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“Okay, so…you know pool?”
She blinked at him a few times, then lifted her eyebrows in a silent, Excuse me?
Jack held up a finger. “Right. Okay, so you know pool. You got your table, that’s…” he started drawing vague shapes on the paper napkin in front of them. “One of these, and—“
“A…rectangle?”
“If you must use fancy technical terms. And you got your pockets.” A series of slapdash circles. “One, two, three, four, five, and…six.”
“So far this seems like you explaining pool. Badly.”
“Faith, Carter. So here is a pool ball—assume just one for purposes of this—and a stick.”
“Cue.”
“Cue.”
“Which ball is it?”
Sam could see the temptation to be a smartass play out on his face, and the moment he opted to resist.
“The cue ball. So you hit the cue ball with the cue, say…thusly.”
He drew a line and an arrow suggesting a shot that sent the ball from the center of the table at an angle of approximately forty-five degrees toward the wall between a corner and side pocket. Then he traced the line with his finger and added sound effects: “Fsshhhew *pop*.”
“Why would I do that?” She gestured for the pen with wiggling fingers, then sketched a rough cone of uncertainty widening out from the point of impact toward the end wall. “What’s my goal here? Because that ball would probably end up in the middle of nowhere, depending on the surface and velocity and whether I put any English on it. It probably wouldn’t end up anywhere near a pocket, if that was your point “
“Aha!” He slapped a hand on the table. “Exactly.”
She waited again, suppressing a giggle. He was so cute when he was worked up.
After a few seconds, he sighed. “Look, so here you have six pockets. One stick. Usually a buncha balls—“
“You’re a buncha balls.”
He scowled and slid her margarita glass away from her hand. “You’re cut off. Drink some water.”
“You are no longer the boss of me,” she reminded him in her haughtiest tone, but drank some water anyway because he wasn’t wrong. “Back to your balls.”
“Christ, Carter, this is a family restaurant. All right, so you have…all that happening in pool, yes? And you’re good at pool because you’re good at…?”
“Hand-eye coordination?” She leaned on one elbow, resting her chin on her hand and batting her eyelashes at him.
No joy.
“And…?”
Sliding one shoe off and extending a foot towards his ankle, confident the booth table and dim light would hide it, she looked innocently up at the colorful mural on the wall. “Uh…spatial relationships?”
“Getting warmer—heyyyyy watch it there, lady. No footsie-wootsie until you pay attention to the poolsie…woolsie. Huh.”
“I don’t like that guy.”
“I realized as it was coming out of my mouth.”
Biting her lip, determined not to fall for an opening as obvious as ‘coming out of your mouth,’ Sam gave in for the moment. “Physics. Happy, hotshot?”
“Not as happy as I bet I’ll be about twenty minutes after we pay the tab and head home. Yes, Doctor Tipsy McSmartypants, you can hustle pool because you’re good at physics. And spatial relationships, and hand-eye coordination, but let’s stick to physics.”
“I was told there would be statistics,” she reminded him.
“They’re coming. Don’t. Don’t say it. Tequila was the wrong liquor to ply you with.” He waved at their waiter, who nodded in acknowledgment but headed off toward the kitchen.
“You won’t be saying that about twenty minutes after we pay the tab and head home.” She smirked at how pained he looked. He really did set himself up beautifully sometimes. Tequila almost always got her into trouble, but she had rarely enjoyed the trouble quite this much. “Or sooner if we find a place to park.”
He closed his eyes…dark lashes against his tanned skin, salt-and-pepper eyebrows dipped down towards the bridge of his nose. She leaned over and stroked the left brow with one fingertip. “You with your sexy scar.”
“You’re killing me here. Okay. Pool. Physics. It’s fun, yes?”
It was. She loved the way the angles arrayed themselves in ever-shifting invisible fans across the felt, the delicate considerations of elastic collision and velocity relative to inertia. The impulse leaping from one object to the next, exactly as she ordered by minute adjustments to the angle and momentum of the cue, and the precise point of impact. All of it so crystal-clear to her, and so opaque to her victims. Opponents.
“I love pool.” And margaritas. And Jack.
He used That Voice on her, which seemed like cheating. “Then what if I told you about something with even more physics? Faster, higher-stakes physics. Practically infinity more variables. With statistics on top.”
She had to resist the impulse to fan herself.
“I’ve seen hockey.”
“But have you really? Seen hockey? Because look…” Picking up the pen again, he started defacing another napkin, using one of his gorgeous hands to pin it down it next to the first drawing for comparison. “You have…”
“A rectangle.”
“And a little bit more. You wouldn’t want to make it easy, so instead of six pockets, only two.” Semi-circles at each end of the rectangle. And then two stick figures.
“They look angry.”
“Only at the puck. Usually. So to spice it up, each pocket has an angry guy with a stick guarding it.” More lines. “That’s another selling point. Forget one stick. Here you get twelve.”
“Hmm. Keep talking.”
About anything, really. She would've listened to him read the phone book.
“And that still seems too easy, so let’s get rid of all those…” He looked up at her with a long-suffering expression. “All those little spherical force vectors. And keep only one. But flatten it.”
She frowned. “You're losing variables, though.”
“Except…” Jack rapidly sketched in another ten stick figures, one next to each line. “You add in biomechanics. The constant change of force and angle of each of these guys’ two skates over an almost frictionless surface. The fact that instead of going maybe five, six miles per hour, like a pool ball, that hockey puck can top a hundred MPH.” He started tapping the napkin with his index finger for emphasis, pointing to various features of the drawing and making circles where appropriate, and as though that might animate the graphic for her. “And all twelve of these biomechanical factors here are having to calculate the physics of that puck’s motion in relation to the rink position, all the other players, and the two goals. While holding big sticks and sliding around on ice, balancing on twenty-four wet knives!”
An odd moment for the waiter to pop over with their check. He politely said nothing about the twenty-four wet knives, asked if they wanted dessert—no—and if they’d enjoyed the meal—yes—then disappeared discreetly with Jack’s credit card.
Jack turned to her when they were alone again. “Where was I...oh, okay. So, each of those players? Can also be traveling anywhere up to about thirty-five, even forty miles an hour at any given point on the ice. So at that speed, on the fly, they’re constantly factoring in their own velocity, the velocity of the puck, the force applied with the stick, various shooting vectors that are in constant flux, the vertical force needed from their legs to brake or turn…and ice is a fickle, unpredictable mistress, so there’s also, ya know…a chaos…deal.”
God, he was hot. She loved it when he forgot to pretend to be stupid. Especially when he did it while looking at her so intensely. Yearning for her to get this, because he loved this, and he loved her.
“That does sound…intriguing.” She slipped a foot up his pants leg again, venturing past his sock. His skin was warm, and the coarse hairs tickled her toes. “Now tell me about the statistics.”
He narrowed his eyes in warning. “Carter…”
“You took my margarita away, Jack. Give me this.”
“Conduct unbecoming.” He slid the drink back to her as he glanced around the restaurant automatically, scanning for familiar faces.
She took the drink, but kept her foot where it was. “We’re married. You’re retired. I outrank anyone who might see us. Please tell me about the statistics, sir.” She had a That Voice too. It made him clench his jaw and stare at her like he was a starving cartoon lion and she was an animated steak.
“You…” He cleared his throat and tugged at the collar of his voluminous shirt. “You get to judge them. By several metrics. On how well they do all this high-speed applied physics stuff. And then compare results and note trends. Spanning years. Also, in any given game, there are probably at least two players who fucking hate each other, so you can have side bets on whether there’ll be bloodshed. And as if all that weren’t enough…at the intermissions you get to watch a Zamboni. Ehhh?”
Maybe it was the tequila talking, but this did actually sound like it had potential. However, that didn’t mean she had to give it up to him for free. “And if I agree to go to Denver with you to see the…Denver...Pucksters—“
“The Colorado Avalanche.”
“Play your…Hometown Hockeyboys…”
“Minnesota Wild.”
“We can also go to Tattered Cover and the botanical garden while we’re there, and stay at a fancy hotel?” She quickly corrected herself. “I get to pick the hotel.”
Fancy could be a very relative term. Best to assure it was her idea of fancy, not Jack’s, which could end up being a hunting lodge three hours out of town.
“Oh yes. Assuming you don’t get called back to work, if you’ll come with me to the game, let me explain it, and talk your sexy physics talk at me, then for the rest of the weekend your wish is my command.”
“Hmm. I like the sound of that.”
The waiter returned with the receipt, which Jack signed with a flourish after adding a hefty tip.
“Thanks. Okay, margarita girl, ready to hit the road?” He held out a hand and helped her up, and she started toward the door. “Um, Sam?”
“Hmm?”
Jack pointed down to her feet, which were both bare. “Forget something?”
Holding her head high, she backtracked to retrieve her shoes from under the table.
Jack tsked as she slipped them back on. “I blame the footsie-wootsie.”
She shrugged as she passed him again, leading the way to the exit. “Don’t complain. It helped you sell me on the hockey-wockey.”
They were casual all the way to the door. Only once it closed behind them did Jack shoot his cuff and check his wristwatch.
“Glad we got next weekend settled. As for the rest of tonight…twenty minutes, starting…now!”