"You could be my someone, you could be my scene."

My fingertips graze the green felt. I bend over, contorting myself into a yoga pose of sorts to be at eye level with the cue ball. A pool stick guided by my right hand balances gently on the fingers of my left hand. I admire my stance, my gray nail polish, and the familiar pink diamond on my middle finger. In an instant, my background figuratively changes. No longer am I in the upstairs of a small, dark pool hall with ten tables -- standing at a random one in the center of the room -- across from a jukebox playing random rhythm and blues music. Instead, I’m in the far back corner of a large warehouse-sized room with an abundance of pool tables. A plush red carpet is beneath my feet, neon red lights along the walls compete with ambient mood lighting from above and throughout the room. Plumes of smoke mix with the stale manufactured cool air. A grunge rock band, rhythmic hip-hop tune, or country song blasts from this jukebox. He watches me shoot the ball.

I sink it and stand upright. I catch his expression -- impressed or surprised. My emotions match his. We play for hours, flirting, talking, and being twenty-something year-olds with little care in the world. I spend my days as a green reporter making mistakes. He, as a sometimes-local community college student, other times employee at a random job, and many times, a vagabond living with his mother in a two-bedroom apartment. He dresses in baggy jeans, old sneakers, and an equally aged t-shirt, often sporting holes. He wears hard plastic framed glasses with rectangular lenses over his dark eyes. They complement his black hair and goofy smile.

Friday nights belong to us. Rounds of Bud Light sit on the circular high table. Our favorite waitress – a twenty-something Black girl wearing a short black skirt with a matching pocketed apron, pantyhose with white sneakers, a long-sleeved pressed white tuxedo shirt, and red bow tie – stops by carrying two fresh beers on her round tray. She replaces the old bottles with the news ones and makes a snarky comment about the manager on shift. Or, she add tidbits about the other regular patrons, most of whom are thirty-something Latinos, likely blue-collar workers. Sometimes, she is joined by other servers and we create our own gossipy clique. Other times, she puts down her tray and practices shots with me, showing me exactly where to hit the ball and how hard. I perfect several attempts, developing a love for certain moves. We laugh, dance, sing, and play the standard Eight-ball pool for hours on end.

My mind slowly returns to present day. The images of my favorite pool hall fade. I am no longer in McAllen, Texas, with palm trees in the parking lot and winters that never truly get cold, but in Western Massachusetts, where the outside temperature is dropping from the November day’s unusually warm digits. I make a shot in the joint, absent of air conditioning, plumes of cigarette smoke, or a Puddle of Mudd song blasting from the jukebox. I look for him, a tall Latino man who is an oddity as he doesn’t speak the language and barely understands it. I wait for him to crack a joke and pretend he's being hustled, mock surprise, or praise my move. I look for her to join me in a dance of victory. Instead, I see a different man, my partner of eight years, in jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt. His face is unshaven. His hair is dark and he doesn’t wear glasses. He’s not Latino, but Asian. He looks at me without expression, just sort of shrugs his shoulders, not understanding the memory playing out in my mind. He brushes against me and pecks me on the lips, but he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know this part of me. This is only the second time we’ve played Eight-ball together.

As we continue our game, I wonder about her - what happened to her? Where did she end up? What does she do now? Him, I know that answer and I almost wish I didn’t. He, who was three years younger than me, died of brain cancer several years ago. Yet, he still remains a goofy twenty-two in my memories.