The Quest for Epic

Chapter sixteen

"Because..." the look he gave me chilled me right to the marrow "You don't look at him the way you looked at me that night at the concert".

Oh my. My cheeks were on fire.

How was he capable of turning me into such a hot mess by just opening his mouth?

"How dare you, Noah? How dare you even bring that up again when I have to look at your girlfriend who is really nice by the way, knowing that I kissed her boyfriend? Do you know how guilty that makes me feel?"

"It wasn't your fault, Ellenore. I'm sorry I shouldn't have said that"

"Please, this is bad enough as it is. Can we just try to get through this evening?"

Noah nodded. "Yeah, of course"

I didn't notice how close we had drawn to each other during the course of our discussion till Shannon appeared.

"I'm back! You wouldn't believe the line to the bathroom".

We took a few much needed steps away from each other and turned to face Shannon. Her smile dimmed just a little as she looked between Noah and me.

"Hope I didn't miss anything?"

The clerk took that moment to return with the shoes.

"Just rented some shoes", Noah said, taking hers and handing them over to her "Let's go put them on"

We all changed into our shoes and Rob finally returned with his and joined us. We made our way to the bowling rink, Rob and Noah chose a lane and I entered our names into the computer. It was going to be a couple versus couple game, as suggested by Shannon and seconded by Rob.

About twenty minutes into the game, Rob and I were leading. I wasn't the greatest bowler in the world but Shannon was downright awful. Anytime she bowled and her ball fell into the gutter, she would just laugh and tell us how her only athletic skill was speed texting. But she was having so much fun and her energy was so infectious, you couldn't help but laugh along with her. I would probably be having fun too, if Rob wasn't grilling me so hard on bowling techniques and hounding on me to concentrate.

Noah was damn near perfect at bowling, as he was at everything and his strikes made up a bit for Shannon's bad game. Rob was good too, but I got the feeling he was getting pissed by Noah's skill and kept trying to out-bowl him.

Finally, it was the last round and it was up to me to secure the win for team Rob and Ellie. I stood up from the bench, Shannon cheering me on and offering some girl power while leaning on Noah, whose eyes flickered to me every now and then.

I picked up my hot pink ball and waited for the pin setting machine to finish setting up the next cycle of pins. Rob came to my side, his olive skin looking a little flushed as he gave a pep talk.

"Alright, so Ellie concentrate hard on the middle pins okay? Just imagine your ball going right through there and make it happen, we really need a strike on this one"

I simply nodded. He looked a bit too agitated for a simple game of bowling.

He walked away and I took my stance, running forward and then letting go of the ball in an angle that I was sure would secure me a strike.

The bowling ball crashed through a series of pins, and they all fell to the floor leaving two standing stubbornly upright at the far right of the lane.

Darn, I could almost hear Rob curse in the distance. How was I going to make this shot without my ball rolling into the gutter?

I bit my lip waiting for my ball to come up again and trying to analyze the perfect angle, when suddenly Noah stood and jogged up to me.