“Mrs huh?” he said, looking down at me, his hazel eyes taking me in. “Where’s your ring, then?”
When I had my ring, no one really looked at it. When I didn’t have my ring, everyone looked at my hand to see an expected white stone of some sort, or a wedding band even. I shook my head and turned around.
Darius was watching us while setting up the game, trying to look like he wasn’t eavesdropping and I cracked a grin. He needed to work on that skill. I leaned over the table and grabbed his left hand. He looked at me, confused.
“Nice arse,” some immature kid decided to yell out and I sighed. I banged my forehead on the edge of the table. Did they really need to push people? It was like they wanted to fight.
Darius decided to come to my rescue, calmly and coolly saying to the kid, “The arse is spoken for, kid. Go back to your game.” He probably saw the same thing I saw: a bunch of immature teenagers. No need to cause a fight that they clearly wanted to have.
With a last tug, I managed to get the wedding ring off and turned back around, leaving Darius to finish setting up.
“There, happy?” I asked the kid as I placed the ring on my ring finger. It was big, really big, but as long as I held my hand upright, it should stay.
The kid judged the ring and then looked at me and nodded. “Well, if you’re married, you’re married. Sorry.”
It was a surprise when he turned around to walk back to his group. I looked at Adrian, telling him, “See? No need to cause a fight.”
Adrian rolled his eyes as he grabbed the chalk back from me while I placed the ring on my thumb. At least it wouldn’t fall off this finger.
I don’t know why I had decided to step in. I remember when I urged Darius to punch the guys at the café for making a remark. Maybe I was saving the kids from these two.
I could only imagine the damage they could do, and I didn’t want that. After all, the immature teens reminded me of many of my own friends back in school. It was at the age that they were immature, trying to act like men when they really had no idea how to be.
“Your turn,” Adrian called and I walked over. Right, the game.
It was after another solid ten minutes that the others returned, the noise level in the room increasing by eighty percent as those three came in.
“What took you so long?” Adrian asked, going straight for the bags they were holding. Whatever that was in the bags smelled amazing.
“Calm down, we were only gone for half an hour,” Matthew said as he checked his watch. He had gotten an actual ice bag for his bruise.
“Is it better?” I asked guiltily as I pulled his hand back to see the bruise. It looked much worse, but that was expected since the bruise was darkening, which meant all the good things, like platelets, under his skin were getting to work to heal it.
“The pain stopped, just looks nasty,” he said, voicing my opinion. I nodded. The ice should help.
“Who are they?” asked Lee ,nodding to the other table. He earned a grunt from Adrian who was busy shoving the kebab into his mouth.
“Mayor’s son,” I said when no one decided to reply. “Or something he said.” I thanked Kristoff when he handed me a kebab as well.
After we all ate and talked for a bit, it was back to another game, and Adrian cleaning up the mess he made on the floor.
“Seriously, Adrian, you don’t want to get kicked out for leaving meat everywhere,” Lee told him off as he stood up and I laughed. When Adrian stood up, crumbs, meat, vegetables, everything fell off his lap onto the floor.
He ate messily than a child.
“Are you blind? Because I am cleaning, duh.” Adrian rolled his eyes, picking up the mess he made.
“Come on, Ivory, do you want to break?” Lee chucked me the white ball.
“Probably won’t really break,” I told him. I wasn’t the best at breaking but he told me to have a shot anyway. And my shot was pretty pathetic. Three of the balls broke and Darius started laughing loudly, one of those laughs that started deep in your stomach and came out.
“Shut up,” I said, in embarrassment, nudging him as I stepped away so Kristoff could break it properly. “At least I tried.”
“We can go after this game finished.”
Darius’s voice made me jump and I realised how tired and out of focus I was. I yawned again and nodded.
I had lost count of how many games I had played. It was simply too enjoyable to stop playing. Lee was long done playing, already on the couch with one leg propped up. He was on his phone, laughing and reading out random tweets he found funny every now and then.
Made me wonder, did Darius have twitter? What would he tweet about if he did have one?
Another business deal.
I smiled as I imagined him tweeting that. No, Darius would have a boring twitter feed, but probably millions of followers.
“What are you smiling about?” Darius questioned as he gave me the cue stick.