Damn Good Reasons **DISCONTINUED - SEE NEW VER!**

Chapter 21 - Bitter Reunion

Walking up Main street, I stopped outside the Blue Point diner to see that drapes were still hanging in the windows. I was coming to terms with it being turned into a restaurant now. After all, it wasn't the diner itself that I was love with. It was the people. And they were gone forever. That was what I had to accept.

"Hey, Cass." The voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I looked back down the street to see Eyeball standing outside Irby's with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other. He started wobbling towards me, drunk as a skunk. "What you doin' out here by yourself?" He sat on the nearest window ledge and leaned back against the glass.

"Just... thinking. What are you doing?"

"Can't remember," he slurred with a slight cackle. "Came out here for somethin'... but... nup, it's gone."

"Well, it's been a long day. I'm going home."

"Why don't you come in for a bit. Shoot some pool. I'll buy you a drink."

"Thanks, but... Ace is in there, right?"

He glared at me like a deer caught in the headlights. "Ace? Uh.. no. No, Ace ain't in there, no."

"You're a terrible liar."

Eyeball stuck his cigarette in his mouth, wrapped an arm around my waist and started leading me back down the path. "Come on, Cass," he mumbled through his smoke. "You need to have some fun; get outta that mood you're in."

"I'm not in a mood."

"Then stop worryin' 'bout nothin'! Just go with it. Life's better like that."

He pushed open the door to Irby's, and a short, brawny, red-headed guy came out and nearly bumped straight into us. "Hey, watch where you're goin' man!" Eyeball snarled.

The guy stopped and glared at me, and a shady smirk formed at the corner of his lips. He squirmed past us with his eyes fixed on me which seemed overly odd and even a little creepy. I clutched Eyeball tight at the waist, glad to have him with me at that moment.

"I remember that guy..." I said as we watched him stagger down the street. "At my old house in Hutt, he was peeking out at me and Ace from the neighbor's house."

"Still wanna walk home by yourself?"

The thick smoke made me choke, but the warmth of the pool hall caressed me so lovingly that I didn't mind paying up with a brief coughing fit. It was crowded in there for a weeknight. I hung on Eyeball's tail, bumping shoulders with people as he led me to the back of the room where the other boys looked to be well into the night's drinking session.

Vince's voice is always the first one you hear, even when it's a full house and the jukebox is playing at full volume. He was now sitting in the booth with Jack and Fuzzy, and so I kept my distance and hung around the pool table where Billy and Charlie were finishing up a game. It took a few moments of looking around for me to spot Ace. He was sitting at the bar with a beer in his hand as he watched a game of baseball playing on the television set on the shelf above him.

I felt a wanting need shoot through my stomach.

"I'll get you that drink," Eyeball said, patting his back pocket. "Shit... where's my wallet? Oh, now I remember what I was doin'! Shit..."

"It's OK. I might start looking for a ride home."

"No you ain't. You stay right put there." He meandered over to the next pool table where a group of guys were playing for a small pile of cash that had been placed near one of the corner pockets. I watched, stunned as Eyeball swiped the money up without even bothering to be discreet and walked off with it. One of the guys chased him in protest, but Eyeball just squared his shoulders and gave him a look as if to say, 'what are you gonna do about it?' and the guy backed right off.