Robin Wasserman - Envy

She didn’t know the half of it.

“I just ran into Kane and Beth at the coffee shop,” she continued, “and figured you might need someone to play with.”

Adam’s stomach clenched, but he forced himself to ignore it. He also forced himself-and it took a significant mental and physical effort-not to request any details. So what if his girlfriend and his best friend were getting cozy over coffee while he played couch potato?

“She’s tutoring him for the SATs,” Adam explained gruffly.

“I heard that,” Harper said in a perky voice. “It’s so nice of her-I know how busy she always is. It’s great that she made the time for him.”

Drive the knife in a little deeper, why don’t you , he thought, but struggled to keep his irritation in check. After all it’s not like any of this was Harper’s fault.

“You know Beth,” he offered half-heartedly.

“She just can’t say no,” Harper agreed.

Interesting choice of words , Adam mused. Lately, it seemed that “no” was the only word in Beth’s vocabulary. At least when it came to him. When it came to the questions that counted.

But that, too, wasn’t Harper’s fault.

“So I’m bored,” he admitted. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Funny you should ask…”

Freshly showered and changed from his ratty Lakers shirt and boxers into jeans and a slightly less ratty Red Sox shirt, Adam met Harper in his driveway, and they drove to the 8 Ball, a pool hall on the outskirts of town. The place was reliably empty on a Sunday afternoon, except for a few die-hard pool sharks and a deathly pale, spiky haired bartender with a thick snake tattoo coiled around the length of his right arm. He waved at Harper as she came in, and Harper grinned back, giving him a sly wink.

“You know that guy?” Adam asked. But she’d already left his side, flitting over to the bar to order them a pitcher of beer. With a bemused shrug, he followed behind and slid into a seat at the bar next to her as she poured them both a mug of Pabst. It was crap, but it was also five dollars a pitcher-three on Sunday afternoons. The large wooden sign on the wall read CONSERVE WATER: DRINK BEER-and Adam was only too happy to oblige.

“So, you come here often?” he asked Harper, leering as if it were a pickup line.

“I get around,” Harper, reminded him. Like everyone else she knew, Harper had a fake ID-not that you needed one in a place like Grace. It was one of those towns where everyone knew everyone else-which meant every bartender in town knew Harper and her friends were underage. Fortunately, it was also one of those towns where none of them cared.

“I just had no idea this was your kind of place,” he admitted, raising his glass to her (once he’d managed to peel it off the mysteriously sticky tabletop).

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” she pointed out, laughing. She downed her beer, then leaped up and tugged him toward one of the pool tables. “Come on, hotshot, time to show me your moves.”

“I don’t know…,” Adam hedged. Harper in competitive high gear wasn’t a pleasant sight to see. (After losing a close game of Monopoly in third grade, she’d accused him of cheating, then stuffed two game pieces-the metal thimble and top hat-up his nose.)

“I’ll go easy on you,” she promised. “What-are you afraid of losing to a girl? Chicken?” She started clucking and flapping her arms, and soon the couple next to them-Adam assumed it was a couple, though he couldn’t tell the man from the woman-turned to stare.

“Enough, woman!” he roared in mock anger, throwing his arms around her from behind in a tight bear hug. “You asked for it.” He lifted her off the ground easily and carried her over to one of the pool tables. She squealed and kicked her feet in the air, but it was no use.

“I’ll only let go if you promise to behave,” he warned her, depositing her in front of one of the tables.

“As if I’d ever promise to do that,” she giggled, and despite the fact that her arms were pinned to her sides, she began to tickle him-after years of practice, she knew exactly the right spots. Adam shivered with laughter and let go immediately, backing away. She smacked him affectionately on the butt and grabbed a pool cue.

“Enough playing around, mister. Let’s get down to business.”

Harper leaned over the pool table, drew the cue back, and, in a single, graceful sweep, knocked it into the cue ball, hitting it dead center. She paused, her chest grazing the soft green felt, her ass only a few inches away from Adam, who hovered behind her waiting for the shot and, she hoped, admiring the way she filled out her dark, snug jeans. The cue ball slammed into the eight ball and sent it skidding across the table into the far corner pocket, exactly as she’d planned.

Victory!

She spun to face Adam, who shook his head in rueful defeat.

“I give up, Harper,” he said, throwing his arms up in surrender. “Three games in a row? You’re clearly a better man than I.”

“Let’s not forget the two darts games in the middle,” Harper pointed out. One of the things she loved about Adam was that he knew how to lose (of course, another thing she loved was that it was a skill he didn’t need to use very often). “What can I say? I came, I saw, I conquered.” And this was different from the rest of her life how? “You came close in that last game,” she conceded, softening a bit.

“Yeah, real close,” Adam said sarcastically, rolling one of his striped balls into a corner pocket. There were still four left on the table.

“What? Can I help it that I’m a natural?” Harper asked with a grin.

“Yeah, yeah, come on, champ-let me buy you a victory drink before I take you home.”

He grabbed her hand and led her to the bar, and Harper took a deep breath, glad he was a step ahead and couldn’t see the way her face lit up at the touch of his fingers on hers. They’d had such a long, amazing afternoon, laughing and bickering and horsing around. Not flirting-for how could you flirt with someone you’d known your whole life? Flirting required some air of mystery, the sense that you were hiding more than you were revealing, the possibility that a look, a word, a touch all meant more than you were willing to admit. With Adam, everything was transparent, every move anticipated and understood.

Not that she didn’t have her secrets, of course. There was the small fact that she was hopelessly in love with him. The smaller fact that she was conspiring to send his girlfriend into the arms of another guy.

But when they were together, and things were going well, stuff like that disappeared. It was like she could stop hiding, stop strategizing, stop anticipating, and just be . Not “be herself,” because who was the “real” Harper Grace after all? Who knew? Who cared? No, with Adam, she didn’t have to worry about being herself-but she didn’t have to be someone else, either, like she did for the losers at school. Being popular was like a 24/7 game of Let’s Pretend. It didn’t matter to them who she really was-all that mattered was who she needed to be. Who she appeared to be.

With Adam, it was different. She was different. She was, they were, Harper-and-Adam, a seamless organism different and somehow better than either one alone. And there were times, when she caught a look in his eye or felt the comfortable weight of his arm around her waist, that she knew he felt it too. She could read him like that. Completely.

They were, thus, way beyond flirting.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Chip, the scrawny bartender-cum-bouncer-cum-heavy-metal-wannabe-boy-toy grinning at her from behind the scratched-up bar. Chip was cute enough, and useful-one of the reasons she’d gotten so good at pool was that Chip could always be counted on for a few free drinks, making the 8 Ball a perfect late-night pit stop. Once, in a fit of alcoholic gratitude, she’d even agreed to a date. Big mistake. Now he couldn’t stop leering at her, and unless she wanted to start paying for her beer, she couldn’t afford not to flirt back. Besides, how painful could unadulterated adoration be? And if Adam happened to notice how easily she could turn a guy on? Well, so much the better.