Game on
I fired off a quick text before we got started.
I suck at darts!
“Play 3-0-1, teams?” Thayle asked, as if that was supposed to mean anything to me.
“We weren’t all raised in bars,” Neo said, taking a swig of beer.
“Neo,” I chastised, forgetting for a moment he was my boss instead of a friend. It felt like he was becoming both.
“It’s fine,” Thayle said. “Not mentioning the whole situation is like not saying Voldemort. Neo knows I don’t mind talking about it. Takes away its power to hurt me.”
For a casual, throw-away statement, it was incredibly profound.
“What she means to say is, we’ll play on teams. You and Cos and the two of us. Thayle, you start.”
As she tossed out a dart, hitting the board with a shout of “doubled in, baby,” my phone buzzed.
Wasn’t talking about darts
I resisted the urge to look at him. Instead, I put my phone on the table and took a drink, only turning around to see him taking aim at the dartboard. The sight of a six-foot muscled god with his signature white tee and dark-rimmed glasses, whose bicep flexed as he took aim, didn’t bother me at all. I wasn’t weak in the knees. I wasn’t affected in the least.
The thought was so absurd I actually laughed out loud as his dart hit the board.
“Nice,” Neo said, despite the fact that Cos was his opponent. Though I had no idea why it was a nice shot or what was happening beyond the obvious. The darts had to hit the board.
Speaking of hitting, or missing your mark, Cosimo and I were heading into dangerous territory. No, I’d never intended to get involved with someone I worked with—scratch that, worked for—but this was entirely different. In less than two months, he wouldn’t be my employer. The fact that this job was temporary was the only reason I was already picturing Cosimo’s naked body hovering over me.
I needed to get my mind off that mental picture before Neo and Thayle guessed what was happening. We’d already dodged one bullet tonight.
Neo pulled the darts from the board and took his turn.
“I’m thinking about what you said, Thayle. Maybe that’s part of my problem,” I mused.
“Shoving the past into a drawer and never opening it makes the drawer seem pretty scary.”
“What’s something that’s in your drawer?” Cos asked. He stood right next to me, drinking his beer ever so casually, as if that kiss did not just happen.
“I mean, Evan, obviously.”
“Blech,” Thayle said. “I can see why you wouldn’t want to talk about him.”
Agreed. “My dad is another obvious one.”
“You never talk about him,” Cos said as Neo took aim with his second dart.
“Exactly. There aren’t many good memories. I mean, the guy basically got remarried and just moved on, as if I didn’t exist. Usually, I just catalog him like anyone else in my life I don’t have contact with anymore. But I’m sure there are residual feelings. Buried somewhere, in the drawer.”
Neo took his final shot, gathered up the darts and walked back to the high-top, where the rest of us stood.
“I’m sure there are,” Cos said. “I can’t imagine on some level you don’t feel abandoned, even if not consciously.”
I thought about that for a second. It definitely wasn’t a conscious thing. In fact, like I told the group, I didn’t give my father a second thought most days.
“Or not,” Thayle said. “I didn’t come up with this on my own. I have a fantastic therapist, and we’ve talked about this before. Because even though my dad was there, he kind of wasn’t too. And then he died. But I had a male role model who filled the void. A neighbor was, still is, one of the greatest guys in the world. That, my therapist says, made a huge difference.”
“Who’s the neighbor?” I asked, curious.