Twelve.
There are places you shouldn't go, and places you should.
Delly's is a youth club that welcomes you with a hug. A hug that smells of old curtains, Impulse, and sugary, hot bread. It's my home from home, a place where I can earn some cash, and a place I can hide out when I need to. Carmen, an ex-corporate hotshot, local girl done good, has ended up with too many surrogate kids to handle. She always keeps her door open. It doesn't stop everyone from ending up on the darker side of the street, but she gives up her heart hoping it makes the difference to their choice.
There are TVs and pool tables, jukeboxes and hot food. Its tuck shop, one I run to help out on slow days, is the draw of half the kids in here. That, and Delly's easygoing nature and eccentric personality.
I've half fallen asleep, head on arm, when familiar voices drift down the street into the open door.
Rose and Angie appear arm in arm, followed by Sam and Paul, with Ben and his mates straggling in at the rear. A pool tournament is to be tonight's entertainment. Angie and Rose hang back with me, chatting and stealing cola bottles and fizzy rings until my shift finishes.
"You gonna stay out for a bit?" Rose's tongue is green from apple sours.
I'm tired, but reluctant to go home yet. "Yeah, you wanna game?"
"Only if you let me win." She grins and bites a strawberry lace, pulling until it snaps.
"Ha, no chance."
I unhook a couple of cues from the wall. Working here has its advantages—unlimited sweets and use of the pool tables being one of them.
"Are you going to talk to Ben?" Angie asks as I lock up the shop and head down to the pool hall at the back of the building. I've lost count of how many nervous and giddy heart-fluttering kisses I've given away in its dark corners.
Ben, on the receiving end of lots of them, is still avoiding me, which is pissing me off. But not enough to call him out on it. "Nope. Not today."
Sam waves us over, a huge grin on his face, pointing at the 50 pence pieces lined up along the edge of the table. "Let's see what you've got, B."
I rack up the balls and chalk my cue, a habit that drives him mad with its repetition. "Any sign of Cullen?" I ask, taking extra care to get it lined up perfectly so I don't have to look at the way he's smirking at me. Sam is the only one who knows how much I've been hanging out with the new kid on the block. He loves shiny new things too much to care what his friends think.
"He said he might come around later, but that was before they decided to come along." He tips his head to the opposite side of the room where Ben is easily working his way to the top of the leaderboard.
It won't stop Cullen.
He arrives ten minutes later and makes a beeline for my table. He jumps up onto the benches that run around the room, sitting beside Sam. They're hidden in the darkness where the lights above the tables don't reach, but I catch him smiling every time I mess up a shot, which is a lot more than before he arrived.
Sam beats me for a pack of Astro Belts.
He offers Cullen a match, but he suggests Rose play. She's terrible, but the tips of Sam's ears flush red when she agrees.
I hand over my cue, and hop up on the bench alongside Cullen, forgetting for a moment that they don't know about me and him and whatever we are. It's an action which draws the attention of everyone here as if I've painted a bright red line down the middle of the room and stepped right over it.
I don't care. I'm drawn to his shadows. They feel like home.
We don't talk much. Just watch. I'm aware that Ben is beating everyone, his voice booming across the ceiling and down the walls. He's always been the best.
Cullen hasn't picked up a cue, either. I'm wondering whether he can play, when he jumps up and stalks over to the competition table, slamming his coin on the edge, a smile creasing his face. "Best of three?"
Ben laughs, but the knuckles wrapped around his cue are bone-white. My heart lurches out of the gate like a greyhound when Cullen's smile widens. He looks right at me and says, "Winner takes all?"
AN: Thank you xx