Ms. Francie sets the bottles and the nachos on the counter, and I settle up and carry everything back to the lane.
"Thank you," Molly says when I hand her the beer, and the way she tips it up and takes a long pull from the bottle while she's watching Bryan line up his shot might be the single most distracting thing I've seen all night, which is saying something given the last two hours.
We finish the first game with Molly and me ahead by a comfortable margin, which Lucy argues loudly and at length is not a fair reflection of her actual skill level. Bryan is gracious about it in the way of a teenage boy who is very motivated to be agreeable, and I respect the strategy even if I'm not going to say so out loud.
The second game is closer, and that's mostly because Molly and Lucy get into a conversation somewhere around the fifth frame that involves a lot of gesturing and laughing and not a lot of actually paying attention to whose turn it is. Bryan and I end up sitting together for a solid ten minutes while the two of them get whatever they're talking about fully out of their systems, and he asks me about Fish and Wildlife. I’m not sure if he really wants to know about it, or if he’s trying to make small talk, but I humor him.
"It's work," I tell him, and I mean it. "You spend time outside, you actually help people, and you're not stuck in a building all day."
He nods like he's filing that away somewhere, and then Lucy calls his name and he's gone, and I'm back to watching Molly set up her shot, and we're right back to where we started.
By the time we turn in our shoes and head back out to the truck, it's close to nine-thirty and the temperature has dropped another few degrees since we went in. Lucy is walking close enough to Bryan that their shoulders keep bumping, and when we pull up to his house, she turns to me with a look on her face that I know well enough to brace for.
"Give us a minute?" she asks, already opening the door.
"One minute, Luce."
She and Bryan hop out, and I watch them in the rearview mirror as they walk up toward the edge of the driveway. Molly shifts in the seat beside me and I can feel her trying not to smile.
"Don't," I say.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to say that it's sweet," she says, and her voice is so full of sweetness that I almost let it go. "She’s walking him to his door, and he talked to her every time they were waiting for their turn to bowl. That's a good sign."
I watch him lean in and give Lucy a quick kiss, and Lucy's hand comes up to his arm for just a second before she steps back, and something happens in my chest that I genuinely was not prepared for. It's not anger, and it's not quite protectiveness, though both of those things are in there somewhere. It's more like the distinct and sudden awareness that my little sister is growing up in real time and I don't have any say in the matter and never did.
"She's too young for this," I mutter.
"She's sixteen, not twelve."
"She's my little sister."
"And she's going to date people," Molly says, patiently. "The best thing you can do is be someone she feels comfortable talking to about it."
I drag a hand over my face. "I know that."
"I know you know it."
Lucy climbs back in, and she's grinning with bright eyes. I don't comment on it. I just pull out and head toward my parents' house.
"That was so fun," Lucy announces from the backseat. "We should do this every week."
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," I tell her, not looking forward to having to do this with my sister every week.
"You're just grumpy because we almost beat you in the second game."
"You didn't, though,” I argue, rolling my eyes up so that they meet hers in the rearview mirror.
"Almost," she repeats, like that counts for something.
I glance over at Molly, and she's got her elbow resting on the door and her chin in her hand, watching the road go by, and I have to physically redirect my attention back to where I'm going because the bowling alley did a number on me that I have not fully recovered from. Two hours of watching her bend and stretch and reach and laugh, close enough to touch and not able to do a damn thing about it, has left me in a state that I'm doing my best to keep contained.
The light's still on at my parents' place when I pull into the driveway, and Mom comes to the door when she hears the truck. She steps out onto the porch and waves, and Lucy is already out and heading up the steps before I've fully stopped. I roll the window down.
"Thanks for taking her," Mom calls, and then her eyes move from me to the passenger seat, and back to me again, and she gets this look. It's not a bad look. It's the look of a woman who has been waiting for something to happen and has just clocked that it might be happening. She raises one eyebrow, doesn't say a word, and then she smiles and ushers Lucy inside, and the door closes.