Eighteen
Tanya sent the ball a little too high and soft. Eddie was all over it and smashed it back.“ Game!” he shouted, as Tanya ducked.
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The instruction booklet for the dartboard sat on the workbench. Justin was leafing through the various games programmed into the unit.“ Do you know how to play?” he asked.“ It’ s how your mother and I met.”“ I thought you met at an ice house,” Nicole said.“ Your mom would not let any guy buy her a drink unless he could beat her at darts,” Eddie explained.“ That is because after they buy a couple drinks they think they own you for the night. Your father was the only one I let win consistently.”“ You didn’ t let me win,” Eddie protested.“ You’ re right dear,” Tanya said, winking at Nicole. Justin was up and turning on the game.“ I want to play Mom,” Justin said.“ All of us can play a game. It can take up to four players at a time. The most common is a count down game. The first to reach exactly zero, wins,” Tanya said.“ The boards height and toe line are regulation.” Eddie said, as Justin put his foot at the line.“ Looks awfully close,” he remarked. A smile crossed both Eddie and Tanya’ s faces.“ Ladies first,” Eddie said, offering the brightly colored projectiles. Tanya took her darts from their out of the way place. Nicole and Justin exchanged a glance.“ The skull and crossbones still mean, don’ t touch,” Tanya said, holding up her darts and showing the white markings on the black flights. She stepped to the line, tossed her darts quickly and precisely, walked to the board, removed her darts and hit the button for the next player. Nicole, Justin and Eddie followed. The children soon noticed they would need to practice. Tanya’ s score was sixteen. Eddie just hit double digits and the kids were still in triple digits when Tanya asked Justin to give her three numbers that added up to sixteen.“ Seven, eight and one,” he said. The thump, thump, thump came rapidly and the game announced player one the winner. Tanya put her darts in their case and carried them from the garage.
Eddie loved the look on his children’ s faces as they stood staring after her. He imagined it would be similar to finding out your father just won the world poker tour and you never saw him holding a deck of cards. He also had to admit to himself, she might have,‘ let him win’. He left the kids to practice and went in search of his“ little dart shark”.“ Impressive,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.“ Just lucky,” she said, with a huge smile.“ Speaking of lucky... If you bring the popcorn, I have the movie,” Eddie said, nodding toward the bedroom.“ Skip the popcorn. Bring the wine, while I tell the children it’ s been a long week, we are expecting company tomorrow and need our rest.”“ We definitely want to be at our best.”“ Definitely,” she said.
Tanya spent a great deal of time thinking about their encounter with Kate and decided any damage control was superseded by the fact she and Eddie made love two nights later. She still wanted to make sure and had made an appointment for them both to have blood tests.
The bottle of wine Eddie purchased as the unknown brand was not as he hoped. Tanya always liked his backup plan for such occasions. Pour the sub-par wine over ice, add 7-up, a twist of lime, a slice of orange and a cherry. The wine was never a