Right as he was about to send the shot, Connor said, “You didn’t used to be this hostile.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Yeah, okay, maybe. But you were good at darts.”
Ben had been good at a lot of things.
“I read this article about Tiger Woods,” he said, aiming. “Early in his career, he had some problem with his drive, so his coach made him take the whole thing apart and build it up from the ground level. He spent more than a year playing like complete garbage. None of the different parts of the swing were working in concert like they were supposed to. But then he pulled all the elements back together again, and it was magic. There was this click. The swing came back. He became Tiger Woods, you know? But even better.”
“Your point?”
“It’s a process,” Ben explained. “I’m evolving into the Tiger Woods of darts.”
“You don’t want to be Tiger Woods. Everybody hates him.”
“What, because of the adultery thing?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s still a great golfer.”
“Doesn’t matter. You need a better role model.”
“Fine. I’ll be the Jack Nicklaus of darts.”
Connor smiled. “That barely even makes sense.”
“That’s what you get for messing with my analogies.”
The analogy didn’t matter. The point wasn’t for Ben to get good at darts, it was for him to get better at life. To break his personality down to the raw elements and then recombine them for a less disastrous result.
“You going to shoot that thing or not?”
Ben threw it without aiming or thinking. The dart hit the very edge of the board and dropped to the floor. Connor shook his head, amazed. “Who was that blonde you were talking to?”
“What, at the bar?”
“Yeah.”
May. Her name was May. “She asked me about my book.”
“She looked kind of …”
Like a dairymaid in jeans. Brown eyes with golden lashes like wheat stubble. Milky skin. Freckles on her nose. “Kind of what?”
“Like she was having a bad day.”
She had. Uncomfortable, nervous, a little sad—way too pliable. She reminded him of three-quarters of the girls he’d gone to high school with, and she interested him not at all.
Except that when he’d told her Einarsson was a douche, the sour shape of her mouth had chastised him with all the force of a whip, and his heart had kicked in his chest, hard.
Then she’d blinked and turned innocuous again.
“Not my type.”
“No shit. She’s all soft. You spend a week filling in for Sam in the kitchen, and you look like you’re ready to take somebody’s head off. I’m surprised she even had the courage to talk to you.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“You’re worse. I bet you couldn’t be nice if you tried.”
Ben exhaled and threw another dart. When it lodged, quivering, in the floorboard, he felt like ripping it out and stepping on it, but he didn’t do it.
Progress. Even if it looked like failure.
He used to bulldoze his way through his days fueled by tension and aimless hostility. He’d wanted to be the best chef in New York. He hadn’t had a lot of time for darts, but on the rare occasion that he’d played, every missile had flown straight and true from his fingertips, like a bolt of sheared-off fury.
And that was great, except he’d also been a miserable bastard with stress-induced hypertension, insomnia, and a tendency to fly into unprovoked rages. He’d screamed at his kitchen staff and fought with his wife so much, they’d practically made an Olympic sport of it.
He didn’t blame Sandy for leaving him for greener pastures eighteen months ago. Hell, he would have left him, too, if he’d been able to figure out how. She’d done him a favor, delivering that wake-up call. Hey, Ben? You’ve turned into an unbearable asshole.
These days, he was learning how to keep a cool head. Even if it was hell on his dart game.
Ben inhaled, squinted, cocked, and let another dart fly. It hit the drywall to the left of the target.
Connor snorted. “When’s Alec back?”
“I’ve got a week.”
“You find another place to live yet?”
“No.”
“You even look?”
“Sure.”
Connor raised an eyebrow.
“Some.” If glancing at Craigslist for five minutes a week ago counted as looking.
Ben went through his whole routine—deep breath, focal point, directing his energy—and threw the last dart. This time, he managed to hit the target.
“Two points,” Connor said. “You’re setting the world on fire.”