The Gambler

by Molly O'Keefe

  The air tasted like spice and sweat. The band roared into their set and the dance floor was packed.

  Through the bodies, I saw the band, and the world, my heart, every function of my body—stopped.

  Sitting at the piano, a narrow fedora low over his eyes, a wrinkled linen shirt open over a damp white tank top was Tyler O’Neill. His fingers working the keys, his feet on the pedals, his whole body coiled and curled, pumping and shifting, working the piano as if it were a life-and-death race to some finish.

  I didn’t know how long I watched him, but I was suddenly aware of my heart thundering in my chest, in my fingers, between my legs. Sweat beaded between my breasts, along my spine, and I felt like I had on too many clothes. There were simply too many things between my skin and the air that touched Tyler.

  I felt everything I’d felt that summer when we came out here almost every night. Me, sick with love and lust, and Tyler, working up the nerve to play with the band. We’d sit in the corner, his fingers on my leg under the table, or on my arm or back—playing me as if I were a keyboard.

  “Go!” Tyler yelled, lifting his sweaty face to the thin black accordion player and they smiled at each other, sliding in and through some riff, some narrow and bright tunnel of music until finally the accordion player threw up his hands.

  “I give, man, I give.”

  And then it was just Tyler.

  He ran the back of his hands across the keys—a flourish—and stood up, the bench collapsing backward as if grateful for the break.

  Remy’s erupted into applause.

  Tyler raised his arms and bowed back to the band, lifting a longneck from the floor and taking a long swig, the muscles of his neck flexing as he swallowed.

  I felt flush watching him, hot and full. Ripe.

  Miguel, Richard, Remy’s, the music Tyler created—all of it turned to black and it was just Tyler.

  Always Tyler.

  TYLER

  * * *

  I took the back door out into thick swamp, needing an escape from the gratitude and shameless women. Shameless women were usually my kind of woman, but tonight it felt all off. I was avoiding thinking about it too hard because I had a sinking suspicion that Juliette was at the root of that sudden and unfortunately timed change of heart.

  The last time I’d been here had been with her, and I couldn’t sit at that piano and not remember that. In fact, everywhere I looked I thought I saw her. The bright light of her eyes, the curve of her shoulder in a whisper thin shirt. Her hair, blue-black in the light.

  But it was a trick. She would never come here. Never again, I’d made sure of that.

  And ninety-nine percent of the time there wasn’t a question in my mind that I’d done the right thing. That walking away from Juliette had been the best thing for her, as painful as it had been at the time.

  But tonight, I wished things were different. That I’d had a choice ten years ago that could have included her.

  My shirt, soaked from neck to waist, stuck to me. I took it off, flinging the linen over my shoulder, and untucked my undershirt from the damp waistband of my old blue jeans. I’d forgotten what a workout Dixieland Jazz was.

  The pier where Remy kept a few flat bottom fishing boats dipped under my weight, the water lapping quietly against aluminum and wood and whatever reptile was waiting for me to misstep and be dinner.

  My lower back and wrists screamed from the abuse they were taking. Tomorrow I’d pay a fortune in aspirin for this good time, but I was just too damn content to care right now.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this good. Maybe when I first got to Vegas. When I first found Dad and started winning some money. But then those good days just started to blend and the good became okay. And then they became bad.

  And then it was just my life.

  But this—friends, music, this wired and thrilling sense of joy—this wasn’t anything I was used to. It was like remembering who I was—or who I had been.

  Behind me, a shoe scuffed the worn wood and the pier dropped slightly under my feet.

  A chill ran over my skin, a prickly awareness that told me I wasn’t alone. But then the scent of lemons cut through the mud-scented swamp air and I knew who was out here with me.

  My eyes closed on a sigh.

  “Go away,” I said. I couldn’t handle this. I was too raw tonight, too much myself to keep up all the bullshit, the lies I needed to tell her to keep the peace. “Please, just go.”

  JULIETTE

  * * *

  I can’t. God, I wish I could, but I am stuck here. With you.

  “I’ll go,” I said. “But I need a few answers.”

  “What have answers ever gotten you, Juliette?” he asked, his back still to me. His white undershirt stuck to him, hugging the muscles that my fingers and hands and lips remembered all too well.

  “Is what they’re saying in there true?”

  “Well,” Tyler laughed and finally faced me. His blond hair was plastered to his forehead, but those blue eyes pulsed and glowed in the dark. Tyler took a swig from the beer bottle in his hand. “If they’re saying I’m the best piano player this side of Mississippi, then yes, I would have to admit—”

  “Cut the bullshit, Tyler!” I cried, surprised and infuriated at the gaping cracks in my composure. “For once. Please. For me. Cut the crap.”

  He blinked and after a moment shrugged. “What do you want to know?” He asked before taking another drink, his eyes never leaving mine. I felt raw, naked under his gaze.

  “Did you donate money to Remy after the last storm?”

  Tyler licked his lips and nodded.

  “And again, recently?”

  “After I won the World Series thing,” he said. “I know a lot of the folks around here, especially the musicians, don’t have any savings.”

  “And you just happened to have a ton of cash.”

  “As a matter of fact—” His grin split the darkness like a knife and my breath hitched.

  Unbelievably, tears scorched my eyes.

  “Hey, hey,” Tyler said, stepping up the pier toward me. “Don’t get all worked up here. I’m still an asshole at heart.”

  His expression was that potent mix of boy and man and my composure cracked further. I winced under the power of my old love. My old longings.

  It wasn’t enough that he’d left me, but he’d taken a huge part of me with him. My heart. The future I’d planned. My…body. Or my connection to it. For any man but this one—this blue-eyed devil in worn jeans and cowboy boots—I was stone-cold.

  “I met your father tonight,” I said, my voice a knife I jabbed at his chest. He winced and I didn’t want to like that so much. “I went to your house to talk to you about Miguel, and you can imagine my surprise when your father answers the door.”

  “He’s harmless.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me? Why did you lie?”

  “Because he’s my dad!” he cried, as if it were that simple. And maybe for Tyler it was, and that was the problem. Tyler’s loyalties were those of a ten-year-old boy. “Look, full disclosure. His roommates in Los Angeles were arrested for credit-card fraud—”

  “You are kidding me!”

  “Dad was questioned and released. He had nothing to do with it.”

  “So why is he here?”

  “He just needs a place to stay.”

  “And you’re suddenly the soul of generosity? Taking care of the homeless and your father and a beat-up kid?” I was spinning closer and closer to the edge of a question, a cliff I swore I’d never approach—but I couldn’t stop myself. Every defense was in ruins.

  “Is this more of the Tyler O’Neill sleight of hand?” I asked. “The guessing game? Which part is the real you and which part is the bluff? Which part is the guy handing out money to the poor and which part is the man who walked away—” My voice cracked and I stopped, grasping with everything in me for control.

  “Whatever it’s easiest for you to believe, Juliet
te. Go with that. Don’t break your head trying to figure me out.”

  “It’s a little late for that, Tyler! Or did I imagine that summer? Did I make that up? You and me and the Chevy and coming out here every night. Did I make up your kisses and the way you touched me? Those things you told me about moving to New Orleans and how we’d live above a bakery and you’d play the piano and I’d get my law degree? Was that real? Did I make that up?”

  “No.” He was so still. So quiet. “It was real.”

  “Then why did you go?”

  The words tumbled out, words I’d wondered a million times, and now, now that he was here and my heart was pumping out fresh hurt, they were unstoppable.

  Tyler froze as if the question had a power over him he couldn’t fight.

  “Don’t,” he breathed, “do this to yourself.”

  I laughed, the sound vicious and hard, and he closed the last distance between us. He was so close I could smell him, taste the spice of him on my tongue. A buzz filled my head, a warning that I was too close. Too close to him and too close to doing something stupid.

  “Juliette,” Tyler breathed, his eyes roving over my face like fingers over Braille, “I’m not worth whatever it is you’re doing to yourself.”

  “Then tell me why you left!” I snapped, and he flinched. “What did you think would happen when I woke up that morning and realized you’d left me, left me after I’d lied to my father for months, after I’d slept with you and given you every single part of myself, after I’d told you that I loved you? Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Or that I wouldn’t care that you left without a word!” I was screaming. “Not one word, Tyler!”

  “I know,” he whispered. “I do, I know.”

  I slapped him. Because he didn’t know. He had no goddamned idea of the pain I’d lived with.

  My hand burned and the buzz in my head turned to a roar.

  Tyler’s jaw clenched and his eyes blazed and for a second I wondered if he might slap me back. I would welcome it. I would welcome the chance to totally kick his ass.

  “Feel better?” he asked, his cheek turning red.

  “No.”

  “Me, neither,” he said.

  And then he kissed me. His mouth hard against mine, a slap in kiss form. Craving something violent, I grabbed his shirt and pulled him to me. My mouth opened and I devoured him, would have swallowed him whole if I could. If I could just get close enough.

  He groaned and wrapped his arms around me, low around my hips, and lifted me against him, notching me against his erection.

  His flavor exploded in me. His heat and scent pummelled me. I fisted my hands into his hair, raking the skin of his shoulders with my nails and he groaned low in his chest. A growl of desire and want and need that my entire body echoed.

  It was all so familiar. The way he grabbed my ass and how his thigh slid between my legs. That pressure. That fucking pressure. He knew what it did to me.

  “Ty-“ I tried to push away, because I felt so close to the edge. So ready. And I didn’t want to be vulnerable like that with him. I didn’t want to give him that.

  “I can feel how close you are,” he whispered in my ear, before taking my earlobe between his teeth. “Let me make you come. Let me… let me do it for you.”

  No. I wanted to say that. No way. I had my pride. I had my anger. And all my questions.

  But it had been so long. Since he’d held me. Since anyone had held me. Since the ice around my body had melted enough for me to feel something. And the rush of feeling was too much to ignore.

  So, I just melted into him, onto him. His thigh holding my weight. His arms around my waist.

  “That’s it,” he said and he applied the pressure and I flexed my hips and I rode him. Used him.

  This wasn’t even the first time he’d made me come out here like this. Ten years ago we couldn’t keep our hands off each other and watching him play piano would get me so hot, one touch out here on the dock, or behind the building and once in the dark hallways to the bathroom, one touch and I’d fall apart.

  “Fuck,” he breathed and I could feel his cock but I wasn’t touching him. I made fists in his shirt, scratched his back. I tipped my head back and let it just roll over me.

  I could feel the scream rising in my throat and I bit his arm, the hard round muscle of his shoulder to keep myself quiet. His soft grunt only made it sweeter.

  When it was over and I was limp and dizzy, I stepped away. His touch, so perfect before was now nearly unbearable. I was wobbly and he reached for me but I pushed his hands away.

  What should I say? I wondered. What did anyone say after that?

  “There’s not been one day I have not thought of you,” he said and it took a moment for his words to register. To slide cool fingers down my spine, extinguishing the fire in my belly.

  Tyler’s blue eyes were unreadable and I wanted to smack him again. “You can’t just say that, Tyler. You can’t—”

  “Forget it, Juliette,” he said, and it was as if a light went out in him. “Forget about me. I was never worth what you gave me.”

  He stepped past me, back up the pier and the party going on inside. The door opened and someone yelled his name and Tyler laughed, the sound like being blasted by glass and I gasped for breath.

  “On my way!” he yelled, Tyler the piano man reborn, and then he was gone.

  * * *

  TYLER

  * * *

  A peanut shell, sandwiched between the piano bench and me, was digging its sharp little claws into my shoulder blade. It hurt. A lot, actually. But what did a guy expect trying to sleep on a piano bench?

  With a peanut shell and a hangover the size of the Gulf for company.

  I ignored the discomfort for as long as I could, trying to find a comfortable place on the hard bench while my head pounded and my back muscles burned.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened to my night. Even though the last thing I remembered was walking away from Juliette, my head told me I’d drowned the taste of that kiss in some bourbon and my back told me I’d pounded out my frustration on the piano.

  Not that it had worked—I was still frustrated and the taste of that kiss remained on my tongue. The feel of her was burned against my leg.

  Jesus, she was the same under the badge and the blazers. The same woman. Hot and mine.

  Mine.

  But there was something delicious happening in the air, and my stomach growled. Coffee. Bacon. Unfiltered Marlboros.

  There were worse places to wake up hungover and sore than Remy’s.

  “Wake up, Tyler.” Someone poked at my leg and I nearly lost my precarious bed.

  Gingerly, I sat up, and peanut shells popped off my back like hard bog leeches.

  “Morning, Priscilla,” I groaned. Blindly I held out my hand and a warm ceramic mug was pressed into it. The sweet smell of Remy’s chicory coffee made divine with about eight tablespoons of sugar was almost enough to coax my eyes open. Almost.

  “You were a man on fire last night,” Priscilla said. “That last set.” She whistled long and low.

  Priscilla’s whistles were a language of their own. This whistle was loaded and I knew she didn’t want to talk about music. This whistle had “let’s talk about your sad life” all over it.

  I grunted.

  “Sure brings back memories,” Priscilla went on, about as subtle as a water buffalo in a tutu. “’Course, you spending the night here reminds me of a few years ago, too.”

  “If you have a point,” I muttered, “go ahead and get to it.”

  “Not worth it if you’re gonna sit there half-dead.”

  I blinked open my eyes.

  It took a while, but I glanced around surprised at how clean it was. Spotless except for the little island of peanut shells and beer bottles around me.

  “I didn’t know this place had windows,” I muttered.

  Priscilla sat on a chair in front of the stage, wrapped in a subdued pale yellow rob
e. The wig gone, replaced by a bright purple head scarf. In the bright sunlight she almost looked her age—not that I could tell what that was.

  “What are you doing back here?” she asked.

  “A boy can’t visit his family?”

  “The whole parish knows The Manor is sitting empty these days. There’s no family of yours to visit right now.”

  “You and Remy-”

  “Boy, please. You’re not here for us.” She narrowed her eyes. “I got a bad feeling it has something to do with the rumor your momma was in town not long ago, looking for some gems.”

  I stared into my mug, seeing my reflection in the black.

  “There are no gems,” I said. “There probably never were. I’ve searched that house inside and out.”

  “What about your momma? You telling me her being around wasn’t a draw?”

  “That was part of it,” I said, sitting in a pool of sunshine, thoughts of my mother just floated through me instead of weighing me down.

  I sucked down the coffee and shuddered as it jackknifed into my system.

  “What you planning, boy?”

  Somewhere in the back of my mind I had a bunch of things I wanted to say to my mother. I wanted answers to questions that kept me up nights. But I knew in my heart of hearts that it was fruitless. The questions about why she’d left me, Savannah and Carter would go unanswered, and frankly, it was about time I moved on. Stopped being a kid left on a doorstep by a mother who didn’t care about me.

  “Truth is,” I said, unsure of why I was even talking about this. But that’s what booze and music and kissing the best woman I’d ever known got me—confused, weak. “I was lonely.”

  “You?” Priscilla asked with a snort. “What about that girlfriend of yours? That French woman.”

  “It didn’t work out.” I left it at that, the whole story too depressing to get into with the feel of Juliette branded back into the skin of my arms like a graft from the past.

  “Well, I’m not sure what you expect,” Priscilla said, taking a sip of coffee. “You live in Las Vegas. In a hotel. I’ve never heard of anything so lonely in my life.”