Aces Up

by Lauren Barnholdt

  And then his mouth opens slightly and his tongue is in my mouth and we fall down to the bed and we’re kissing and his hands are on my back and I can feel my body responding to his.

  I pull away from the kiss first, not because I want to, but because it seems like the right thing to do. I mean, that’s crazy, me kissing Cole. It doesn’t make sense. I like Max. Actually, no. I don’t like Max. I don’t like anyone. I like being alone, thank you very much. Single and drama free. Besides, isn’t Cole kind of like my boss now? I don’t think it’s the best idea to be hooking up with your boss. Nothing good can come of that.

  “We should go,” I say, sitting up. I smooth my hair and look at the ground. “Downstairs. So I can put what you taught me into action.”

  “Right,” he says, grinning at me. “I bet you just can’t wait to put what I’ve taught you into action.”

  “Stop being such an ass,” I say. I stand up and Cole follows me out the door and onto the elevator.

  “I’m going to sit with you,” he says as the doors shut. I watch the numbers start their descent, and I get more excited as we get closer to the poker room. “At the same table, I mean.”

  “Okay,” I say, suddenly nervous. I don’t want him sitting with me. It feels like too much scrutiny. The other night, when I wanted him to sit with me, he didn’t want to. Now, all of a sudden, he wants to bring me out there. “But why?”

  “So you can watch me,” he says. “And I can watch you.”

  Great. My heart starts beating at about three hundred miles a minute.

  We get right into a three-six table. And for once, I have to agree that Cole might be right. About my outfit. The guys at the table react to me in a different way than the guys did the other night. They don’t take me seriously, yet at the same time, they act flustered around me, like everything’s different now that a girl in a sexy outfit is sitting at their table.

  Cole sits down a few minutes after I do, and we pretend like we don’t know each other.

  He raises his eyebrows, and gives me little looks and signals that make me slow down, think, and run all the numbers in my head.

  And when the guy next to me orders a glass of red wine, I follow suit and do the same. So that’s how I spend the night, drinking a little wine, playing poker, watching Cole, and feeling sophisticated and exhilarated. Every time another pile of chips gets pushed across the table to me, my heart beats fast, and every time I have to fold a hand, my heart sinks and I wait impatiently until I can get into another one.

  It’s a complete and total rush, and I love the feeling of the cards beneath my fingers, the excitement in the air, and the knowing that anything could happen. By the end of the night, I’ve won three hundred dollars.

  And by the time I leave the casino, it’s five-thirty in the morning.

  Once I’m on my way home, the three hundred dollars tucked neatly into my purse, my high starts to fade. Fast. One, not only have I made out with Cole, but two, I have been out all night. Playing poker. Which means that I will now have to figure out a way to sneak inside my house, get ready for school, and head off without anyone’s being the wiser. Of course, I’ll be going to school on pretty much no sleep, but if I can just get through the morning, I think I might be able to skip my afternoon classes by faking sick, then come home and take a nap before work.

  I’m pretty confident in my sneak-in-and-sneak-out-to-school plan, until I open the door to my house and find Robyn sitting at the table, a book open in front of her.

  “Oh, hello,” she says, looking up at me.

  “Oh, hello,” I say. I feel my mouth go dry, and my face gets hot. Lying to Leonardo is one thing, but fooling my sister … I’ve never really done it before this whole casino thing. And I’m not sure if I can pull it off. “I was just, um, out taking a walk before school.” I give her a big smile, like “Isn’t fitness great?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Dressed like that?” I look down at the dress I’m wearing, the one I stole from her closet. It’s now totally disheveled from all the, um, hanging out I was doing on Cole’s bed, and it smells of the general disgustingness that is the air of the casino.

  “Fine,” I say, deciding to give her limited information. “I was out, but if you tell Mom or Dad, I’m going to kill you.”

  “Out doing what?” she asks, excited. She slams her book shut and looks like she’s ready to settle in for a sister-to-sister chat.

  “Just, you know,” I say, “out.” I figure this should suffice, since I’ve never asked Robyn where she’s gone when she’s out late and needs me to cover for her. Which, by the way, I’ve done tons of times. Of course, it’s pretty much known that she’s always out with Leonardo, so it’s not like what she’s done or where she’s been is some big secret. I, on the other hand, have never snuck in late at night after being out with a guy, so this is kind of a big deal.

  “With a guy?” Robyn asks. Her voice is all singsongy.

  “Yes,” I say. Not a lie.

  “With Max?” She grins, and I feel bad, because I don’t want to lie to her, but I can’t tell her the truth now, can I? So I just smile in what I hope is a mysterious way that she takes to mean “yes” but is technically not an answer, and then say, “What are you doing up so early, anyway?”

  “I have class at eight,” she says. “And we’re having a test, so I decided to do a little early-morning studying.” She glances at the clock and frowns. “Actually, Leonardo was supposed to be here by now to take me to the library.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” I say. I grab a protein shake out of the fridge (they’re my dad’s, but I figure I’m going to need some kind of energy boost if I’m going to make it through the morning) and head upstairs, where I wash my face, brush my teeth, and pull a brush through my hair. I change into jeans and a sweater, then head back out the door to school.

  I don’t even see my mom or my dad, and I get to school half an hour early. And I don’t even feel tired. Is it possible that this might really be that easy? That I’m going to be able to get away with playing poker every night, that I’ll be able to make hundreds of dollars and stop when I have enough for Wellesley, and that I won’t get into trouble? I mean, it seems completely unlikely and unfair, but so far so good.

  I’m so busy pondering the possibilities of this throughout first period that I don’t realize that Parvati has followed me out of math. I’m at my locker, getting my books for my next class (and trying to resist the urge to check my phone to see if Cole has texted me), when she finally comes up to me.

  “Helllooo, Shannon,” she says, leaning against the locker next to mine. I jump.

  “Oh,” I say. “Hi.” I’m really not in the mood to hear about her and Max, or her and Wellesley, or her and the math scholarship, or her and [insert anything here]. So I do my best to try and ignore her, even though I know it’s futile. Parvati does not take hints. But then she reaches over and slams my locker door shut before I’m even done getting my books.

  “Hey,” I say. “I wasn’t done in there!”

  “What,” she demands, crossing her arms over her chest, “happened between you and Max?”

  Oh. My. God. Okay. Deep breath. There is no need to panic. I mean, there’s no way she could know about me and Max, right? God, what if she knows about me and Max? What if Max told her? Why would Max tell her? What guy is that stupid? Unless he’s one of those guys with tons of integrity, ugh. Wait a minute. If Max told Parvati what happened, why would she be asking me what happened? She would already know.

  More likely, she heard about something happening and is now trying to figure it out.

  “Um,” I say, stalling for time and information. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” she says, “that you were seen having a fight with him in the hall yesterday.” She jams her finger into my chest, and I take a step back. We were seen? By who? It was early in the morning; the halls were completely deserted. Although I guess maybe we were being pretty loud, and now that I th
ink about it, I do remember seeing a few kids wandering around. But I thought they were just some freshman walkers.

  “Oh, that,” I say. “That was nothing.” I give a little chuckle and wave my hand at her dismissively. “We weren’t even fighting, really. All we did was have a little bit of a yell. Not even a yell. It was more like some raised voices.” Parvati doesn’t look convinced. “It was nothing,” I repeat lamely.

  “What was nothing?” Parvati demands, and suddenly she looks kind of … wild. Her hair is all sticking up (Parvati’s hair is usually very smooth), and her eyes have this crazed look in them. I’ve never seen her like this, and I start to become a little frightened, even though she’s only five foot one.

  “The thing that happened in the hall,” I whisper.

  “What DID HAPPEN IN THE HALL?” Parvati’s having a bit of a yell herself at this point, and now she’s pretty close to my face. I have a bad feeling that if I don’t give her the right answer, she might just go crazy. Maybe even punch me.

  “Now,” she says. “You better tell me, and tell me good.” Tell her good? Wow. That’s a little … extreme.

  “Look,” I say. “We were, uh, having a fight about tutoring. Max thought I wasn’t giving it my all, and so he got a little heated with me.” I sigh and push my hair out of my face. I roll my eyes as if to say, “You know how Max is about his math.”

  She narrows her eyes at me. “I don’t believe you,” she finally says.

  “Um, you don’t?”

  “No,” she says. She studies me up and down and then crosses her arms over her green polo shirt. “Because if you two were just fighting about the tutoring, then why did he break up with me?”

  “Why did he what?” I ask. Parvati and Max broke up? My heart beats a little faster as I wonder if maybe it had anything to do with me.

  “WHY DID HE BREAK UP WITH ME?” Parvati yells. Several people turn to stare.

  “Walk,” I say, grabbing her shirt and pulling her down the hall with me. I lead her into the alcove by the stairs. “Listen,” I say, “I don’t know why he broke up with you.” And then, all at once, the fight seems to drain right out of her. Her whole face crumples up like tissue paper, and the next thing I know, she’s crying.

  “I don’t know, either,” she says. “I just … I just wish …”

  Wow. This is really awkward, having an emotional moment with your math archenemy, the ex-girlfriend of the guy you used to be in love with, in the alcove where people usually go to make out.

  “I just wish …” Parvati takes a big sniff.

  “You just wish what?” I say. I move in so I can hear her, but Parvati seems to think this means I want to hug her, and she steps in close to me. I place my arms awkwardly around her back. Oh, God.

  “I just wish it hadn’t happened,” she says. “I mean, we were so happy together. We even had a great weekend.”

  “What did he say exactly?” I ask, wondering if it makes me a horrible person that I’m really hoping their breakup had something to do with me.

  “He didn’t give me a good reason,” she says, sniffing again. “He just kept saying he needed space.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. I try to smooth her hair down in the back.

  “It is?” she asks.

  “It is,” I say. “It’ll all work out one way or the other.”

  “It will?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. She pulls away from me, and I reach into my bag and hand her a tissue. She blows her nose obediently. “Here, take this.” I pull out my iPod and shove it into her hands. “Listen to the playlist that’s called Boys Suck.”

  She looks at me blankly. “Boys Suck?” she repeats.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know it’s not all that original, but I think you’ll like it.”

  “Thanks,” she says, slipping the buds into her ears and scrolling through the songs.

  “And, Parvati,” I say, “if you want to know why Max broke up with you, then you should ask him again. You deserve an explanation.”

  ? ? ? ?

  I know Max has second period free, and that he usually spends it in the library. I know this because once (okay, twice), I accidentally maybe on purpose followed him. But that was at the beginning of the year, when I was still holding out hope that we might be friends again.

  But whatever. If I just happen to be in the library second period, and if I just happen to see Max waiting in line to check out a book, and if I just happen to go talk to him, it’s totally fine, since:

  a) I don’t even like him anymore. I mean, I just kissed someone else last night. Still. I smooth my hair self-consciously and hope he doesn’t notice the dark circles under my eyes.

  b) I need to tell him to talk to Parvati and tell her there’s nothing going on with us, before I end up in the middle of all their drama.

  “We need to talk,” I say, walking up to him in the library checkout line.

  “Oh, now you want to talk,” he says, repeating my words from yesterday. At the front of the line, a harried-looking student worker is trying to check people out. Why is the line so long, anyway? Who still checks books out of the school library?

  “Look,” I say, “you need to talk to Parvati, you need to give her a reason why you broke up with her, because she thinks it has something to do with me.”

  There’s a few seconds of silence, and for a moment, I’m almost thinking (hoping) that he’s going to say it does have something to do with me, but then he says, “Why did you lie to me about your fake ID?” I’m thrown by the change in topic.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask, frowning.

  “You told me you were using the fake ID so that you could get a job at the casino to pay for Wellesley.”

  “I was,” I say. “I mean, I did.” Geez. What is the deal with all the questions? I’m the one who’s come here to confront him, to tell him he’d better start being honest with his girlfriend. I don’t owe him anything. He’s not even my friend! He’s just a guy who I used to be friends with, who I accidentally kissed, and who I maybe kind of sort of still like. No! I mean, who I kind of sort of don’t still like. No, who I definitely don’t still like, because—

  “Then how come Chris Harmon saw you at the casino last night, playing poker with a bunch of guys?”

  “That,” I say haughtily, “is none of your business.” Also, how is everyone at the casino all the time? First Leonardo, now Chris Harmon. Really, the place has to get a better system of IDing people. I don’t know why I was so nervous about my fake birth certificate; they’re obviously just letting anyone in. If I wasn’t getting in with a fake ID, I would totally call the news and tip them off.

  “Are you … Shannon, do you have a gambling problem?” He’s looking at me seriously, and I gape at him. Is he kidding me?

  “Are you kidding me?” I ask.

  A sophomore girl in front of us in line turns around and shushes us.

  “Sorry,” I say. I turn back to Max. “Are you kidding me?” I whisper.

  “No, I just …”

  “I do not have a gambling problem,” I say. “And not that it’s any of your business, but if you must know, yes, I was at the casino playing poker. Who cares? Lots of people play poker.”

  “Fine,” Max says. “It’s not a big deal, I was just worried about you, that’s all.” He’s at the front of the line now, and he sets his book down in front of the student worker, who opens the book and scans it. My heart catches in my chest. Max was worried about me? But then I remember that Max has my number, and if he was so worried about me, he could have called.

  “You were worried about me?” I ask. “Just all of a sudden?”

  “No,” he says. “Not all of a sudden. You’re my friend.”

  I look at him incredulously. “We’re friends?” I ask. “Because that’s news to me. Friends call each other. Friends talk to each other and hang out. And friends don’t kiss each other and then never talk again!”

  “Max Heller?” the student work
er says, looking between the two of us nervously. “Um, you have an overdue library book.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Max says. “What book is it?”

  “The Stand,” the worker says. “Stephen King?”

  “Yeah, I know who wrote it,” Max says, sounding annoyed. He pulls out his wallet. “Can I just pay for it?”

  “And besides,” I say, getting angrier, “you don’t have to worry about me. Because I was there with a guy.”

  “A guy?” Max frowns.

  “Yeah,” I say. “My new boyfriend.” Granted, that’s a little bit of a stretch. Even I know that one kiss does not a boyfriend make. But I’m not going to say that to Max. “I was there with my new hookup” definitely doesn’t pack the same punch.

  “Your new boyfriend?” Max looks at me incredulously. “You have a new boyfriend after you kissed me the other night?”

  “I. Was. Drunk,” I hiss. “And you kissed me, too.”

  “You were drunk?” he asks, ignoring the part about his kissing me, too. “And so your lips just happened to fall onto mine?” His voice is a little raised now, and the student worker, whose name tag reads “Ron,” starts to look super-nervous.

  “Yes, you can pay for it,” Ron says. “Twenty-seven ninety-five.”

  “They didn’t fall onto yours,” I say. “I was tipsy. I can’t be held responsible for what I did the other night. It was nothing, it was just”—I wave my hand—“a drunken mistake.” The words almost catch in my throat, but I’m able to push them through.

  “Fine,” Max says. I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or Ron.

  “Fine?”

  “Fine that you have a boyfriend now, and fine, I’ll pay twenty-seven ninety-five for the stupid book.” He pulls two twenties out of his wallet and drops them onto the counter.

  “I’ll have to get you some change,” Ron says. The idea seems to send him into a little bit of a panic.