by Joey Bush
“Please. Tell me what’s going on,” he whispered.
I cleared my throat. I could hardly look at him. “I just. My father died when I was really, really young. Nine. But before that, I remember the alcohol. The gambling. The drugs. He did it all at a casino outside of Indianapolis. It disgusted me, the way he used our money. He just completely obliterated my family, and then he left us.” I felt my body shaking.
Drew placed his fingers on my shoulders, kneading into my skin with his strong thumb. He sighed. We continued to listen to the music rollicking from the casino. “Molly. I’m so sorry to hear this.” His eyes were so firm, so stoic. “You know I lost my father when I was quite young, as well.”
I shook my head, feeling my heart break all over again. “What happened?” But he just shook his head; he didn’t want to go into it. I didn’t want anyone else to go through that sheer pain I had gone through; I didn’t want anyone to have to endure the loss of a parent. This was still so strong in me—this pain—all these years later. “I’m so sorry.” My voice broke.
The silence between us drove us to listen to the humming conversation of the people, the roll of the great machines. He kneaded more and more against my skin, helping me to relax. “Tell you what,” he murmured. “We’re already here, yeah? We’ve driven all this way?”
I nodded. I was adamant about not playing, but this didn’t mean we couldn’t enter. He had come all the way to Iowa for this place; it had to be special to him. I wanted to know what was important to him. Could I be important to him? Or was I a floozy, just another woman? Perhaps he did this with all the girls.
“We’re already here. And I won’t spend very much, okay? I’ll just spend five thousand at a time.”
My eyes widened, shocked at his throwing away five thousand dollars, just at a time. To me, this was more money than I had ever seen in one place. This money would save my life. And to him—it was like betting five dollars. Maybe ten.
“Just five thousand,” he assured me again, looking for a nod, a yes, anything.
And so I gave it. “Of course,” I murmured. “Five is good.”
He traced my face with his finger and leaned down, giving my nose a small tap with his lips. Something trembled inside of me. “It’s going to be all right.”
We waltzed into the immaculate casino. I stood on his arm like a queen. A few of the most beautiful people I had ever seen—again and again—looked toward us, eyeing us as the competition. Their eyes flashed. I poised my face in such a way that seemed high and mighty. I arched my eyebrow toward the women who glared at me and they turned away, frightened, suddenly, at my appearance of wealth.
If they only knew, I thought, about my smelly apartment and my cat Boomer. The thought made me giddy with happiness. How we can pretend to be people we’re absolutely not, even when we’re so starkly ourselves on the inside.
Drew rounded the corner and traded his five thousand for chips. I looked at the chips in his hand as he slipped them into his pocket. He pulled one out and looked at me, kissing it precisely. He handed it to me. “For good luck,” he murmured. I felt its frigidness in my fingers as I folded it back and forth in my hands. How much was each one worth? Did I want to know?
We walked toward the blackjack table. In my head, I knew Drew would be a blackjack player, so much like my losing father. My father always told my mother and me that he started out winning, every evening. That he got hot. And then—and then—the tables changed. They altered. I arched my eyebrow toward Drew, uncertain. Was he a winner? He sat down at the table and patted the soft green. The man dealt him and the others in. I stood behind him, watching his cards, watching how so many of the other players lost and lost, while Drew continued to win. Did these people all have millions of dollars to blow? Were they all maintaining the five thousand dollar rule?
“And another one for Thompson,” the dealer declared to the world, hitting Drew with more and more coins. Drew looked at the coins dispassionately, as if un-amused by them. He aligned them in a little colony on his right. I watched as the stacks grew higher and higher.
I was holding onto his arm, my eyes bright in my head. I had given up on sad thoughts of my father, especially on my third martini. I remembered how my mother had turned so hateful, so riotous in the days after his death. She had disallowed everything, and thusly, I had fled. I didn’t belong there.
But this man—this handsome man before me—was such a winner. He understood the intricacies of money; he understood how it lived, how it breathed. He could manipulate it however he wanted. “You are so talented,” I murmured, kissing him on the forehead. I didn’t know why I did it; it just felt right.
“Talent has nothing to do with it,” Drew said toward me. “It’s luck.” He turned back toward the dealer, declaring that he was ready to take a break. The dealer bowed his head toward him, and Drew marched from the table, taking me on his arm. I looked back at the other sad sacks who remained on, looking at their chips in confusion. How had they lost so much? How would they tell their wives, their husbands about what had happened there that evening? I imagined the world beyond the glamor, beyond the high heels, beyond the make-up; the world that had existed, for example, in my own home. It hadn’t been beautiful. It had been lonely, desolate. We had had to make tough decisions, like trading in televisions for food money or giving up on ideas of vacations just to keep the house.
But I had to right my brain about it. I was pretty smart about money; I was doing the best I could. I didn’t normally gamble. Sure, I had lost my dance studio. But it had been through no real fault of my own. I wasn’t going out and spending, spending, and gambling. I was simply treading water in a wayward sea.
Drew, in this moment, was my rock. My pillar. I turned toward him as I walked away from the blackjack table.
“How are you seriously so good at that?” I hissed at him. I gripped his arm tight as I kept winding my head around, looking at everyone else in the casino. Everyone else appeared to be losing. Drew had mastered this game, this path.
But Drew looked at me with a harsh smile. “You’re going to want to keep your voice down,” he murmured. “You want to know how I win so much?”
I nodded, my eyes large. “Please. Tell me.”
Drew whispered in my ear. I could feel his breath hot on my neck. “I count cards.”
My face grew bright with admiration. Drew was not only cheating at this gambling situation; he was also a blissful genius. He wasn’t really gambling at all—not like my father who blindly gave away our things, our life. Rather, he had his money and he made it bigger.
“How do you do it?” I whispered back. I sipped on my martini, loving the way the liquid rolled over my tongue.
“I’ll teach you, if you like,” he murmured back.
He rushed through the basics in the corner by the bar. Girls continued delivering us drinks, as if on cue. “I just have them keep them coming when I’m here,” Drew explained as he sipped from his whiskey. I was already quite drunk; he was looking blurrier and more handsome every time I sipped from my drink. Casinos were marvelous; high living was marvelous.
“Okay. So you know, you need to beat the dealer. Yeah?” he began. I nodded. “Okay. When you count cards, you have to remember; cards between 2 and 6 have a value of a plus one. Cards between seven and nine have a value of zero. Cards between ten and ace have a value of negative one.”
“Negative one,” I repeated, trying to keep it all straight in my head. I had never been great at math, and my palms had begun to sweat. Could I really do this? I couldn’t even keep funds to my name. “Wait—Can I put up your tokens? I don’t have—I mean. I don’t want to bet any of my own money.” My face burned as I asked this.
But Drew wasn’t embarrassed. He simply waved his hand in front of his face, tossing it away. “Of course. Of course.” He cleared his throat and took another sip of whiskey. “So. As you play, you add up the numbers. You have to bet when the card count is higher than plus three. Do you understa
nd?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“They’re playing with two decks over there, though. So. You have to divide the number you have by two to get your true number count. Does that make sense?”
I nodded once more. “Two decks. Divide by two. Got it.”
“Do you think you want to try this?”
I spoke through the alcohol. “I’m willing to try anything once,” I said saucily. His eyes met with mine, and suddenly we knew—we knew we wanted to fuck. We were on the same page. I walked back toward the blackjack table, feeling my ass move this way, then that as I walked. I knew he was watching. I sat at the same seat that had been Drew’s and gave the dealer a single nod in greeting. I flashed him a bit of cleavage. I wasn’t sure who I was, who I had become. But I loved the daring of it all. I nodded to the other people at the blackjack table—the people who were trying to earn back what they’d lost. The woman on the end from Missouri. The man in the middle without hair. The Asian man who punched the table every time he lost—which was every time. Frustration churned on.
The dealer greeted me with familiarity. “Madame.” I nodded toward him. In the back of my mind, I couldn’t believe I was in the middle of Iowa, that I was in the midst of cornfields, of simple folk. All around me were beautiful millionaires and piles of money.
“Hit me,” I said. I counted the cards. First a four. Then a ten. I thought in my head; Plus one. Minus one. I continued counting until—about ten minutes later—I found myself hit with a plus six. My eyes wide, I found myself winning that round. And then the next. And then the next.
Drew stood by me stoically as I used his chips. “That’s my girl,” were his only words as I sat there, focused and counting, counting, counting.
It was like I was addicted suddenly. I couldn’t get enough. The drinks kept coming; my blood pressure kept rising. After an hour, I had won over ten thousand dollars. My head was spinning. I could buy the goddamned studio! The dance studio could be mine; I wouldn’t be in danger of losing my apartment. My eyes were large as the dealer kept dealing, and the chips were sent my way.
After another twenty minutes things started to die down. The count died on the table, and I turned toward Drew, ready to give it a rest. “I don’t know how my father got addicted, really,” I murmured, looking down at the plethora of coins, feeling like I was waking up from a dream. My blood pressure started to release. I could breathe again. “It really does get old after a while.”
“I can only come here every few months, get it out of my system. You earned quite a lot of coins, there, natural.” He winked at me. “Let’s go cash in your winnings.”
But I started shaking my head vehemently. We couldn’t cash in my winnings; these weren’t my winnings. “I would have never been able to put the money up,” I murmured. “These are yours. They came from your money. I can’t take them—“
“Come on, Mol. You earned this money. This should go to you.” He smiled at me good-naturedly, but he sensed a darkness in me—a prideful nature. He hung his head for a moment before walking toward the exchange and collecting the winnings. He stuffed them in a yellow envelope and pushed them into a secret, inner-jacket pocket. He looked at me, nodding, noting that my eyes were dripping with fatigue. The flashing lights, the slot machines were knocking into my brain. I was happy to see him taking the money I’d earned, but I still felt a gnawing ache about it. After all; that was more money than I’d ever seen before.
“Shall we go?”
I jumped toward him, kissing him on the cheek. I felt the immense excitement of the evening’s festivities; I felt the high-esteem of winning and winning and winning, chip after chip. “What an adventure,” I murmured into his ear, allowing my lips to trace his neck.
We raced back to the Porsche. Drew tossed the valet two hundred dollars to drive us back to the hotel; we were far too drunk, too committed to laughing in the back seat, rolling around and holding our stomachs.
“You, Molly—big-eyed and saying you just don’t know if you CAN count cards,” Drew laughed, holding onto his stomach. “I can’t believe you conned me. You conned me!”
I slapped him on the knee, giggling myself. “What can I say? I’m just a natural.” The valet driver up front drove us fast through the night toward the hotel, and I leaned my head toward Drew’s, allowing my forehead to connect with his. “It was a beautiful night.”
And it was. I couldn’t get over how much fun it had been. As he helped me from the Porsche and gave the valet more money to get home from the hotel, I longed to hold onto him, to hug him close to my body. I felt my breasts bounce as we rushed into the hotel, our hands linked.
As we clattered into the glass elevator, I sensed everyone looking at us once more; the rich people, the blonde bimbo and her grand millionaire. But I didn’t care. I caught him close to me and brought him in an intimate hug. His eyes caught on mine, and he whispered into my ear. “Say. Would you want to—would you want to go to the Jacuzzi? It’s personal; off to the side of the hotel room.”
My eyes were wide as he spoke.
“It’s just. I’m not ready to let the night end yet. You know?”
I nodded at this, feeling the excitement drape around me like a cloth. The elevator shot into the sky and I leaned heavy against him, ready to throw myself into the evening, whatever the costs. The feeling of all that money in my hand—all those coins—had given me a sense of power, a sense that everything in the world was possible. This, beyond anything else, churned me to cling to this beautiful man, to hold onto every moment.
CHAPTER NINE
We rushed into the hotel room and off to the side, where—sure enough—there sat a bubbling Jacuzzi. The Jacuzzi room featured grand windows that stretched above the Jacuzzi and on all sides, making you feel like you were situated in a sort of shell. I felt the alcohol in my blood as I gazed at the Jacuzzi, as I turned toward Drew beside me, who was watching me as well. He reached up to his shirt and began unbuttoning, all the way down to his waist.
I smiled at him, feeling oddly nervous. I knew we had been together before, that he had seen me naked. But this time felt different; it felt purposeful. I pulled my gown from my head, revealing my low-cut bra that barely held my breasts in it, and my thong. The bra and underwear were red. I didn’t know why I packed such sexy underwear; I had simply longed to have the option—just in case I turned my body over to this handsome, god-like man.
I sauntered lightly into the Jacuzzi, feeling the hot water roll up around me, over my arms, along my slim waist. I smiled at him as I sat in it up to my chin. “Aren’t you going to join me?” I asked him saucily, feeling the drunkenness waft through me.
Drew held up one finger, standing in just his boxers. He walked toward the kitchen and came back with a bottle of Jack Daniels. I raised my eyebrow at him, deep in a blurred level of drunkenness. He took a small sip from the bottle and handed it to me as he got into the Jacuzzi, making slight waves in the water. “Take a sip,” he whispered.
I did. He smiled as I pulled it away from my lips, gazing at his body as he stood above me in the water. He held the glass bottle. “You were great in there, today.”
“Yeah?”
“You were remarkable. Most girls get sort of nervous when they’re counting cards. They think it’s illegal or something.”
“It’s rather simple,” I said. “But satisfying.” I raised my eyebrows high in the air, looking at him with a sense of sexual playfulness. Was this going to happen?
“I’m sorry I brought you there, though. I didn’t realize that your father had died, leaving, I’m guess, you and your mother without a dime. What a dick.”
I hung my head. I didn’t want to get into it. “It’s all right. It happened a long time ago.” I blinked my eyes at him. “And what about you? You said your father died when you were young?”
He nodded and took another sip. “Drunk driving. Crashed into a tree. Which is why I don’t drink and drive at all. You’ll notice I hired the valet to br
ing us back here.”
“Your safety is really rare.” I rose up, bringing my body closer to his. I could feel a vibrancy about him. My body was pulsing with longing, one that I couldn’t retreat from. “I’m glad you take care of yourself. And me.” I was inches away from his mouth. I longed for him to kiss me, to wrap me in his arms. I longed for him to hold me, to fuck me the way he used to—before I knew about the dance studio, before I knew he had destroyed my life.
I touched his waist and watched as he pulled down his boxers, revealing his pulsing dick in the water. He tossed the boxers from the Jacuzzi, allowing them to flop on the ground outside of the water. He grabbed at my bra and brought the straps down over my arms, revealing my breasts as they popped from their hiding place. My nipples were hot, pointed. My breasts were tingling. He unlatched the bra in back and tossed it to the ground. We smiled at each other, nervous.
He yanked at my underwear. I reached down and touched my hot and revving pussy. He watched me as I did it, and he leaned toward me, kissing my mouth and placing his lips around my nipple. His tongue coursed around the nipple, making me feel so hot, so good. He brought his fingers to my pussy and began rubbing me, making me horny out of my mind. I looked up at his eyes, my own wide and nearly panicked with passion. I wanted him so bad.
I pushed him against the Jacuzzi wall and pushed his dick into my dripping pussy. I started fucking him, allowing my breasts to bounce above his head, around his shoulders. His eyes rolled back into his head and he grabbed me around the waist, easing me over his dick, forcing me to fuck him slowly, passionately.
He was about to cum. I could sense it about him. Suddenly, right before he did, I eased off him, tempting him with my wet, dripping body. I waved my finger in front of his face, shaking my head. “Not yet, baby,” I whispered.
