Mark and Cole play pool

Mark's POV:

I am playing pool on a green felt table in a quiet back room of the local sports bar. There are several televisions hung close to the ceiling all around the main room which make the bar very noisy. This is one of the many reasons why I like the Double Tap so much better than this bar. The biggest reason that I don't usually go to this bar is because this is not the hangout of my friends and I. I would not be here at all if I did not want to play pool. The main advantage to me being here is that all of the noise is helping me cope with how I lost Sadie's affections to Leah Myers who is another one of my friends. I think about how all of this transpired as my buddy and roommate Cole enters the room to hit me up for a game.

"How are you doing, Mark?" Cole wondered while giving me a morose look.

"I'm just clearing my head by playing some pool," I grumbled while running my right hand through my short brown hair.

"You okay?" Cole pressed.

"I'm as well as I can be, I guess," I murmured.

"I know that you must be hurting because Sadie picked Leah over you," Cole guessed.

"It hurt a little when I broke up with Amy, but I was able to bounce back quickly because she wasn't very nice. Sadie is different. It hurts a lot when one of the great ones turn you down."

"Sadie is of the great ones, but I think you may have dodged a bullet by having Leah wind up with her", Cole consoled me.

"What makes you say such a thing?" I insisted while raising my right eyebrow in shock.

"Have you seen Sereena today?" Cole asked me.

"No, why?" I had to know.

"I saw Sereena when I went to the gym where she works for an exercise session and she was standing behind her counter wearing an ugly black eye."

"Are you telling me that sweet lovable Sadie did that to Sereena?" I spat in disbelief.

"Apparently Rocky Balboa gets real wild while she is having a nightmare," Cole explained. "She thought she was punching Camilla but she accidentally hit her own roommate instead. One punch and she had Sereena on the floor with a TKO."

"Wow!" I whistled.

"See how you might have gotten lucky?" Cole teased while picking up a cue stick. "Leah is in the line of fire now."

"I guess," I sighed. "I just don't see why Sadie went for a woman. She always dated men while we were in college."

"Sadie made a list of all the things she needed in a significant other and Leah was the only one who had what she needed," Cole answered. "I don't think that she woke up one day and decided to be a lesbian."

"You are right," I gave in.

"You should have seen Brooke when she came down to take Sereena to lunch," Cole laughed. "Brooke was fussing over the poor thing like a mother hen. She kept pestering Sereena with makeup tips. I am pretty sure Sereena has never wore makeup in her life. It took every last bit of restraint that I had to keep from laughing my head off."

"Yeah, that does sound funny," I admitted. "Are you going to break or should I?"

"You did the honors last time so I should break this time," Cole insisted while looking for the best shot.

"Go for it," I caved in while waving my right hand at the table.

I can't say that I am into this game very much because my mind keeps wandering when Sadie and I played pool on the day after the Double Tap suffered some minor fire damage. Just to make things more interesting, we decided that the loser would perform a dare of the winner's choice. Sadie let out a noise that messed up one of my shots and I do not know if she did it on purpose or if she panicked. She beat me so I had to do one of her dares. I can't say that I was complaining because Sadie dared me to kiss her. I thought that I was making headway with her, but I think that Sadie was confused about having three people into her at once which caused her to test the waters of all three candidates. I can't say that I blame her. I might have done the same thing. I wish I could just get over Sadie, but it is going to take me a while. The only thing that I can do is congratulate Leah the next time I see her.