“Now, what angle does this make?” he asked, leaning on the pool table, clasping his hands on the edge. I frowned and shrugged. I don’t know.
“Right angle?” I guessed and mentally slapped myself for being so stupid. “Obtuse. I meant obtuse,” I corrected myself.
Darius was grinning and then pointed to the edge of the table. “That’s where you want to hit it at,” he instructed. That’s when I realised I could just sit here listening to his voice. No wonder people didn’t complain when he spoke.
His voice was low and somehow it had a tone that made you want to listen to it. He should have become a news reporter.
“On the pool table, energy is always conserved…”
And I didn’t even hear the first part again. Crap. I nodded like I was paying attention.
“If you hit the ball lightly, the ball can stop before something good or bad can happen, due to the little friction. The collisions between the balls are perfectly elastic-”
I frowned, cutting him off. “Did you do physics or something? Speak English,” I complained but he just smiled and shook his head.
“If you hit it with the right force, when the balls meet, one will stop and the other will go,” he said and I nodded. Ah, the beauty of English.
“So you need to figure out where to hit this white ball from where you are, to hit it at the edge to make it rebound and hit the yellow ball we have here.” He moved his finger closer to me. “If you hit it here, the angle isn’t big enough. But if you hit it here,” he said, moving his finger back to where it was, “it should rebound at the proper angle.”
I nodded. Okay, so I’m just going to pretend I understood everything he said and just hit it where his finger was.
“Alright, hit it hard, but lightly.”
“It’s that contradicting,” I said as I leaned down to hit it.
“Just a bit,” he replied.
And I missed just a bit, the white all hitting the edge rather than rebounding, deciding to go over the edge. Darius leaned forward and caught it before it dropped.
“Not that hard,” he said, placing it back there. “Try again.”
I nodded and this time when I hit it “softly”, the white ball moved ten centimeters before it stopped. Well… that was too soft.
“Three times lucky?” I asked as he placed the white ball back and walked over to me. Man, I was hopeless. I leaned back down to take another shot when I felt him behind me, making me jump.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I felt his hand on my waist, moving me.
He answered, “Helping.”
I frowned but moved as instructed.
“Um,” I said, moving away from his touch that was slightly border lining the ticklish factor.
“Just turn around,” he whispered and I did, trying not to shiver as he placed his hand on my right hand at the end where I was holding the stick, and the other where I was using my left hand. I could feel the warmth from his front on my back, and it made me realise how close we were.
Not that I was complaining.
“You just need to know how much force to use,” he said. He was still focusing on the game? My mind was going mental and my heart was about to fall out of my chest and he was talking about the game. God damn it, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate when he was doing this.
He pulled my arm back with his and it shot forward, hitting the ball with accurate force, and for once it rebounded and hit the other ball, which fell into the pocket. “Done,” he muttered, his breath tickling the nape of my neck.
This time I did shiver, just the slightest, as I let go of the cue stick and stood up straighter. I cleared my throat and turned around, only to come face to face with him. He was still standing there?
“What?” I asked, confused, as he stared down at me, his eyes nearly as dark as the green of the billiard table.
“Blue suits you,” he commented, pulling on the end of my cowboy-type buttonup shirt. I could feel my face heat up. Did he just compliment me? His fingers brushed a strand of my hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ear. It made my heart beat even louder.
It felt like the whole world could hear it, but I highly doubted that. His fingers cupped my chin, his thumb running across the bottom of my lip. I mentally cursed, positive that my lips were more chapped than a cookie crumb, and this is why you should moisturise.
When his lips met mine, I really didn’t care about moisturising lotion. I wrapped my arms around his neck as I kissed him back.
“I leave you both for five minutes and this is what happens? Do you want me to banish you to opposite corners or something?”
I pulled back, blinking, trying to get out of my dazed moment. I turned to see Adrian crossing his arms against his chest and tapping his foot on the ground, like an angry mother.