by J. Saman
I swallow hard then blink twice. “Almost three. Drunk driver.”
He shakes his head, the smile slipping from his thin lips. “A baby.”
I toss the dice in my hand, needing the distraction.
“Eight.”
Mo and I fall into silence for a moment, letting the game lead us. I put money behind the pass line—the same as him—and more money on six. I don’t even want to think about how much I have in play on this table right now.
“What was your daughter’s name?” I ask, while the dealer does her thing with the new people joining the table on the other end.
“Chloe. She was my angel. Now she’s up in heaven.” He looks up at the ceiling and smiles again. “Yours?”
“Maggie,” I swallow again, suddenly needing to ask a very personal question to a total stranger. “How did you…?” I can’t even finish my words.
“Get through it?”
God this guy just knows me. I nod.
“Well, cookie,” he touches the brim of his cowboy hat, sliding his finger back and forth across it. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I still struggle with it, and I know I always will.” The dealer slides me the dice again and I reach forward to retrieve them. “But it took me finally accepting that there are things in this world I cannot change. Death being one of them. And that I was beyond blessed to have had her at all.” He doesn’t rush me. No one does. Mo just continues to talk while I hold onto the dice for a moment, rolling them in my hand. “Now when I think about Chloe, I focus on the happiness her brief life brought me. Not the sorrow of her loss.”
I nod, understanding but not fully on the same page. When I think about Maggie and Eric, I still feel the heartbreak of their loss. It’s true though, I am missing out on remembering the joy of their lives.
I throw the dice down the table.
“Six,” the dealer calls out and the people down on the other end of the table cheer, as does Mo.
“We won again, cookie,” Mo looks at me with his sparkling blue eyes and easy smile. “I think you are my good luck charm after all.” His expression turns serious. “And maybe I can be yours, too.”
“I think you are, Mo,” I smile, pick up my chips that I just won and toss the dice again. This pattern continues—us winning—for the next twenty minutes. I have no idea how much money Mo and I won, but the two guys at the other end of the table have been hollering and cheering, and singing my praises. All four of us are laughing and smiling, because this is just fun.
Winning always is.
Eventually I crap out, which is fine. It’s scary to think how far this could go and how easily my head will swell with it. But after I do crap out, I place a hundred-dollar chip on snake eyes.
“That’s a sucker’s bet, cookie,” Mo warns me.
I nod my head in acknowledgment. Thirty-one to one odds is a sucker’s bet. But Maggie was two when she died, and for some reason, I want to bet on that. The guy down at the far end picks up the dice and tosses them, and as they fly across the table I shut my eyes, picturing Maggie’s sweet smiling face.
Maggie was always smiling.
That girl had no shortage of happiness.
When the shouting erupts, I don’t notice right away that it is for me until someone shakes me. “Holy shit, you just won over three thousand dollars,” one of the guys who was playing on the other end of the table, says. He’s smiling with wide, excited, brown eyes.
“You did it, cookie!” Mo pulls me in for a hug, which would be strange if we hadn’t just shared way more than most strangers do in under thirty minutes. “Remember, the key is to find your happiness in the life you shared with her.” I don’t reply, I just hug him back and then release him. “You take care of yourself now. Find your peace with what’s done and live your life. That’s all any of us can do in this short go-around that we get.”
“Thanks, Mo. You’re something very special.”
He smiles, pats my cheek like my grandmother used to and leaves to go find his wife.
Someone hands me my chips and I silently walk away, far too stunned to react the way they want me too. I have no idea how much money in chips I’ve stuffed into my bag, but I think it’s a lot. My phone buzzes in my back pocket as I wander past some dinging slots, but I’m not ready to answer it. I want more of this moment of suspended time.
It’s almost like I’m floating, watching myself from the outside.
Maybe it’s the constant noise—the buzzing and ringing, and humming and talking, and laughing—all around me. Maybe it’s the artificial lights combined with lack of daylight. Who knows? But I’m reveling in it right now, surprised by how oddly good it feels.
A roulette wheel is spinning and there are maybe six people standing around the felt, reaching and placing chips and markers all over the numbers. I’ve never played roulette either, but the concept is simple. Way easier to get than craps.
I take two one-hundred dollar chips out of my bag, and place them both on the number nineteen, drawing the curious gazes of a few fellow gamblers.
Eric was born on March nineteenth and Maggie on July nineteenth.
One hundred for each of them.
Seems a bizarre thing to gamble money on them, but for some reason, it feels like the right thing to do.
It’s as if I can sense their aura. Like Maggie thinks I’m being silly, and Eric’s laughing and shaking his head because I’m wasting money, but would never tell me not to, regardless. The dealer calls out: “No more bets!” and the small white ball clickety-clacks against the multicolored wooden wheel, landing finally on red nineteen.
People are screaming and grabbing me, and a large man walks over with a fake smile, congratulating me.
I’m too stunned to speak.
Then I’m being pulled into a large, familiar chest.
“Katie? What’s going on?”
It’s Ryan. Thank god he is here.
I don’t know why that’s the reaction I have to him holding me, but it is. He steps back, tilting my face up to his.
“Why are you crying?” Concern is etched on his handsome face. I didn’t realize I was, so I have no answer for that.
“Sir? Is everything okay? Should I call for some help?” That’s the guy who congratulated me, and I think it’s time I start talking before they have me committed.
“Yes,” I wipe my face with my hands and smile. “I’m fine. Just surprised I won is all.”
The guy nods at me like this reaction happens all the time, then hands me my chips, which is evidently several thousands of dollars.
“What the hell did I miss while I was working?” Ryan’s flabbergasted. I don’t blame him. This is a lot of money and he hasn’t even seen what I’m hiding in my bag.
I look up at his bewildered face, reaching up to touch his prickly, soft, nearly-black beard.
“So I was walking around the casino when I met a man named Mo. He taught me how to play craps. His daughter died at seventeen in a drunk-driving accident on prom night. I rolled the dice and won insane money,” I’m rambling a mile a minute, but can’t seem to stop the verbal diarrhea. “Then Mo left, and I was walking around like some mindless zombie for I don’t know how long. I saw the roulette table and I decided to play nineteen,” I point to the table we’re still next to. Amazingly, Ryan is standing here listening to me, and not running off screaming from my crazy. “Because it’s the date of Eric and Maggie’s birthdays,” I blow out a breath. “And I won, Ryan. I won everything, and Mo told me to remember the happiness of their lives and not the sorrow of their deaths, and I’m just so tired of being sad. I want to think of them and be happy that I had them in my life, because they both made me so incredibly happy. Does that make sense?”
He brushed his knuckles along my jaw and nods with a half-smile that says I may be onto something.
God I hope so.
My head falls into his chest and his arms wrap around me, holding me to him like
I’m precious. He kisses the top of my head.
“We should go cash in your chips. Get them out of your bag and then feed you. Do you want me to take care of that?” I nod into him. I love how he knows exactly what I need. “Come with me, sweetheart.”
And I do.
I might just follow Ryan Grant anywhere.
Chapter 17
Kate
The mild October air outside the casino is like a balm on my overheated skin and muddled brain. Ryan holds my hand, swinging it a little between us as we walk down the strip. I imagine we make quite the odd couple.
He’s so tall and I’m so short in comparison.
“What are you in the mood to eat?” He’s as casual as ever, acting as though I didn’t just have some sort of minor psychotic event back there.
Why does he have to be so wonderful? I mean, I’m not looking for judgment or anything, but he makes me seem so…normal, when I feel anything but.
I think on this for a moment. “I want a Vegas-style buffet.” He turns to look at me. “You know, the kind with everything from caviar to egg rolls to breakfast. I’m talking a full boat, self-indulgent, glutinous dining experience.”
He’s giving me that crooked smile that I like so much, and his green, bespectacled eyes are laughing at me. “You got it,” he winks, and I can’t help but beam at him. Is it wrong that I want to climb him like a tree in the middle of the sidewalk? Probably.
Ryan doesn’t miss a beat, just keeps walking, so I follow. Sure enough, a few minutes later, we’re headed into Caesar’s. The buffet is as promised. An all-encompassing dining experience. We eat a million different kinds of food and talk about nothing of importance, and it is beyond perfect.
So perfect, in fact, that when we leave to head back to our hotel, I want to die.
“I need to throw up everywhere,” I groan, holding my severely bloated belly. “Thank god I’m wearing yoga pants,” I look up at him. “That’s all I’m saying.”
Ryan laughs out, but I know he’s feeling this hurt too. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much in my life.”
“Ditto,” I groan again, rubbing my food baby.
“Do you want to cab it back to the hotel?”
“No, I need to burn off the eight thousand calories I just consumed.”
“Right,” he deadpans. “That should only take us twenty years. What are you going to do with the money you won?”
I shrug. “I don’t suppose you’d take it to even the expense score?”
He shakes his head with a smirk. “No way, I was promised sexual favors for that.”
I snap my fingers in an aw shucks way. “Ah, that’s right. Damn. Then I guess I’ll save it, or donate it, or both. I really don’t know.”
We make it back to our room, and I swear we both waddle our way into the bedroom, where I proceed to flop down onto the bed. He climbs in beside me, pulling me up so I’m sitting next to him, leaning against the headboard and his arm.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that we met once upon a time as kids, only to meet again as adults and go on this insane trip together?”
“I guess so,” he shrugs a shoulder. “You haven’t changed much since you were six, you know.” He looks down on me with his crooked smile.
“How can you remember me so well? It was ages ago.”
“You did make quite the impression—” I can hear the smile in his voice, “—especially knocking that huge chocolate cake onto the floor.”
I bolt upright, staring at him with wide eyes, and startling him a bit. “That was you?” I ask, bewildered. There’s just no way.
“What do you mean?” he looks confused.
“I remember dropping that cake.”
He smiles, pleased. “You ran off crying. I followed you, since you went into my room.” I get an eyebrow for that. “For some reason you went in there to pout. You were more upset about not getting to eat the cake than you were about your mother yelling at you,” he chuckles lightly at that.
Sitting back on my haunches, I inch towards him on the bed until my knees are touching his thigh. With my hand covering my mouth, I speak through my fingers. “You sat me on your lap.” I cannot believe that was him. “And ran your hands down my hair while I cried before you kissed my cheek and said—”
“Don’t worry, Katie,” he interrupts, repeating what he said to me that day. “When we’re old and married I’ll buy you cake whenever you want.”
I nod, so totally mystified. “Yes. How was that you?”
He laughs. “What’s the big deal? You’re looking at me like I’m a ghost, or a figment of your imagination or something.”
“Dude,” I reach out and smack his shoulder. “Because you basically are.” I can’t get over this. I crawl onto his lap so I’m straddling his thighs, his hands automatically come up to grasp my hips. “Your hair was lighter,” I run my fingers through his dark strands. “And when we left your house, I cried a lot. I told my mother that I had met a prince and since I couldn’t remember your name, I called you Peter.”
He laughs lightly, smiling a lot. He likes this story. “Peter?”
“Yup. You reminded me of Peter Parker for some reason, but I was heavy into princesses at the time, so I thought you were my prince. I held onto that, onto you, for a very long time.”
“Really?” He’s having trouble believing me.
“Promise. But as time went by you became more of an imaginary friend than a memory or a real person, but you always saved me.” I lean forward to kiss his lips softly, before pulling back and resting my head against his hard chest. His hand runs down my hair, much the way he had that day twenty-one years ago.
“I begged my mother every day to have you come back and visit us, or to have us go see you.” The sound of his speaking vibrates through his chest into my ear. His heart beat a steady staccato. “I was ten and you were only six, but I couldn’t get you out of my head,” he lets out a shaky breath, my head rising and falling with the effort. “I saw you again when I was twenty-two, and you were eighteen.”
I sit up in his lap, staring him in the eyes. “What?” I scrunch my eyebrows in confusion. “When?”
He smiles, but his eyes are hesitant, nervous even. “It was my last semester at school and I was returning to Boston from a weekend at home. My mother had given me a package of some kind to deliver to your mother, so I went to your house to drop it off.” My mouth pops open. “I rang the bell and no one was home so I left the box on the front step, when a car pulled into the driveway. A girl with dark hair was driving and when you stepped out of the car, our eyes met and you smiled at me.” He runs his hand across my cheek and through my hair tenderly. “The second I saw you, my breath caught in my chest.” A small smile curls the corners of his lips and his eyes sparkle, full of memories. “I couldn’t even speak. It was like I had been stunned. I knew who you were instantly and I figured you wouldn’t recognize me, but just as I was about to call out to you, a guy—who I assume was Eric—got out of the car and called your attention away from me. He put his arm around your waist and pulled you in for a quick kiss, and any nerve I had died right there.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I just sit here and stare at him in quiet disbelief.
“I was almost done with school and I knew I’d be leaving Boston. You were only eighteen, not even graduated from high school yet, and you clearly had a boyfriend. So I left without speaking to you, even though I really wanted to.” He leans forward to kiss my lips, pulling back to rest his forehead against mine for only a moment. “You stayed with me after that day, again,” he emphasizes. “One way or another, Katie, you’ve been on my mind since I was ten years old. That’s why when my mother told me you were leaving Boston, driving across the country and was willing to take me, I called you. I debated it, believe me, I did. I knew what you’d been through. That you’d lost Eric and Maggie,” he grimaces a little as he says their names, like he’s af
raid of hurting me.
It does hurt. It always will, but I need to start being okay with that hurt instead of always running from it.
“But I also knew that if I didn’t at least contact you and see what your situation was, I’d always regret it.” He leans forward, dropping his forehead to mine again. “And Katie? I’m so fucking happy that I made that call. Whatever happens—or doesn’t happen for that matter—I’ll never regret these weeks with you.”
“I’m scared,” I whisper before I can stop the words.
“I know, baby. Me too.”
“I don’t know what to do, Ryan. I really don’t.”
He cups my cheek, holding me in place so I have to meet his eyes. “We don’t have to decide anything now. We can just continue on and see where we end up. I don’t want to pressure you, Katie. I don’t. I’m in this no matter the outcome, but I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what I’m hoping for,” he sighs out. “But I’ll take what I can get with you. Even if it’s just friendship. I’m okay with that. I just want you around.”
I have no answers. I’m all unknowns and paradoxes.
So I kiss him. I run my fingers through his beard and I kiss him hard. Telling him with my lips what I can’t with my words.
“Katie,” he whispers against me reverently. I love it when he does that. He groans, running his hands through my hair and down my back to the top of my bottom, where he freezes.
I’m tired of all these rules.
I’m tired of a lot lately, but I know in my soul that I’ll never find another man like Ryan. If I’m going to sleep with anyone else again, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather do that with than him. Reaching up, I pull my shirt over my head, making him gasp.
“Katie?” This time it’s a question.
My fingers find his hair again. “I want you to touch me, Ryan.”
His eyes turn to twin pools of heat and he swallows hard. “Are you sure?”