I was wearing clown shoes. Borrowed clown shoes. The last time I went bowling was probably in elementary school, and in all these years since, I hadn’t missed it. Not once in all that time had I woken up and thought to myself, you know what would be fun? Renting some weird, old ugly shoes and rolling a heavy ball down a waxed lane over and over again. And then paying money for the pleasure.

Rosie giggled at my bleak expression. “I’m sorry,” she said when I arched an eyebrow at her. “You obviously hate this already. Why didn’t you tell me you hated bowling?”

I shook my head at her. “I don’t hate bowling.”

I hated the very concept of bowling. But now that I was actually here in the bowling alley next to Rosie, it was hard to hate the experience of bowling. Getting a prostate exam might be a pleasant experience if Rosie was there (although, on second thought, probably not). She cocked her head to the side and I could tell she was trying to decide if she believed me.

Giving her time to figure me out was a bad idea, so I distracted her the best way I could think of: I kissed her. Not the sort of passionate, impulsive, invasive kiss that I’d given her this morning in my bedroom. Just a swift press of my lips on hers, but it did the trick. She flushed scarlet and gaped at me in an extremely satisfying way. Rosie’s roommate giggled at us both.

“Get a room,” Trina chirped.

Is that an option? I asked silently. Because it sounds a lot better than bowling.

“Aren’t they supposed to put up the things on the sides of the lanes?” I asked after a moment. I had the ball, and the horrible shoes, but something was missing.

“Bumpers?” It was Chris who replied. He smirked. “Bumpers are for kids, dude.”

“Oh. It’s been a while since I’ve been bowling.” My reply was sheepish. The last time I’d bowled, there had definitely been bumpers.

I had a feeling I was going to need the bumpers. I watched the bowlers in other lanes sending their balls cleanly down toward the pins in neat, efficient little lines, and winced internally. This might be embarrassing.

At least I probably wouldn’t be as bad as the little kid two lanes down who fell over the line face-first and set off some kind of alarm. He grinned and squealed at the attention he received, lolling around on the waxed floor until his mom scooped him up.

“Don’t worry,” Rosie said, grabbing my hand and reading my mind. “I’m a terrible bowler. It’s not about throwing strikes or winning. It’s just for fun.”

As one half of a pair of competitive brothers, I learned a long time ago that all games were, in fact, about winning. If you weren’t winning, you were losing by definition. Despite the hypercompetitive mumblings of my inner ten-year-old boy, I tried on a smile for Rosie’s sake and squeezed her soft little hand in mine. Above all, I wanted her to have a good time. The past few days had been really tough for her, and she deserved a nice night. Still…

“Prepare to be underwhelmed,” I announced. It was my first turn. I grabbed the ball, walked up to the line, and imitated the woman in the lane next to me. The ball rolled smoothly down the lane, and, impossibly, knocked the pins down. All of them. Wait… that was pretty easy.

“Nice strike!” someone in another lane said to me, dipping his head approvingly.

I turned to see my little party staring at me and clapping. Rosie gave me a kiss on the cheek when I sat down. I basked in the positive attention.

“I’m actually very impressed,” she told me. “That was really good.”

“Beginners luck,” I said modestly.

Ok, maybe this won’t be so bad.

“You shouldn’t be surprised. My brother’s always been excellent at playing with his balls,” a familiar voice interrupted.

Goddammit Ian.

“What, are you stalking me now?” I asked, flabbergasted. Ian shook his head, sending his too-long dark hair dancing around his face. Trina, Chris, and Rosie looked between us in confusion. They were nowhere near as confused as I was.

“Nope,” Ian replied with a big, bright, shit-eating grin on his face. “It’s just a particularly freakish coincidence. I’m here to bowl, just like you,” he replied. He pointed down a few lanes to where Jack Reese, the former keyboardist-slash-rhythm-guitarist for Axial Tilt was hanging out with Victoria Priestly. One of the backup singers for Victoria’s old band, Edelweiss, was there, too. Ada? Ida? I wasn’t sure what her name was.

I stared at him in disbelief. Freakish coincidence was right. Too freakish. Suspicious. My eyes narrowed, and Ian waved a hand. He seemed confused that I wasn’t happier.

“Maybe a little bird sent me a message that you might be here, but if anything,” he told me, “you’re the one acting out of character. Since when do you bowl?”

I glanced down at my watch. “Since approximately five minutes ago.”

“Hmm,” he replied. He looked around at Rosie and her friends. “Aren’t you going to introduce me? Or do I have to do it myself?”

I sighed. This was so not how I envisioned this meeting. It seemed like Calvin Ross had decided to reach out to Ian and engineer this on his own. How Ross knew that Rosie would be here tonight was a mystery, but I had a very good feeling that Ian’s little bird was Rosie’s meddling father. Unless Ian was actually stalking me. I couldn’t fully rule that out.

As frustrated as I was, politeness forced me not to say anything other than, “Rosie, Trina, Chris, this is my brother, Ian.”

“Hi Ian,” the three said in unison.

“Wow. It’s just like an AA meeting in here,” he quipped. He zeroed in on Rosie. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you Rosie,” he told her. “It’s great to meet you. I hear birthday congratulations are in order.”

She blinked at him, and then her eyes zipped back and forth between my face and his. “Hello and thank you. I’m a really big fan of Axial Tilt.”

He sighed dramatically. “Me too. Jason kicked me out before we ever got big. I was too drunk and disorderly to take on tour.”

It was funny how he glossed over the accident that killed Jen. I bit back a wave of familiar anger.

“J-Jason Kane?” Rosie was stuttering. The world-famous lead singer of Axial Tilt had been one of my best (read: most lucrative) clients. Now that he was contentedly raising a family and living a quiet, normal life (normal for him, at least), I was in trouble with the firm. Which was how Calvin Ross could blackmail me into getting in touch with his daughter to help fix her plumbing problems and then crush her dreams. Really, at the end of the day, all of this was Kane’s fault. I made a mental note to let him know.

Ian nodded, oblivious to my inner monologue, and then shrugged. “Yeah. Jason’s a real pain in the ass. Nice guy though.”

All three college students look appropriately in awe of my brother. “I can’t believe you know Jason Kane,” Trina said. The amazement in her voice was obvious.

“To be fair to my brother, Ryan probably knows him better than I do these days,” Ian replied, cuffing me on the shoulder. “We all used to be pretty tight back the day though.” I stared awkwardly back at him. This bowling alley interaction felt super-weird.

The problem with Ian, aside from the fact that he was too-clever and too-talented for his own good, was that he was objectively both better looking and more charming than me. Now that he was sober, all that charm no longer went to waste. Watching Ian interacting with Rosie made me feel weirdly territorial. Violently territorial. All of a sudden, I wanted to toss her over my shoulder, bang on my chest like King Kong, and climb the Empire State building in a jealous, ridiculous, childish rage.

Calm down Donkey Kong, I reminded myself. Ian’s just curious. Your dumb brother’s not after your girl.

The speed with which Rosie had become ‘my girl’ at least in my sordid mind, was astounding. All thoughts of exposing Rosie to Victoria and Ian to help her career fled. But with a concerned and focused effort, I fought down my primitive Cro-Magnon impulses. I didn’t beat my beat chest. Instead, I put another polite smile on my face.

“Well Ian,” I said as smoothly as I could, “it’s weird that you’re here, but, um, you’re definitely here. Nice seeing you. Let’s talk later.”

Ok, it wasn’t particularly smooth. That was more his thing. I was the smart one, not the smooth one.

“Don’t be silly,” Ian replied. “We should combine forces and have a real party. Let me go grab Victoria, Isla, and Jack.” Isla, that was her name. Ian paused. “Unless you don’t want to hang out?”

Ian was up to something. I frowned at him and he winked back at me. “It’s really up to Rosie. This is her birthday party you’re crashing.”

Ian turned his megawatt smile on Rosie. “Rosie, can I please crash your birthday party?”

Rosie’s eyes were a few lanes away. She was staring at the collection of famous people with an awed expression. “Sure,” she stuttered. “I’d love that.”