He opens his mouth as if to respond, then he shuts it. He looks down at his lap. “Sorry,” he finally says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
An apology. Wow. Didn’t expect that.
“So you’ll come gamble with me?” I ask.
“Sure.” He gives me that half-shrug. “Why not?”
Chapter 20
Alex
It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a casino.
It used to be something fun—a way to pick up some extra cash and hang out with my buddies. Or impress a girl I was dating. Because I’m really fucking good at it. There are a lot of things I’m good at, but gambling is up there. I don’t care if that sounds arrogant—it’s the truth.
The casino at the Venetian is crowded. There are dozens of people milling about the slot machines as they ding for occasional victories, and there are two rows of people lining each roulette table. Those games are a waste of time. The odds are stacked in favor of the casino.
A loud cheer resounds from a nearby table, which makes my skin crawl. Crowds were always something I enjoyed or at least didn’t notice, but all the crowds I’ve encountered on this trip are wearing on me. Can I just be in one goddamn place where I don’t have to worry about crashing into something with my wheelchair?
Nellie must notice my discomfort, because she leans in close to my ear: “Do you need me to steer again?”
“No,” I say quickly. Hell no. This casino is crowded, but I can manage. I’m going to manage.
She scans the crowd, her eyes wide. I don’t think she’s gambled much in her life. This is a new scene for her. Even though she had to drag me here kicking and screaming, I’m glad I get to be the guy who takes her here.
“What do you want to do first?” she asks me. “Slot machines? Video poker? Roulette?”
“Blackjack,” I say.
I see one blackjack table off to the side but I’m sure we’ll find plenty more. We need to locate a table that has three or four players, but not too crowded that I’ll be pushing people aside with my chair.
“Blackjack?” She crinkles her nose. “Is that fun?”
“It’s fun if you play with me.”
She arches an eyebrow at me while I try not to think about how sexy she is. “Why?”
I hesitate. Once I tell her this, I can’t take it back. But what the hell. It’s not like I’m going to score with her. “I know how to count cards,” I say quietly.
“You can count cards!” she cries, much too loudly.
“Can you keep your voice down please?” I glare at her. “Yeah, I can.”
“Don’t they use like six or seven decks?”
“It doesn’t matter. I can still keep track.”
“Like with a machine…?”
“Yeah, a machine called my brain.”
She’s giving me a funny look, which is something I’m used to. The funny look because I’m strapped to a wheelchair is still new for me, but the funny look because of my memory for numbers is something I’ve been experiencing for a long time. My whole life. In high school, I used to keep it to myself because I wanted to be cool, and you don’t get a reputation of being cool if you’re freakishly good at math.
“I’m just good at remembering numbers,” I say simply.
She scratches at her chin, studying my face. “You said that the first time we met.”
“Did I?”
She nods. “So what does that mean, exactly? Can you do math in your head or something?”
“Uh, yeah,” I say, knowing from experience what’s coming next. “I can.”
Naturally, Nellie whips out her phone. She brings up the calculator function on the screen and flashes me a toothy grin that shows off her crooked incisor. “Okay, smart guy. What’s 537 times 821?”
I’m not as fast as the calculator. I’m not a freaking computer. But after a minute, I reply, “It’s 440,877.”
Her mouth falls open. “Holy shit.”
“Is that a good ‘holy shit’ or a bad ‘holy shit’?”
She shakes her head. “I just had no idea you were a genius. What are you doing bumming around Vegas? You should be doing… well, something important with those kinds of brains.”
“It’s honestly not as useful as you’d think,” I say. “I mean, so I can do what a calculator can do. So what?”
“It’s got to be useful somehow…”
“I don’t know… not really.”
I think back to college, when I was deciding what to do with my life. The world seemed so wide open back then. I’d double-majored in math and economics, because I was good at math but economics was the path to a successful future. The NSA offered me a job, but the pay wasn’t anywhere close to what the big investment companies were offering. I did what I thought was best for my future.
Well, I fucked up my future. With all my great plans, who would have thought I’d be living with my parents again at age thirty-five?
Nellie is looking around the floor of the casino. “So how does it work? This…” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Counting cards.”
I grin at her, finally feeling in my element. She’s been helping me nonstop since we got here. Now is my chance to be cool. “I keep an eye on what cards get played on the table. When they first load up the card dealer, I have no advantage. But at around the halfway point, there’s usually a bias of either high cards or low cards left. That’s when we up our bets.”
She chews on her lip. “Can we get in trouble for doing this?”
“It’s illegal to use an electronic card counter,” I say. “But I don’t think using my brain is against the law.” I shrug. “And anyway, what are they gonna do? Break my legs?”
She shoots me a look. “Well, they could break mine.”
I grin at her. “Well, that’s your problem.”
Nellie is unamused.
Regardless, she can’t resist. We find a table in the casino that fits my needs, and I verify the table doesn’t have an auto-shuffler that continuously shuffles the cards, which would eliminate my advantage. The dealer, a girl named Heidi with straight chin-length blond hair and breasts that rival Nellie’s, sweetly tells us that it’s fine to push one of the chairs out of the way so I can get close to the table. The advantage of being in a power wheelchair now as opposed to manual is it gives me extra height—I need to see the whole table to keep track of what cards are being played.
Nellie bought chips earlier with the money I’ve got stashed in my chair. She’s got them in her purse, which makes sense since she’s going to have to lay them out. There’s a lot I can do with voice controls, but any paper money transactions are off the table for me. If she weren’t with me, I wouldn’t be able to gamble here on my own. Like I said, I wouldn’t have dared to even leave my room.
On the other hand, not being able to move my arms isn’t that big a disadvantage in blackjack. The cards are all dealt face-up, so I don’t have to flip anything. The rules of the table are you’re not supposed to touch your cards or your chips at all. I don’t think that will be difficult for me.
“Will you both be playing?” Heidi asks us. She hasn’t been condescending to me yet, which is a nice change. I guess she sees all types at this job.
Nellie looks at me questioningly and I nod at Heidi. “Yes, but she’s going to have to place the bets for me.”
Heidi flashes a blindingly white smile. “Of course, no problem.”
I wonder if she’ll be so sweet when we’re owning the table.
We have to wait until Heidi reloads the card dealer before I can start keeping track. In the meantime, we stick with the minimum table bet. The goal isn’t to win big, but to stay roughly even. Still, Nellie is tentative with her bets. She keeps looking at me and asking, “Should I hit?”
“The dealer has to hit if she has sixteen or less,” I tell her. “Those are the rules that give the house the best advantage. So that’s what you should do.”
She looks down at the cards in front of her: a four
, a six, and a seven. “So I should hit?”
A middle-aged man to Nellie’s left lets out a snort. “Good thing you’re pretty, girlie,” he comments.
I grit my teeth. If I weren’t strapped to this chair, I would have told that asshole in no uncertain terms he can’t talk to her like that. Actually, I could still tell him since there’s nothing wrong with my mouth, but it’s hard to be a tough guy when it’s painfully obvious you can’t back it up. In any case, I ignore him.
“You’ve got seventeen,” I tell her patiently. “So you should stick.”
“Oh.” She looks embarrassed as she turns to face the dealer. “Stick then.”
The dealer goes bust with twenty-two and Nellie wins her hand. She lets out a cute squeal every time she wins. This time she throws up her arms in the air so that I can see a hint of her white belly. Oh Christ, she’s got her belly button pierced. It’s so fucking sexy. It makes me want to… want to…
Well, it doesn’t matter what I want. All I can do is look. I need to stop having these thoughts because I’m just frustrating myself. I almost wish someone would castrate me so I could shut it off. (No, I don’t really wish that.)
When about half the stack of cards have been dealt, I know a lot of small cards have come out. At least three-quarters of the remaining cards are high cards. So now is the time to up our bets.
“Bet a second chip,” I tell Nellie.
She glances at me and flashes a nervous smile. She pushes an extra chip down from each of our small piles. Nothing too flashy—I want to test the waters. I think we’ve got a good few hands before she loads the sorter again.
Nellie ends up with a nine and a ten, which she sticks on. I’ve got a five and a six—eleven. Scoring a picture card will get me to twenty-one. And by my counts, the deck is stacked in favor of me getting a picture card.
“Double down,” I tell Nellie.
She blinks a few times. “What’s that?”
The asshole sitting on her right lets out an exaggerated sigh. What the hell is wrong with him? “It means you double your bet and you only get one card,” I explain.
She nods and pushes two more chips into the pile. And now Heidi’s going to give us one more card.
I’m nervous, but in a good way. I haven’t been this kind of nervous in a long time. It’s not like things don’t make me nervous these days—plenty does. I’m nervous every time I have a new PCA that they’ll drop me or worse. I’m nervous my mother will injure herself while doing my care, and then what the fuck will I do? I’m nervous about getting a bedsore that will keep me out of my wheelchair or even send me to the hospital. There’s plenty to be nervous about.
But this is a different kind of nervous. The kind of excitement where something bad could happen, but something really good could also happen. It’s like the way I used to feel when I’d ask a girl out on a date or made a risky investment. Or how I felt when I asked Isabelle to marry me. For me, risks usually paid off.
Heidi flips over a card:
King of spades.
“Twenty-one!” Heidi calls out.
Nellie lets out a squeal. And then something unexpected happens, which is she throws her arms around me. It’s more of a half-hug, because the back of my chair and the strap on my chest keeps her from getting too into it, plus I obviously can’t hug her back. I can only sit there, feeling her soft black hair brush against my cheek, inhaling her shampoo. It smells like strawberries.
Cool it, Warner.
“That was so exciting!” she gushes when she pulls away.
I nod, hoping the heat I feel in my ears doesn’t enter my face. I don’t want her to know she’s the first girl to touch me that way who wasn’t doing my care. And I don’t want her to know how much I enjoyed it.
Chapter 21
Nellie
Oh my God, I can’t believe how much money we won! Almost a thousand dollars!
Really, it’s Alex’s money. His cash bought the chips and his brain told me when to hit or stick or double down. Or buy insurance against the dealer (never, apparently, although they kept asking us). But even so, he insisted on splitting our winnings. Which was nice of him, considering Doug is already paying me two-thousand dollars. I felt guilty taking the money, but he insisted.
“We’re a team,” he kept saying.
We might have been a team, but it was his incredible mind that somehow kept track of all those cards. Alex Warner is a legit genius—I’ve never seen anything like it. And even though he was keeping track of all those cards, he was still able to chat with me and explain things about the game to me. He’s incredible.
But he’s got that coffee date with Isabelle, and the closer it gets, the more anxious he looks. I still don’t entirely understand why he’s doing this. I mean, I can’t imagine this guy she’s marrying is so awful that he had to fly all this way to stop the wedding. I’ve got to believe he’s doing this because he still loves her and is hoping he might still have a shot with her.
And maybe he does.
“Do you want me to stay with you?” I ask him. We’re heading to Coffee Bean, which is in the lobby of the Venetian, and Isabelle’s suggested meeting place. He already told me he wants me to accompany him there, just in case something arises that he can’t handle. Like a door.
“I don’t know,” he says as his chair glides beside me. I’ve noticed when he puts his mouth onto the control, the chair keeps moving forward without him continuously puffing into it. I’m sure he’d have to do something to get it to turn, but luckily, people are leaping out of our way. “I guess maybe in the beginning, just in case. But I should probably have the conversation with her alone.”
“We should have a signal you give me when you want me to leave.”
He nods. “Okay, but in case you hadn’t noticed, my options for signals are limited.”
“Right, so it would have to be a verbal signal.” I think for a moment. “What if you said, ‘This is a great location for a wedding’?”
“That’s so generic,” he complains. “I’ll never remember that.”
“You’ll never remember that!” I burst out. He’s got to be kidding me! “You just remembered like four-hundred playing cards! You can’t remember one sentence?”
“I have a good memory for numbers, but—”
“Not for anything else,” I finish. I roll my eyes. “Well, do your best. Come on, is it that hard?”
“I guess not,” he grumbles.
With our signal securely in place, we navigate to the Coffee Bean on the first floor of the Venetian. As soon as we get inside, I can tell right away it’s an awful place for them to be meeting. It’s not very crowded, at least, but there are a ton of tables and chairs squeezed into a very small amount of space. I look at Alex’s face and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing.
“Shit,” he mumbles under his breath.
“Can you manage?” I ask.
“We’ll see.”
We pick the first table inside the store, and I pull away two of the chairs to make room for Alex’s big power wheelchair. I sit in one of the other chairs, leaving one free for the infamous Isabelle.
I glance at the time display on the phone mounted on Alex’s wheelchair. “We’re ten minutes early, so we’ve got a little time.”
He gives me a nervous smile. “Isabelle likes promptness.”
“Does she?”
“Yes, she does.”
I suppress an urge to roll my eyes. “I’m going to go get a coffee and maybe a muffin. Want anything?”
“Not a chance.”
Of course. He doesn’t want to be fed in front of Isabelle.
“You know,” I say, “you’ve got to get over feeling so self-conscious over—”
“Nellie, I said no.”
“Fine.” I’m not going to argue with him when he’s so nervous. It’s only been four years since his injury, which seems like a long time, but isn’t very long for such a gigantic life change. I’m sure in ten years, he won’t feel s
elf-conscious over being fed anymore.
I stand up, pulling down my tank top that seems to want nothing more than to ride up my belly. My tank top seems to think I’m a slut. “I’ll be right back,” I tell him.
“Wait.” He gazes up at me with those intense gray eyes. “How do I look?”
Wow, if there was ever a loaded question…
From the neck up, Alex Warner is still one of the most handsome guys I’ve known. Those eyes alone are enough to do it for me, but his tousled dark hair, the sprouting shadow of a beard on his chin, and that tiny cleft in his chin all come together in just the right way. He’s not just hot—he’s smokin’. There isn’t a thing I’d change.
From the neck down, well, he looks like any other guy sitting in a wheelchair. Yes, the muscles in his arms and chest are faded, but I was never into buff guys anyway. It might do him a favor if he could conceal that thick strap across his chest, but after our experience at the airport, I don’t have any delusions he could go without it.
“You look good,” I say.
His eyebrows scrunch together. “You hesitated.”
“I was checking. Sheesh, relax.”
I’m not even going to tease him—it would be cruel. He is really nervous. Ridiculously nervous. He was less nervous when we had a hundred bucks riding on one flip of a card (while I was pissing my pants). Gambling on cards was fun for him, but this isn’t.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I’ve got your back.”
He nods slightly. “I just… I always feel like I need to be perfect for Isabelle.”
I wish he hadn’t turned down those free drinks at the blackjack table. He could use a shot of whiskey like nobody’s business. I mean, I get it. He’s about to see his fiancée who dumped him. That’s got to be rough. Maybe after I get my coffee, I can give him a little pep talk.
“Alex?”
Damn it, she’s here.
I whirl around to face The Great Isabelle Legere—the woman Alex flew all this way to see, even though she dumped his ass. And… well, I’m no lesbian, but man oh man. I can see what he likes about her, that’s for sure. She’s just as spectacular as I remember from four years ago. That’s literally the only word for her: spectacular. Her long blond hair is shimmering in the light of Coffee Bean, her blue eyes penetrate my very soul, and she has the most perfect figure I’ve ever seen: tall, long legs, perfect boobs, the whole deal. I almost want to reach out and poke her to make sure she isn’t a mirage created for our amusement by the Venetian Hotel.
My Ex's Wedding: A Fake Boyfriend Romance Page 12
