I scan the room every other minute, but no dice. Every so often, I pull my phone from my pocket and check for a missed call or a text declaring she got lost.
Nothing.
I place another bet and take a swig from a sweating beer bottle with a slice of orange shoved down the neck. Calypso should’ve stuck with me. I found a waitress a minute after she ran off.
I place another bet and watch an anorexic blonde with lipstick on her teeth drip from the arm of a plump man. The top of his head shines under the bright lights above, and his Ohio State sweatshirt barely covers his plumber’s crack when he sits.
But still, he wears the smile of a man who clearly believes he’s winning in life.
Poor schmuck. Probably came here on vacation. Doesn’t realize the woman hanging on his arm is a hooker. She’ll go back to his hotel tonight. Get him all warmed up. He’ll think he’s getting lucky and then she’ll politely inform him, when she’s two seconds from unzipping his too-tight jeans, that her hourly rate is five hundred bucks.
I could warn him, but I don’t think he’d care. He’s on top of the world right now. What kind of asshole would I be if I ruined that for him?
And who knows, maybe getting had by a hooker in Vegas is on his bucket list. If it isn’t, it should be. You haven’t lived until you’ve been swindled by a gap-toothed blonde in knock-off Armani with pancake tits.
Three brisk taps on my shoulder pull me out of the moment.
“Crew Forrester, can you come with us?” A casino security guard mutters something into his earpiece.
“What’s this?” I sip my beer.
“I need you to come with me, sir.”
The folks around the roulette table gawk. This is fucking embarrassing, and that’s saying a lot. I generally don’t give a flying fuck what anyone thinks.
“Have I done something wrong?” I huff, asking a question I damn well know the answer to. I glance at my watch. Twenty-five minutes, and still no Calypso.
Shit.
Calypso.
“This is about my friend, isn’t it?” I rise, sipping my beer and following the suited brute.
He leads me through a set of inconspicuous doors and down a long corridor. The gray walls are a stark contrast from the rest of the place. Gone are the magic and lights and sounds. It’s like we’ve been sucked through some kind of vortex.
“I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing this part of the casino,” I say, ambling behind him, beer still in hand. “You know I have access to the Black Key Club, right?”
He says nothing, and still, we walk.
“You ever been up there?” I ask. “So nice. I played in a tourn—”
The man stops short and whips out his badge and scans it against a pad by the doorknob. It beeps and the door whooshes as he flings it open. He reminds me of a human gorilla hybrid.
I peer around him and see a long table and white walls. This looks like an interrogation room.
“Come on,” he says.
Two more steps and I’m in.
“Crew.” Calypso’s voice precedes her arms around my neck. I can’t breathe, she’s squeezing me so tight. I slip my hands over her arms and pull them down, gulping air.
“What’s this? Why are you in here?” I ask.
“They think I’m someone I’m not,” she says. “I tried to tell them. They won’t listen.”
I turn to the human gorilla and then to another guard perched on a swivel chair in the corner. He flicks the tip of a pen against a yellow legal pad with a look in his eyes that tells me he hates his job as much as I suspect he does.
“Facial recognition software identified her as a match for someone.” His tone is flat, and he promptly shoves his pen cap between his back molars.
“I showed them my ID. They think I’m Lacy Whitmore or something.” I smell the sweet Amaretto on her breath, and I hope to God she was at least coherent enough during her interrogation to accidentally implicate herself. “They want someone else to vouch for me.”
“She’s Calypso,” I say. “No last name.”
The guards exchange looks and laugh.
“That’s her real name,” I say.
The human gorilla shrugs. “Her driver’s license and ID all checked out. It’s legit.”
“You going to sign off on this one then?” the other guard asks me. “Vouch for her. If you’re lying, it’s your ass on the line.”
“You’re looking at felonies. Hefty charges. Jail time,” the gorilla adds.
I glance at Calypso. Her fingers dig into my arm and her body trembles. There’s no way this woman has a lawless gambler past. I saw the way she reacted when she lost my hundred bucks.
“Give me the goddamn paper.” I huff. “And you owe her an apology.”
The seated guard spits his pen cap into his hand. “We’re just doing our jobs.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll be making a call to Javier come Monday.” Throwing out the name of the head of security at this casino causes both men to sit up straight.
I know Javier very well. He moonlights as a mid-stakes grinder, and I’ve had the pleasure of sitting next to him at some very intense tournaments.
Javier doesn’t fuck around.
“Got a clean pen?” I stick my hand out, and the gorilla hands me a shiny pen with the casino’s logo in sparkling gold. Thirty seconds later, my signature is affixed to the bottom of a statement that claims Calypso is . . . Calypso . . . and not Lacy Whitmore. “There. Can we go now?”
“Hang on.” The seated guard leaves the room for a minute.
Calypso looks into my eyes.
“I’ll make this up to you,” I whisper.
“All right,” the guard says as he returns. “On behalf of the Hill Valley Casino and Resort, we’d like to apologize for your inconvenience and offer you a free night’s stay in our presidential suite.”
“What?” Calypso’s jaw falls, and her hand beats on my chest.
I know for a fact that’s a ten-thousand dollars per night stay. These guys must really want to stay on Javier’s good side.
Thoughts of ditching the whole table games bullshit and getting her up in that room, ripping off those clothes, and fucking her against the glass windows overlooking the city lights fill my head.
And then I remember.
Emme.
I take Calypso’s hands in mine and lower them from my chest.
“Not tonight,” I say. “Gotta get back to Emme.”
Her face falls. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I completely forgot. Of course.”
“Is this offer valid only for tonight?” I ask the one guard.
“If you’d like to use it another night, you’ll need to make arrangements with the front desk,” he says. “The offer expires in ninety days.”
“Good enough,” I say. “We free to go now?”
They nod, and Gorilla gets the door.
We exit the corridor and hit the game floor, but Calypso looks tired and my mood has deflated.
So much for a first fucking date.
FOURTEEN
Calypso
“For the last time, you don’t need to apologize.” My eyes drift shut, but the cool glass of the passenger window against my cheek keeps me awake.
Crew rolls to a stop at a red light on our drive home.
“I still had fun,” I insist.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me. I know I had fun. That’s all that matters.”
“Fucking facial recognition software.” He spits his words. “Bullshit. I want to see this Lacy fucking Whitmore.”
“Me too.” I laugh. “Come on. You have to admit this whole thing’s kind of funny. And they offered that suite.”
“Still.”
I open my eyelids just enough to see his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel. A silver Volvo careens in front of us, cutting us off, and Crew lays on his horn.
I pop up.
I’m awake.
“Jesus, Crew,” I say. “It’s n
ot that big of a deal.”
“Fuck.” His shoulders rise as he breathes. “I’m sorry, Calypso. I just . . . I just wanted tonight to go a certain way. I wanted to have a good time. I wanted . . .”
I lean closer to him, placing my hand on the side of his shoulder. His muscles flex and tense under my touch, hard as steel.
“I really did have a good time,” I say. “A little bit of this city goes a very long way for me.”
“We barely scratched the surface.”
“That’s all we needed to scratch.” I rub his arm, though I’d much rather rest my head on it. His warmth relaxes my bones and makes me want to sleep for a million years. “Vegas really isn’t for me. It’s why I’m moving.”
Crew slams on his breaks. The metal clanking of tools in his truck rattle in the back. But to be fair, we’ve hit another red light.
He turns to me, staring down his perfect nose. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m closing my shop in three months.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I bought it on loan. I’m supposed to make a balloon payment in three months. I don’t have it. The owner gets to take it back.”
“And you’ll lose everything you’ve paid so far?”
“I try not to think about that part.” A loose strand of hair has fallen from my top knot. It feels messier than it’s supposed to now. I just want to go home, wash this makeup off my face, pull my hair out of this . . . thing . . . on my head, and crawl into bed. Talking about my business is a surefire way to put a damper on any night, but I can’t hold it against him. He didn’t bring it up. I did.
“There’s got to be some kind of solution. Can you liquidate? Run a clearance sale? Fundraiser?”
“Believe me, if there was a way to fix this, I’d have thought of it by now.”
The light turns green and he eases into the gas. We’re stuck behind miles of bumper to bumper traffic now, as if everyone decided to leave the strip at the same time. I heard it’s always like this though. Morning, noon and night.
“I couldn’t stay here anyway, Crew,” I say. “This city is the antithesis of everything I want in life. I don’t belong here.”
“How’d you end up here then? Something drew you there?”
“I wanted to go where no one could find me. No one from Shiloh.” I stare up at the dark sky and miss the stars. The lights are too bright around us. The neon drowns out their faint yellow twinkles. “I applied for a job at this bookstore. I passed by one day and it sort of stood out. Didn’t look like it belonged here. Like me. The lady behind the counter told me they weren’t hiring. She was getting ready to sell. I proposed that I buy it out from her on contract. The Tipsy Poet wasn’t planned, it just sort of happened.”
“You don’t have to fit in to belong somewhere.”
“Right, but I don’t want to be here. Not anymore. Ready to move on.”
“Where do you want to be then?” He leans closer to me, but only by an inch or two. Enough for me to notice.
“There’s this writing school, just outside Chicago,” I say. “It’s one of the top writing academies in the country. Actually, it’s the top.”
“Like grad school?”
“No,” I say. “It’s just a little program. It’s less focused on academia and more focused on the craft of writing. It’s where people go to become really great.”
“You’re a writer?”
I nod. “I am.”
“What do you write?”
“Literary fiction,” I say.
“Ah. Guess that makes sense. You own a bookstore. You like to read. It’s not a stretch that you like to write then.” We slow to a crawl and he looks my way again. “I’d have figured romance or something.”
Sitting up straight, I throw him a snarky huff and a bit of side eye. “Why? Because I’m a woman?”
Crew laughs. “God, I’m not that shallow, Calypso. No. I just figured, you know, you’re so soft.”
“Soft?”
He reaches for a loose strand of my hair and twirls it between his fingers. “Yeah. The way you move. The way you talk. Your whole demeanor. You’re sweet and soft. Literary fiction, to me, is so raw and gritty. You make me think of happily ever after.”
“I make you think of happily ever after?”
He still has my hair in his hands, and my heart is pulsing.
“I mean, not like I sit around and think about that stuff, but you remind me of someone searching for her own happily ever after.”
I laugh. Crew drops my hair and reaches for his turn signal.
“There’s where you’re wrong,” I say. “I don’t believe in fairytale endings. I don’t even believe in the idea of fairytales, and I’ve read them all.”
FIFTEEN
Crew
This is where tonight ends.
I stand outside Calypso’s door, just a short distance from mine. As soon as I go home and relieve Noelle, this night is over.
“You know,” I say. “Noelle’s going to give me shit for being home by nine-thirty. I’ve got her until midnight.”
Calypso presses her back into her door and flashes me a sideways smile. I love the way her blue eyes glow in the dark.
“You trying to invite yourself in?”
“Maybe. Is it working?”
“Kind of.”
My heart thumps hard in my chest, the way it does when I know I’m holding an unbeatable hand. But my expression is smooth like glass. Unreadable.
“And what might your intentions be if I let you in?” she asks.
I step toward her, closing the space between us. “If I’m being completely honest, I don’t know.”
“This wasn’t supposed to be a date, you know.” She hooks a dainty hand on her hip. “You tricked me.”
“I wouldn’t say it that way.”
“It’s a bait and switch if I’ve ever seen one.”
I lift my hand to her face, unable to tolerate another moment of not being able to touch her. I’m fully aware of how out of character this is for me. I don’t pine after women. I don’t chase anyone. I don’t . . . date.
And here I am, hardly able to keep my hands off this strange, fascinating creature. Everything about her is soft and beautiful, unassuming and gentle. A little bit left of center.
She’s right. She doesn’t belong in a city like Vegas. This place is too hard for her.
“I didn’t bait and switch.” I drag the pad of my thumb along her bottom lip. “I changed my mind.”
Calypso releases a defeated sign, her lips pulling wide and her warm breath grazing across my fingers.
“Is that how it works?” she asks.
“I guess?” I shrug. “I don’t know, Calypso. I’m new at this.”
“I find that incredibly hard to believe,” she says. “You’re bluffing. You’re a poker player. It’s what you do.”
“I don’t need to bluff with you.” I lick my lips to quell my intense desire to kiss her mouth. Right here. Right now. For no other reason than the fact that it feels right, and I’m dying to know the taste of the lips I’ve been staring at all night. “And you should really find some better poker analogies if you’re going to hang around me.”
Calypso sighs. “I was actually looking forward to learning your game tonight. Believe it or not.”
“It’s not too late. Got any cards?”
She leans in with her shoulder to push the door open. It makes a creaking noise, and I’m hit with the faint scent of lavender and sandalwood. This place smells exactly the way I thought it would.
I shut the door behind me and she peels off her sandals before switching on a nearby lamp. The shade is covered in a sheer, red scarf, washing us both in a warm glow.
A vintage velvet sofa is pushed up against her living room wall.
And books.
Books everywhere.
Stacks on her coffee table. Rows upon rows in bookcases.
“Looks like your bookshop gave birth to a baby bookshop
,” I say.
She nibbles on her nail, glancing around. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
Calypso sinks into her sofa, slipping a book off the top of a nearby pile and paging through.
“I’m going to miss these things someday,” she says. “Everyone and their eReaders and their iPhones. No one wants these relics anymore.”
I can’t argue that. “I’m sure by the time Emme’s in college, her professors will be telling her to scroll to thirty-seven percent in her textbook.”
Calypso laughs.
“How do people not miss the feeling of a page between their fingers?” She shuts the book, dragging her fingertip down its thick spine. “The feel of a real book in your lap. The weight of it in your hands.” She brings it to her nose. “The smell of ink on old paper.”
I stand patiently, letting her have her moment.
“Sorry.” She snaps out of it. “I should be a better hostess.”
Calypso pops up and treks to the kitchen.
“Would you like a drink? I might have a bottle of wine and maybe some fuzzy navel wine coolers.”
“Wine coolers?”
“Presley brought them over a few weeks ago. Said she was feeling nostalgic. Drank only one,” she calls from behind her refrigerator door. The clinking of bottles precedes the slamming of the door. I watch from the living room as she uncorks a bottle of wine and sniffs it. Her expression sours. “No. Oh, my God. That’s really old.”
“Fuzzy navel wine coolers it is.”
She drains the bottle of wine and slips two glass bottles under her arm, stopping at a junk drawer to grab a pack of playing cards on her way back.
Dropping to the middle of the living room floor, she pushes the coffee table toward her and motions for me to sit across.
“We could play at my kitchen table, but . . .” Her gaze drifts toward a small, round table shoved up against a wall and covered in books.
I take a fuzzy navel and unscrew the top until I hear that satisfying hiss.
“Haven’t had one of these since high school.” I take a swig and let the sickeningly sweet orange liquid drip down my gullet.
She hands me a deck of cards wrapped with a hair tie. They’re worn, bent at the corners and faded in spots.
Vegas Baby Page 10