face, I see a grown man with chiseled features and a five o’clock shadow; a man who is a stranger to me. But when I slip up and look into his eyes, I see Kris. The boy I grew up with…the boy I loved. Beautiful auburn eyes don’t change with age—they stay just the same as you remember them, filled with memories of things that used to be.

  His voice lowers until I’m certain only I can hear him. “Let’s take a walk.”

  I nod.

  Chapter 10

  I shouldn’t have glanced back when Kris led me out of the adults’ only section and into the arcade room. Then I wouldn’t have seen the curious look of jealousy on Susan’s face and the smug look on Koby’s face as he nudged Geoff and pointed in our direction. Now everyone no doubt thinks I’m trying to bang the new boss, and they couldn’t be further from the truth. I don’t even know why I’m walking with him.

  We come to a stop in front of these brightly colored ATM type things that dispense cards instead of cash. Kris loads up a card with one hundred virtual tokens and holds it up, wiggling it between his index and middle finger. “Skeeball?”

  Okay maybe it’s just the alcohol—no wait, it’s definitely the alcohol—because I’m kind of sort of thinking that maybe Kris and I can be friends. You know, in a strictly professional boss-employee type of friendship. The alcohol also makes me smile, yank the card out of his hand and say, “Can’t believe you remembered that Skeeball is my specialty.”

  I run the card through the slot on two Skeeball machines and Kris and I play against each other. We don’t talk. And that’s fine with me. This is, after all, earth-shatteringly awkward. I mean, I hate Kris. The sober Delaney hates him with all of her being. But the drunk Delaney is just going with it. We play a dozen games of Skeeball and by the end of them, I’m telling myself the only reason I’m laughing and smiling with this asshole is because subconsciously I want him to feel guilty. I want him to know that I don’t care that he left and I don’t care that he came back.

  The scoreboard lights up above our games, displaying in big neon numbers that I’ve beaten him by over fifty thousand points. He shakes his head and removes the long strand of tickets from my machine, and then the measly strand from his. “It’s been a long time,” he says, almost under his breath but definitely loud enough for me to hear.

  My drunken smile falters. I don’t know what to say. I glance around and find a whack-a-mole machine and swipe my card through it as a distraction. Kris takes one mallet and I take the other.

  “So,” he says, dragging out the word like talking to me is the hardest thing in the world. I feel like telling him that no one freaking asked him to talk to me. After his pause lasts about ten seconds longer than any pause should, I slam my mallet over an unruly mole and look over at him.

  “What?” I ask, but it sounds more like a pissed off mother having heard “Hey mom!” too many times in a row.

  “Whoa,” he says, lifting his mallet in surrender. “I was just trying to make small talk.”

  “Well I’m a little too drunk for that,” I say, allowing my words to slur naturally because I’ve depleted all of my pretend to be less drunk than I am energy.

  He smiles. But it’s not a normal smile or even a snort or a laugh. It’s a Kris Payne smile. Which means his eyes squint up on the sides and kind of twinkle in the way that only light brown eyes can do, and his lips don’t form a crescent-shaped smile, they kind of lift up on one side and press down on the other. And his head tilts ever so slightly to the left.

  That is a Kris Payne smile.

  “I guess that makes me a cool boss,” he says, lightly tapping a mole on the head. I slam the moles on my side of the game, the alcohol in my veins making me uncoordinated and rougher than usual.

  “I guess,” I say as if I don’t believe him at all. And I don’t.

  “So, anyway,” he says that word again, this time scratching his elbow. I wonder if he’s this awkward when talking to his supermodel girlfriends.

  “So, what?” I ask, daring to look at him again just to see if the knots still twist in my stomach. They do.

  “So,” he begins again, saying the words with a deliberate slowness, “Do you have a significant other?”

  The question sobers me in a heartbeat. The toy mallet almost drops out of my hand as I stare at him, ignoring the bobbing moles on the game in front of us. I actually have to think about his question, replay the words over in my mind a second and third time, because I just can’t fathom why he would be asking me what I think he just asked me.

  He lifts an eyebrow waiting for a response. A tiny bit of guilt flows into me as I smile innocently. “Oh you know,” I say, my voice light and mysterious. “They come and they go.”

  He nods, pressing his lips together. “Same here.”

  Of course, I think with sarcasm that feels like bile in my stomach. Of course your significant others come and go. You can’t be that gorgeous and date just one super model. They’re like Pokémon. You have to date them all.

  I don’t say any of that aloud, even though I want to. I seem to hold back a lot of thoughts around him. I may be stupid for thinking the thoughts, but I’m not stupid enough to let him know that. After whack-a-mole, we play various games until we’ve used up all one hundred tokens on the card. Kris’s back pockets are full of tickets and I enjoy how it makes him look slightly less cool and laid back and more like some kind of man-child hoarding tickets to cash in for prizes.

  I still have no idea why Kris and I are perusing through a child-packed room of arcade games, taking turns playing for paper tickets, making pointless small talk and acting as if we don’t have a fucked up past together. If this is his way of making up for what he did, he’s failing. I’m not even sure why I’m still here. I should have called Cat to come rescue me an hour ago. He doesn’t deserve to hang out with me. He doesn’t deserve to be my friend. And he sure as hell doesn’t deserve to look so freaking hot tonight.

  We stop in front of another set of ATM-looking machines, only these count the tickets through some slot that sucks them up like the Cookie Monster. Kris grabs all the tickets from his pockets, handing half of them to me.

  “If only we were kids right now,” I say, as I stare at our pile of a few hundred tickets.

  “Good idea,” he says, taking the tickets from my hands and folding them into one massive stack.

  “I had an idea?” I ask.

  He smiles and glances around the room, his eyes landing on a young boy with beat up shoes and jeans that are a couple inches too short. The boy’s guardian, an elderly man, stands next to him as he plays a game of Skeeball. Kris takes off toward them and I follow lamely, wondering if he’s going to do what I think he might do.

  “Excuse me,” he says, getting the boys attention. He squats down so that he’s eye level with the child and holds out our stack of tickets. “My friend and I are a little too old for tickets so we were wondering if you wouldn’t mind taking them for us?”

  The boy’s eyes almost burst out of his skull and he takes the tickets before Kris has a chance to change his mind. “Thank you!” he squeaks, beaming from ear to ear.

  Kris winks at him and stands back up. My heart turns to goo at the little boy’s excitement. The older man with him pats Kris on the back in a proud grandfatherly way.

  “That was cool of you,” I say as we walk back toward the adult section. My eyes linger on his now empty back pockets and they cling to his ass so tightly it’s a miracle so many tickets ever fit in there in the first place.


  Kris stops suddenly and I stop too, only not before slamming into his backside. “Shit,” he mumbles under his breath, spinning on his heel and grabbing my elbows in his hands. “Go,” he says, pushing me as his toes press my feet backward. “Go, go go.”

  “What? Why?” I ask as I trip over myself in our retreat.

  “Just act casual,” he says. He shoves me behind a massive spin the wheel game, pressing me into the wall. He’s so close I can smell the beer on his breath. I stare at his chest, my heart racing as he looks over his shoulder and into the crowd of innocent people. He’s acting as if a masked shooter just barged in the place, but I don’t hear anyone freaking out.

  Plus, if a shooter really was on the loose, I doubt Kris would take a bullet for me, so pushing me into a corner makes no sense.

  Until I hear her voice.

  “Bringing new girls to our old hangout, huh?” I hear a snort, and then, “That’s romantic.”

  Kris rolls his eyes and lets go of my arms, slowly turning around to face the woman. “I’m here with my employees, so you can move the hell along and leave us alone, thanks.”

  Kris’s ex-girlfriend is here, and she sounds like a total bitch. This is my luck. I bet she would look a thousand times better in my little black dress than I would after a week of fasting and Insanity workouts. Now that the alcohol has worn off, I am out of liquid courage but I venture to peek around Kris’s shoulder anyway. I already know she’s a super model, so I can’t possibly lose too much self-esteem getting a look at her.

  My jaw drops. The woman in front of us, with her hands on her hips as she and Kris say less than nice things to each other, is not a super model. She’s short and a little chunky around the midsection. She wears white cut off jean shorts that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination and a faded grey tank top. A tattoo of a dragon starts at her foot and snakes up her entire leg, disappearing behind the pockets of her shorts. A few dozen wavy-lined and faded tattoos litter her other leg.