Story: The One You're With - part 5

The One You're With

by Varian Milagro

Part 5

It was Lance's turn to break, which meant that she needed him to end his turn as quickly as possible. If he sank too many balls then it would make it way too easy for his partner to win the game. While Rachel was fairly confident that she could sink one or two balls, making all of them without missing was asking a lot. If Lance was able to sink even three balls that would leave five for Jackson. Even if he wasn’t able to win at that point, Cody would have to leave the eight on the table which would mean that Lance would get a second turn. That meant that she had to figure out a way to stop her opponents from sinking eight balls over three turns. That wasn’t going to be easy.

She had an ace up her sleeve when it came to Lance, but she was hoping to save it for an emergency. While she'd been able to distract him by smoking in the last game she wasn't entirely sure it would work again and it would be even less likely to work twice in the same game. She was hoping that all the skills she'd acquired thanks to Cody turning her into a professional smoker would be enough to make him miss one more time.

Lance didn't cooperate and she was about to pull out her only weapon when he finally missed when trying to bank the 14 ball into the side pocket. He'd done a lot of damage though. Only three striped balls remained on the table which meant that if her opponents both sank two balls on their following turns she’d lose the game, the match and any hope for her daughter.

She managed to make two balls, the six and the seven, before missing the one. Her skill had improved dramatically during the evening and knowing how to put spin on the ball really helped when it came to lining up her next shot. Unfortunately she still didn't know how to make bank shots or combinations.

Jackson was looking entirely too pleased with himself. He knew, like everyone else, that sinking the three remaining striped balls would be relatively easy for him. By removing two of the solid colored balls, she'd actually made things easier for him. She probably should have missed on her first shot. There would have been more balls acting as potential obstacles. Much like last game she found herself wishing that she had a way to make him miss like she'd had with Lance. 

An idea came to her almost instantly. She kicked herself for not thinking of it earlier. It was so obvious. Play off his jealousy.

Gabi wasn’t the only one who knew how to dance. Being twins, their mom had taken them both to dance class starting at an early age. Being a professional dancer herself, it was only natural that she wanted her little girls to follow in her footsteps. They were both a disappointment to her. Gabi went too far and became a stripper and Rachel didn’t go far enough having become a banker. Rachel had received a few personal lessons from her twin sister. While dancing in a strip club hadn’t interested her, learning how to dance erotically for a lover certainly did. She’d put on special shows for boyfriends and a few one night stands, but never in public, not until now. 

While Jackson was chalking his cue stick she sauntered over to Lance and asked him for a light. She bent over real low, giving him a wonderful view of her tits. She cast a glance over at Jackson to see if it was working. His face was beet red, which is exactly what she’d been hoping for. She started swaying to the music. “Black Betty” by Ram Jam was playing over the tavern's sound system. She danced close enough to Lance so that he could touch her if he so desired, but kept her body positioned in a way that Jackson couldn’t actually see his partner. She didn’t want him looking at Lance anyway. She wanted his eyes on her and full of jealousy. Whenever she sensed him looking away she would bend forward and shake her ass at him. 

“Do I have to call a clock on you?” Cody said to Jackson eventually.

“You seeing this shit?” Jackson growled. “She’s doing that on purpose.”

“No dancing while he’s taking his shot,” Cody said.

Rachel stopped immediately and then turned around so that she was facing the table.

“Satisfied?” Cody glared at Jackson. “Now, take your shot or forfeit the game.”

Just as Jackson turned and bent over the table, Rachel let out a high-pitched squeal. “Don’t pinch so hard, Lance. I’m really tender in that area” She spun around and then slapped his arm lightly. “At least buy a girl a drink first.”

If Jackson had been a cartoon character he'd have had steam shooting from his ears.

Lance held up his hands. “I didn’t do anything, I swear.”

Jackson hit the next shot so hard that the ball flew off the table and almost hit one of the players at the next pool table. He then stormed off toward the bathrooms. 

Cody cleared all of their balls on his turn, only the eight and three striped balls remained on the table and all of them looked like fairly easy shots to make. Sure enough, Lance sank the first two balls with little difficulty. While he was walking around the table to take a shot at the fifteen, she lit up a new cigarette and made sure that he saw her doing a French inhale. It was pretty obvious that he was trying to not look at her, but he couldn’t help himself. Just as he was about to make his shot she blew a smoke ring and then sent another directly through it. He managed to send the cue ball into his target, but it struck a bumper instead of the bottom of the pocket.. 

She blew him a smokey kiss and then easily pocketed the eight ball, winning her third straight game.

As she rejoined her partner she shed a few more years while her attraction for Cody skyrocketed. She was still attracted to both of her opponents, but they’d been eclipsed by the young man raising from his seat to congratulate her on the win. This time he gave her a hug that she never wanted to end.

Her history was rewritten once again. Now she was a professional dancer, just like her older sister. Being four years older and so talented at dancing, Rachel had naturally looked up to Gabi as she grew up and inevitably followed her into a life of stripping. They’d danced together more than once at Phantasia. The crowd there got off on sisters dancing together, especially when they caressed each other. It rained dollar bills. She’d still gotten a job at a bank, but after five years she was still just a teller.

She didn’t even want to think about the age difference between her and Paige. She still considered herself to be her mother even though that was quite impossible. She took solace in the knowledge that she only had to win one more game and she’d be able to put things back to normal. That’s what Terrance had promised and she clung to it.

It was once again Rachel's turn to break. She let Cody rack the balls for her. She chalked the tip of her cue stick and then lit a cigarette. She found that she liked having the comfort of a smoke while playing pool. She'd learned so much about the game in such a short time. She'd picked up a few skills, met someone who she was really into and learned a lot about the mental aspect of the game. Yet, there was so much more to learn. It made her wonder how good she could have been if she'd started playing sooner in life. She doubted that she'd ever be as good as Cody, no matter how much she practiced. That took a lot of natural skill. He was obviously gifted when it came to the game. She wished she had that kind of talent.

She made the break and actually hit the one ball this time. She hit it with enough force that the balls scattered all about the table and the three ball fell into one of the corner pockets. That meant she got to take another turn. When she looked at the balls strewn about the table she saw them with new eyes. Combo shots and bank shots weren't that hard. It was all about using the correct angles. It was about making a plan, seeing the path. It wasn't just about shooting a ball into a pocket, it was about making that shot while lining up your next shot and knowing how you were going to line up the shot after that. It wasn't that difficult really. 

The difficult thing would be sinking seven more balls in a row and not let on that she knew what she was doing. If she suddenly ran the table, Jackson and Lance would think that they'd been set up. In a way they had been, not by her or Cody, but by Terrance. He had a thing about fakes and posers and she'd been one when she'd walked into this bar with her sister, but no longer. She belonged in this bar and especially at this pool table just as much as any of the three guys.

Luckily they were only calling shots on the eight. As long as the cue ball struck one of her own balls first and one of her balls ended up in a pocket she got to go again. It didn’t have to be pretty, in fact the uglier the shot the easier it would be to sell it as a fluke, a bit of beginner’s luck.

When she sent the two ball into the five which then knocked the four into the side pocket the three men were astonished. Both Lance and Cody congratulated her. Jackson scowled. When she did something similar and the five fell into the corner pocket Lance’s expression mirrored his partner’s. When she banked the one into the far pocket they’d had enough.

Jackson bolted from his chair. "She's a goddamn ringer!"

Rachel put on her best innocent face. "What's a ringer?"

"What the fuck is going on here?" Lance said, slowly rising to his feet.

"You do remember that you're the ones who picked her as my partner," Cody said as he moved between Rachel and the two men.

"You two cooked something up. She acts like she doesn't even know how to hold a cue and now she's sinking combos?" Jackson's fists were balled and his lips curved into a snarl.

"You lost the first four games so you could sucker us into betting big on the next four," Lance said. 

Rachel shrugged. "I'm just a quick learner, what can I say?"

Cody shot her a quick scowl. She knew that she was only making things worse by provoking her opponents, but she couldn't help herself. Despite her attraction to them, they still disgusted her in their own special way. Lance got off on hurting women during sex and Jackson was an asshole through and through.

"Well, there's no way we're paying," Jackson said. 

"Let's finish the game at least. We can sort out who's not going to pay who at the end of this game," Cody said. "You still might win this game after all."

"Not a fucking chance," Rachel mumbled to herself, not loud enough for anyone but Cody to hear. Now that they knew she could play she might as well drop the pretense.

She used her nearly spent cigarette to light another and then pocketed the two ball and then the seven and finally the six. As she lined up on the eight Jackson advanced on the table.

"This is bullshit!" Jackson yanked the stick out of her hands.

Shel walked over to the rack that held all the house sticks and picked out a new one. As she returned Jackson moved to block her path.

"Move," she said.

"You can't sink the eight. If you do you lose."

"Move!" She blew smoke into his face

"You bitch!" he said between coughs.

"Back off and let her finish," Cody said as he tried to get between them. "The rule on the eight ball was for me, remember?"

Lance grabbed Jackson's shoulder. "Now's not the time."

When Jackson still refused to budge, she moved over to the other side of the table, turned so that she was facing the wrong way and then proceeded to shoot the cue ball from behind her back. The cue ball bounced off three rails before finally hitting the eight and sending it toward the corner pocket. 

As the ball dropped, giving her the win, she said, “Pay up loser” and then flicked her cigarette into Jackson's chest where it exploded into a thousand sparks.

Jackson rushed toward Rachel while Lance moved to cut off Cody from coming to her aid. At the same time she once again found herself getting younger, which really wasn’t much of a surprise at this point. She was now only three years older than her daughter and one year younger than Cody. She was of legal drinking age, but barely. 

As she raced to keep as much felt between her and her opponent as possible her new reality settled. Gabi was her half-sister again and nearly eight years older. Her mom’s name was Yolanda, her dad’s third and current wife. For some reason in this reality, he’d never met Rita so she’d been raised by both her mom and dad. Maybe it had something to do with how much time she and her dad had spent together while she was still a child. They spent many hours together playing pool. She caught on quickly and by the time she was nine years old she could beat all of her dad’s friends easily. They would put money on it and her dad gave her a cut. Some of them became quite furious when they learned that they’d been hustled by a girl in grade school. 

“You hustled me, you whore!” Jackson yelled as he made a lunge for her.

While Rachel had youth on her side and was able to keep her distance from him for the most part, she didn’t know for how long. If he managed to catch hold of her he was likely to do permanent damage to her. It wasn’t like anyone was rushing to her defense.

People had noticed the commotion in the main part of the tavern and had come to investigate, but the other pool players had made a wall and weren't letting anyone in the room. They’d probably lost money to a hustler in the past and weren't about to defend one of them.

It was strange, men had no problem literally throwing money at her when she was on stage, or giving her their credit card numbers to smoke a few cigarettes, but they got down right annoyed when she took it from them at the pool table. Some of them even got physical when they realized that they’d been had by a pro, especially a woman. Men like Jackson.

Lance had Cody in a neck hold and squeezed anytime her partner tried to break free. She was on her own. Any moment Jackson would tire of trying to catch her by going around the table and he’d leap over it. If he caught a hold of her it was all over. She really wished she knew how to defend herself.

Her past changed again. In addition to her lessons in pool, dance classes and private schooling, her dad had also paid to have her trained in several different methods of self-defense, Krav Maga, Taekwondo, Karate, to name a few.

She stopped fleeing from Jackson. As he came rushing at her she adjusted her stance to counter his assault. As he reached her she went low and swept his legs out from under him, sending him crashing into the wall. She was on top of him in a flash, wrapping her legs around him, pulling his arm back into an arm bar, a painful submission hold. If he did anything she didn't like she could snap his arm at the elbow with only a little extra force.

"Let him go," Lance said from behind her.

At first she didn't respond, but then she felt cold, sharp metal touch her neck just below her right ear. Lance pushed until the tip of the knife broke her skin. A drop of warm blood ran down and over her breast. She didn’t let go. She didn’t think him the type who’d murder someone in front of a hundred witnesses, even if most of them were too drunk to walk without aid.

“He gives me the keys or I break his fucking arm at the elbow.” She spat in Jackson’s face. “You’ll never play pool or hit a woman with that arm again.”

“Let’s everyone settle down,” Cody said as he edged his way to the side of Lance. He still had his pool cue in his hand. “There is absolutely no need for violence. You don’t want to go to jail, now do you Lance? Spend your life rotting in a jail cell? And for what? Jackson’s car?” 

Lance’s eyes scanned the area. They were the center of attention for at least twenty percent of the bar. Uncertainty crept into his face.

“Just let go of the knife and we’ll talk this thing out,” Cody said.

"Drop that fucking knife or I drop you," Gabi said, followed by the sound of a firearm being cocked. "That's my little sister you fucking pervert."

“Great.” Cody’s face tightened, but he didn’t look away from Lance.

Rachel looked over to see her sister holding a handgun the size of a small cannon pointed at Lance’s head. She was surprised that she could hold it upright even with two hands. The thing must weigh a ton. Gabi's appearance had changed once again. Tattoos covered much of her arms. Her basketball sized tits were spilling out of black halter top which went well with the leather pants and black motorcycle boots she wore. 

Lance slowly pulled the knife away from Rachel’s jugular. 

“Now drop it,” Gabi yelled. Bull stood right beside her, a sawed off shotgun in his hand, pointed toward the floor.

Before he could do as instructed, Paige smashed a full pitcher into his temple, showing everyone within ten feet with beer and glass. 

As Lance slumped to his side, Bull hurried over and stood over him, a foot planted firmly in his chest. 

Rachel pulled on Jackson’s arm, making him scream. “Pay up loser.”

Gabi now had her gun trained on him while Paige threatened with the jagged remains of the pitcher.

Jackson slipped the keys to his Camaro out of his pocket with his free hand. “It’s yours.”

Rachel let go of Jackson and then snatched the keys from his hand. “I’ll get the title from you tomorrow.”

“And you’re not going to give her any hassle are you?” Gabi still had the gun pointed at him. 

“If you do, your next visit will be from me and my crew,” Bull said. “You renege on The Lords of Chaos or any of their friends and you won’t live to regret it.”

A small, balding man framed by two burly guys arrived a moment later. He had the air of someone on a mission. “Throw those two out.” He pointed to Lance and Jackson. “They’re 86’d for the night. If they give you any grief they’re banned for the month.” Addressing no one in particular, he added, “I’ll put up with a lot of things in my club, but welching on a bet ain’t one of them.” He thrust out a finger toward Paige. “You owe me one pitcher. I’ll take it out of tonight’s wages.”

“Yeah, about that. I quit.” Paige removed a cigarette from behind her ear and stuck it in her mouth. “Anyone got a light?” 

Rachel was a little surprised that her daughter hadn’t changed all that much since she’d last seen her. Maybe it had something to do with there being only a couple of years difference between their ages. It wasn’t really possible for them to be mother and daughter so maybe the whole apple doesn’t fall far from the tree thing was no longer in effect. 

As the two bouncers yanked Jackson and Lance to their feet, Cody rushed over and pulled Rachel into a tight embrace. They kissed for only a few seconds before she pulled her lips away. He was happy to see that she was smiling from ear to ear. 

“Oh my god, that was so exciting!” Rachel said. “Is it like that every time you play pool?”

“No, that was all you, gorgeous.” He gazed at her with wonderment in his eyes. “I normally try to be a bit more subtle when I take down an opponent, but I’ve never had a partner quite like you, either.” 

“Sorry about that. He kind of pissed me off.” She held out the car keys. “I guess you’re the owner of a Camaro now.”

“It’s yours.”

“Really?” She kissed him again. He returned it with a fierce passion. They probably would have continued making out, despite having an audience, but Paige interrupted them by taping Rachel’s shoulder, repeatedly.

“How are you my mom? We’re like almost the same age.” Paige said. “Nothing has made sense to me all evening. I don’t remember ever smoking before, but tonight I need one every half hour. And when did I get these?” She motioned toward her D cups. 

Rachel held out her hand for her daughter’s cigarette. “It’s hard to explain, but it’s only temporary.” She took a long drag and then gave the cigarette back.

“What are you two even talking about?” Gabi said. “Neither one of you are making much in the way of sense.”

“Everything will go back to normal real soon,” Rachel said as she scanned the crowd for Terrance. Now that all the excitement was over, most of the customers had dispersed back to their tables. “I thought he would have shown up by now.”

"Who'd show up?" Paige said, perplexed.

"What in the fuck are you talking about?" Gabi said. She was starting to look quite annoyed.

Rachel was about to respond when she found that she was no longer in the tavern. She was in a luxury apartment or penthouse suite in a high-end hotel. City lights gleamed through the floor to ceiling windows and it was clear that the room was very high off the ground. At first Rachel thought she was in Paris because she could see the Eiffel Tower, but then she realized that she was, in fact, in a hotel on the Vegas strip. Judging by the angle and distance of the tower she guessed that they were in one of the Sky Suites at the Aria.

“What the fuck just happened,” Cody said as he scanned the large hotel suite, his eyes wide with wonder.

The story continues with Part 6