Page 205 of What We Bury

“Seriously?”

“Ex-cop. Real hard ass. Used to run interrogations for fun.”

Milo beams like a jackal. “This is fantastic. I was hoping for competition. Are there trash talk rules? Is cursing allowed?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” I ask, shooting him a look.

“I doubt it. I don’t think some of these people have ever heard the word fuck in public,” Micah says, nodding at an older lady wearing pearls.

“Gonna fix that,” Milo says.

The clubhouse door opens and Eli walks out. Beside me Micah stiffens.

Yeah. That about sums it up.

I watch him for the few seconds it takes to cross the grass, gauging his mood. His hair is shoved back like he’s been dragging a hand through it for an hour. Eyes too bright. He looks like he’s had a shit day on top of a restless night.

Good.

“Sorry I’m late,” he mutters, stopping beside me.

“You’re not late,” Milo says, bright as a struck match. “You’re fashionably on time. You’re skip. Go stand at the far end and look important.”

Eli glances at Micah who ignores him pointedly and finishes the rest of my beer.

Knox arrives. “This isn’t bowling,” he grumbles, glaring at the retirees.

“Correct, big guy,” Milo says, clapping him on the shoulder. “It’s lawn bowls and we’re about to dom-in-ate.”

I nudge Knox with my elbow. “Stop glaring. You’ll give someone a heart attack.”

He does, marginally.

The first end is the loudest end ever played in a sport built on calm and quiet. It’s one hundred percent Milo’s fault. He windsup like a pitcher, lets fly, and the wood curves out on its bias, misses the jack by a yard, and dribbles into the trench with a soft, finalplop.

“BALLS OF FURY, BABY!”

Thirty heads turn. The woman in the visor narrows her eyes the way you do when a toddler screams in a library.

He makes his way over to the ditch, staring down at the fallen wood. Placing a hand on his heart, he delivers a eulogy that vows vengeance.

The retirees appear at best amused, at worst utterly horrified.

That about sums up Milo.

Micah ends up being quietly, infuriatingly good—he sends three down that curl in to kiss the jack and doesn’t celebrate a single one, just walks back and sits and waits. I’m mediocre, managing to avoid any trips to the gutter.

Walt Brennan is not. The man is a shark. He lays three around the jack like he set them there by hand and smirks at me each time.

Yeah, yeah, laugh it up grandpa.

Knox doesn’t understand the game at all.

He grips the bowl and sends it down the green with enough force to qualify as assault. I wince in sympathy, then straighten as it curves late, clips one of Walt Brennan’s bowls, and somehow ends up inside the cluster near the jack.

Milo loses his mind.

“YES! SMASH THE RETIREES! BREAK THE PATRIARCHY!”