Truly

Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Ben Hausman took a deep breath, quieting his body and his mind.

He thought of the farm. The view of Lake Superior from the roof of the chicken house, flat and deep blue, stretching away until it fell off the end of the world.

Calm.

Lifting his arm, he bent it and directed all his energy toward the target on the wall. On an exhale, he cocked and flung the dart.

It hit the outermost ring of the target at an angle, bounced, and fell to the floor.

“Dude, you suck at darts,” Connor said from his perch on the arm of the bar’s ratty couch. “Give up. I’ll play you at pinball.”

“Bite me.”

Connor shook his head with a grin. “It’s Tron.”

“What’s Tron?”

“The pinball. They changed it. Didn’t you see? It’s Tron now.”

“Tempting, but I’ll pass.”

“What are you so worked up about?”

“I’m not worked up.”

“Your neck just disappeared.”

Ben blew out a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. Fuck. The whole point of playing darts was to practice not being tense. He refocused on his technique.

Right as he was about to send the shot, Connor said, “You didn’t used to be this hostile.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe. But you were good at darts.”

Ben had been good at a lot of things.

“I read this article about Tiger Woods,” he said, aiming. “Early in his career, he had some problem with his drive, so his coach made him take the whole thing apart and build it up from the ground level. He spent more than a year playing like complete garbage. Just chaos, you know? None of the different parts of the swing were working in concert like they were supposed to. But then he pulled all the elements back together again, and it was magic. There was this click. The swing came back. He became Tiger Woods, you know? But even better.”

“Your point?”

“It’s a process,” Ben explained. “I’m evolving into the Tiger Woods of darts.”

“You don’t want to be Tiger Woods. Everybody hates him.”

“What, because of the adultery thing?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s still a great golfer.”

“Doesn’t matter. You need a better role model.”

“Fine. I’ll be the Jack Nicklaus of darts.”

Connor smiled. “That barely even makes sense.”

“That’s what you get for messing with my analogies.”

The analogy didn’t matter. The point wasn’t for Ben to get good at darts, it was for him to get better at life. To break his personality down to the raw elements and then recombine them for a less disastrous result.

“You going to shoot that thing or not?”

Ben threw it without aiming or thinking. The dart hit the very edge of the board and dropped to the floor. Connor shook his head, amazed. “Who was that girl you were talking to?”