Ash exhaled another little puff of laughter. “As it should be,” came her response to his implication. “If you turn out to be awful, then I’ll naturally assume that everyone else in this city is the same. I’ll be forced to move again, and god--” she overstated around a playful sigh, “--do I hate moving.” The truth was, not even the worst of experiences could have convinced her to leave so soon. She’d waited too long to be here, worked too hard; no way was she running back home with her tail caught between her legs.
His grin was met with one of her own, accompanied by a nod in the wake of his offer. “Yes, please. It’s probably my only chance at winning,” she confessed. Another half-truth; she hadn’t any inkling as to how skilled he was. Either way, she suffered no qualms with taking advantage of his offer. At least, as things stood, she could play poorly without risk of embarrassment.
Turning toward the windowsill, she downed the remaining contents of her drink - setting the glass down afterward with a soft clink and the sound of settling ice. She dried the condensation from her palm with a swipe of her hand against a bare thigh. Even with the faint, nearby breeze of outside air - or, perhaps, in spite of - Ash had begun to break a mild sweat. Her jacket needed to come off, and she took to mentally cursing her choice of costume anew. Fuck it, she thought; if she was going to be flashy, she’d do it with dignity. She stripped herself of her patent jacket, draping it over a stool that remained, mercifully, unoccupied. Her starry playsuit was markedly fitted - calling attention to the slimness of her waist, as well as the swell of curves below. It was modest, only in the sense that she was fully covered from neck to upper-thigh, with sleeves long enough to warrant the use of twin thumbholes.
‘Fake it ‘til you make it,’ had always been Aislin’s favorite aphorism; one that she had frequently proven effective within various trials in her life. Even now, she’d convinced herself she was hot shit as she practiced the maxim - returning to the blue-felted table in a way that suggested this was commonplace for her. Just an outfit. She took up the little square of chalk and smudged it over the tip of her cue, placing it upon one corner of the table thereafter. As she adjusted the location of the cue-ball behind the line, she asked, “Do you prefer to call shots, or keep it casual?” She would’ve chosen the latter, but she thought it only fair for him to decide - given that he’d yielded the break.
Curling her fingers over the felted edge of the table and arcing her thumb to serve as guide, Ash bent over her cue in a position that affirmed she was no novice. After a few experimentally tentative thrusts, she drove the tip home with a satisfying clack - sending the pyramid of balls scattering and ricocheting until two sunk. One stripe, and one solid.
