RJ was distracted and he hated it. He was a betting man with not a dollar on this game. Ian apparently hadn’t played in years, and insisted this would ‘jog his memory’. MacReady, eventually, got impatient with the man for asking him so many questions that he took it upon himself to guide his hands. He remembered teaching him to shoot a gun. It felt like that again, and it made RJ’s stomach twist, a feeling he was used to ignoring, and he attributed it to his lack of dinner. He reminded himself they were still extremely public, and tried to keep that in mind through his mild haze.
“You’re holding it stupid,” MacReady grumbled, scratching his arm. He wasn’t bored, he was nauseas, needed to fixate on this game if it would ever progress.
“Thank you for that observation,” Ian snorted, glasses sliding on his face slightly with the crinkle of his laugh.
“You’re still-” RJ grabbed the cue without thinking, and a surprised look passed over Ian’s face. For a moment, he wondered if he had upset the man, a striking thought. Fuzzily, he remembered in particular gut detail how it felt to yell at the man. Some of him felt guilty when it welled up to his voice, like an electrical surge. He expected something combative or angry back, wanted it like an excuse for his own short temper.
Instead Ian laughed, slightly, if delayed. “Isn’t the point that I use my own cue?”
He breathed out. “I’m showing you.”
Chapter 2 of A Helicopter Pilot and a Mathematician Walk Into A Bar
