location: tenpin terry’s bowl-a-rama. / availability: closed for jade @reversecreek
tenpin terry’s was the kind of place that existed within its own pocket of time. you could come back in ten years, and see the same staff with their buttercup-yellow aprons, the dishes with the same cringey titles ( sloppy-joe’s-big-fat-mouth-watering-fuck-me-daddy-hot-dog ), the same day-old stench of foot sweat that no amount of cleaning spray seemed to banish from the bowling shoes. the place made milo nostalgic for the kind of birthday parties he’d never been allowed as a kid, an arcade rife with violent video games, the bowling lanes a breeding ground for toxic adrenaline, and a diner stuffed with too many e-numbers, and not enough vegan, gluten-free options for it to ever be a viable venue. he’d learned to bowl in later years, a hobby thieved from the big lebowski that became ( for several obsessive months ) his entire personality, fake names embroidered on custom-made shirts and two-hundred-dollar bowling shoes polished within an inch of their life. his shirt today read ‘billy’, lilac with a bubblegum blue collar, the sloping calligraphy of a stranger’s name worn with the same blasé attitude that accompanied milo into every aspect of his life. “yo. thought you’d stood me up—” he eventually admitted through a cloud of cigarette smoke when jade appeared, later than expected, a neuroticism written into his hard drive whenever he felt the shadow of abandonment creep in to his periphery. one chunky doc marten was splayed against the bricks of the building’s exterior in an attempt at appearing casual while milo smoked a cigarette, sling bag with his pumps, towel and polish by his feet. his eyes clocked jade’s and he attempted to hide the silent thrill that pulsed in his stomach that he got whenever he saw her, the instinct to ask her to tell him everything about her day, what she’d seen, who she’d spoken to, to weave him into the narrative of the pieces he had missed. “ready to get absolutely flattened?” dropping his boot from the wall, milo leaned forward, plucked the cigarette from his mouth and slid it between jade’s lips as he picked up his bowling bag and slung it over his shoulder, heading through the automatic doors without so much as a backward glance at his companion.