Beto chuckled and kissed Jessica’s palm. He cast over to Greg, who was frowning too dramatically at his cards. “You ready for Christmas, Greg? I’m sure you won’t be expected to propose this year. I mean, if Carrie didn’t get antsy your third Christmas together, why would she be expecting a ring on the fourth?”
Yes, the trash talk was in full swing. It was one of the rules of how we all played poker. Don’t get in the game if you can’t take your cage getting good and rattled.
Greg ducked behind his cards. His spiked brown hair was too gelled and showed off his encroaching bald spot on the cap of his head. “Dude, keep your voice down with that kinda talk. She’s been hinting since her birthday. You think I can get away with another cutesy gift?”
I fielded this one, discarding one castoff for an even better card. “Depends. What’d you get her last year? Oh, right. Wasn’t it a stuffed monkey holding a heart that said… something. ‘I’m bananas for you’? I can’t remember what it said after she threw it in the trash. Maybe it was ‘I’m smananas for poo’. That’s probably it. Can’t remember.” I scratched my chin and looked up, recalling Carrie’s hour-long rant at the following girl night about the stupid monkey gift she wanted to leave him over. “No, it couldn’t have been that lame and generic. Was it when you got her a fake gemstone necklace in a gold-plated setting because the 24-Karat real gold was too expensive?” I laughed at the memory. “You even put it in a box that was similar to a ring box! Oh, Greg. It’s going to be fun taking your money tonight. Maybe I’ll buy Carrie a real Christmas present with all the money I’m gonna take from you. Poor girl deserves something pretty she can actually go smananas for.”
When it was time to put our cards down, I knew I’d won. I wasn’t much in the mood for foreplay. It was going to be a smooth takedown tonight. This was where I hoped to bury my confusion about why I couldn’t shake the image of Katrina curled up on Von’s lap like a cat.
Half an hour later, and Greg gave up after he ran out of chips and pride. I’d hoped for a smaller pool to conquer, but Greg’s abandoned chair was pulled out to host another player I hadn’t expected. “Von?” I quirked my eyebrow across the table. “You don’t want to play poker.”
“Correction,” he said as he eyed the cards Jordan dealt out, his cigar clutched between his teeth. “I don’t want to lose at poker. It’s been a while since I sat down with a bunch of blokes and was promised a good time.” He tilted his head toward me. “Plus one lovely lady, of course.”
“Call her lovely now. Wait until she takes your chips,” Beto groused. Jessica had long since abandoned our trash talk, walking with Mason to the living room where she introduced him around when he tired of watching me play. Beto tapped my shoe under the table with a hint of a tease on his lips. “Just as cold as she was on a date.”
“Ho!” Von laughed, taking in the tenor of the table. “So it’s that kind of poker game. This’ll be fun. Tell me, Beto is it? Just how unappealing does a bloke have to be to turn such a soft creature cold?”
“Get to know her a little better,” Beto assured Von.
“I know her plenty well.”
Beto’s eyebrow rose at the innuendo that rested in the air between us. “Oh, you know her?”
Von rolled a chip between his fingers, sizing us all up before deciding which cards he wanted to keep and which he wanted to turn in. “Women are a constantly evolving mystery, but as much as a man can know a woman, I know our little November. I know she hates that I’m telling you all I know her. I know how she takes her breakfast after a long night.” He cast me a cold, veiled smile. “I even know that she has a rainbow-shaped scar on the inside of her thigh. Succulent little thing.”
I couldn’t believe he went there. No one knew about that scar. Showing Von my glaring flaws had been a private moment that was precious to me, and he was flaunting it around like my body was fodder for gross guy jokes.
I gasped and pointed across the table at Von, all levity gone. “You shut up about that, or the only thing you’re gonna know about me is how dirty I can fight. Trust me, you don’t want to see that side. Go play with Katrina. You’ll be much happier with someone who’ll put out for your stupid jokes.” I sat back when Von gave me an apologetic tilt. “Von has never seen me naked, for the record.”
Jordan eyed us with a mixture of confusion and amusement. “Record noted. Wow. I’ve never seen Bait so riled up. We do our worst to rattle her, and she barely cares. I’m going to need some proof, kid. Take your pants off so we can put this whole thing to rest.”
Jordan cast over at me the smile of a harmless cad who wanted a good scolding. I leaned across the table and patted his cheek, and then flicked his front tooth hard, sending a painful ring through his mouth. My fingers burned with his mouth germs, but it was worth it. “Enough about my thighs,” I said over his exclamations of pain. “And shut up, Von. You’re trying to hurt me, and I don’t know why.”
“Oh, kid. You know I love you. You and your delicious thighs.”
The words rang hollow, and I could tell they tasted bad in his mouth by the slight grimace he wore after saying them. He looked at me across the table with a note of sincere regret, but then washed it off his face just as quickly as it came with the stupid bravado that had too much sleaze to it. He was putting on a show, but I couldn’t understand why. What had I done to him? “No, you don’t love me,” I said, bringing down my gavel as I understood more fully all the things Danny warned me about.
Jordan stuck his finger in his mouth and held it up in the air as if to test the wind current inside my home. “Yup. Just what I thought. Too much sexual tension. Next time we let girls play, we make it strip poker instead.”
I didn’t like where this was headed, but knew as soon as I let them know they were tap dancing on a landmine, I would be the one exploding. I was seven hands away from taking Jordan out, if I could force him into raising his bet on this round. “Talk all you want, guys. So long as you’ve got cash to back up your chips, I can tune this out all night.”
Beto cast me half a smile. “Save some sexy talk for later, kid.”
“Why? Is Jessica also cold on dates? Yikes. Two in a row? Might not be the women, Beto,” I jabbed. “I raise.” I picked up two more chips and threw them into the pile.
Von watched me needle Jordan into raising even higher, smiling with pride at my prowess when my royal flush killed the round and the rest of Jordan’s sleazy jokes. I didn’t much care if Von was pleased with my poker playing abilities. It was all about domination now, as far as I was concerned.
Jordan was in deep concentration mode for the next few rounds, not bothering to verbally assault any of us as his stack of chips dwindled down to a few measly ones without much promise.
“Von, did you want another drink?” Katrina asked, making her way back to him and placing a beer in his hand. She stood behind his chair, playing with the short hairs at the base of his neck. Of all the needling we did at the table, for no reason at all, Katrina’s fingers in Von’s hair poked at my sore spots the worst.
I lost count and track of what I was doing and bumbled the hand – badly. Jordan perked up while Von’s smile grew sinister. “Not so amazing now, are you?” Jordan said as he dealt another round. I barely gathered my wits before I lost again.
I sifted my new hand into the proper order, averting my eyes as Von invited Katrina onto his lap, sharing his cigar with her. Sharing his germs with her. I hoped beyond a wish on a snowman in July that I hadn’t looked like that when I’d sat on Von’s lap. I vowed I would never sit on a man’s lap again. It hadn’t done me a lick of good with Santa. I only felt stupid for being so casual with Von, who was casual with everybody. “I think I’m good for the night, guys.”
“Leaving so soon?” Von asked. “Something wrong, Peach? Sore loser, are we?”
“Nothing’s wrong at all. I’ll play another hand. You know, I’m glad you’re fitting in so well. I was worried I’d always be your only friend.” I sat back in my
chair and pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a mild tension headache coming on.
“You’re hardly my only. I manage to make friends wherever I go. Some of them even know how to play poker. No one here, mind you, but in other parts of the world.” Katrina whispered something in his ear that made him chuckle darkly. The smile didn’t touch his eyes. He was forcing the laugh, though I couldn’t figure out why. “I don’t know, Katrina. Let me check with my brother.” He shot over the table to me, “Do you think Danny will let me drive Katrina home? She needs someone to fix a few things around the house.”
“I’ll bet,” I mumbled. I sat up straighter and faked a smile that was just as disingenuous as Von’s. “I think Danny will be fine with it. It’s your life. You don’t owe Danny a thing. He knows you don’t belong to him.”
Von’s gaze hardened as he stared at me. “Ollie gave me a hard time about it earlier. I wouldn’t want to make Danny or Ollie or anyone else think I’m here for reasons that just wouldn’t work for either of us.”
“How noble of you. Do what you want, Von. I’m not going to hold you back. If driving Katrina home makes you happy, then why are you checking with anybody? Just go do it. Do it as many times as it takes. Over and over. Why should I care?”
“It’s perfectly acceptable to want to do things with other people who also want to do things.” Von didn’t break eye contact with me, even as Katrina stood to grab her coat and purse.
Jordan looked curiously between us, sensing something more complicated was going on than driving Katrina home. Jordan was a bright little bulb. “Are you two hooking up or something? The shifting wind just got real weird in here.”
Beto had been engrossed in his hand. “Huh? Who’s hooking up with who? You two?” he asked of me and Von.
I was about to answer with a resounding “no,” but Von beat me to it. “Not in this lifetime.” He let out a scoff at the idea that someone like him could ever be with someone like me. It made me feel on the outside of my own group of friends, and very, very small. “Bait’s just a kid. Of course we’re not hooking up. Can you imagine?” He let out another humorless laugh. “Ridiculous.”
My friends called me Bait, and I hated it. Von was supposed to know how much I hated it, and not perpetuate the awful nickname. He’d called me Peach, which was a hefty step up from Bait. Now I was the kid. I’d just cut the head off a monster to save his life, but I was a useless kid. I was easy to throw away, as I’d always suspected. All it took was a party and a heated conversation with Ollie for Von to toss our friendship aside and treat me like I didn’t matter. Von loved me behind closed doors when it was just us, which wasn’t enough for me. He’d been my best friend, but now he was looking at me like he barely knew me, as if he had no clue how deeply his words cut me.
But he knew. He knew and he did it anyway.
I laid my cards down, winning the hand without apology or victory at taking Jordan clean out and diminishing Beto’s hand to just a few chips.
Jordan was dying dramatically in his chair and swearing up and down he would never play poker with me again while we all started settling up. I patted Jordan’s shoulder as I addressed Von without looking at him. “Go home with Katrina. Stay there as long as you like, Von. In fact, I think you should sleep there a few nights. Have all the fun you want. Enjoy her thighs that probably don’t have any scars at all on them. You deserve to have exactly what you want out of life.”
“Maybe I will. Mason can keep you proper company while I’m gone. Lord knows he’s dying for the chance.”
“Hush up with that talk. You know that doesn’t help anything.”
“I just want you to help yourself, kid. Play with the grownups a little. Maybe that’ll get you to finally relax. Unclench so you can actually have some fun instead of being so uptight. Maybe Mason also gets off on perpetual handwashing. Who knows?”
I took a step back, as if his words had turned into an arrow and soared right into the heart I was swearing up and down I didn’t have. I blinked at Von in shock, and I knew by the fumble on his face that he caught himself too late. “Screw you,” I mumbled, embarrassed and hurt. My hands screamed at me to wash them, but I balled them into fists to keep my neurosis from calling the shots.
Beto clapped his hands in Mason’s honor, though Mason was in the living room and out of earshot. He threw down a few bills. “Well done to Mason. Well done to you. I knew someone would come along for you, kid. The prison nurse and the prison guard. That’s gotta be some sort of fairytale. I felt bad after what happened with us. But knowing you found someone? Good for you, kid. Good for you.” Beto patted me on the shoulder, making me feel hollow inside before he left.
Katrina came back into the kitchen just to whisper something in Von’s ear. When he grinned and responded with a, “Sure thing, Peach,” to her, I nearly burst into tears at the gut punch.
It was my nickname. It belonged to me, and Von was passing it out like it was a party favor. I’d let the name become precious to me – let Von become precious to me. I felt stupid and small, staring at my best friend and seeing him for the stranger he now was. They strolled into the living room together, as if nothing catastrophic had just occurred.
My phone rang, and I answered without first checking the caller ID, though pretty much everyone I would want to talk to with a cell phone was already at my house. “Yeah?”
Judge’s low and smooth voice greeted me on the other end. “I didn’t think you’d pick up.”
“Is that how you’re starting all your phone calls these days? I’ve always been a big fan of ‘hello.’” I hung my head that these were the people who called me. “You couldn’t have worse timing if you tried. What do you want?”
Judge cut right down to business. “I need you to do me a favor. Just a short visit to the prison to deliver a message to Fender for me. He’s up for parole, and it won’t look good if we’re seen on the visitor’s log for him.”
I groaned as the table cleared, leaving me to my private conversation. “I can’t do this game tonight, Judge. It’s been a long day, and it’s not nearly over yet.”
He switched from business to friend-mode, and though we weren’t friends anymore, I was too frustrated with the night to care. “What seems to be the problem, baby girl?”
“Nothing fixable, unfortunately.”
“With enough money and influence, everything’s fixable.”
I looked down at my hands, my chin quivering with shame as I warred with the urge to wash them. “I’m not,” I admitted.
“Tell me the problem, and I’ll fix it.” He spoke with the same matter-of-fact tone he used when he’d taught me how to play Monopoly all those years ago.
“We don’t play board games anymore,” I whispered mournfully.
Judge paused, letting my words settle between us with all their weight. “It’s been a long time since I’ve played anything at all.” He cleared his throat, taking control of the conversation when I was content to flounder. “How about I pick up a board game and come over tomorrow. We can catch up without all the drama.”
Tears pricked my eyes at the offer I didn’t know I’d needed to hear. As much as a day spent rolling dice and putting aside age-old divides appealed to me, I knew I couldn’t let anyone I loved near Terraway. Despite the abandonment that still burned my tender insides, I loved my Judge.
I closed my eyes to rein my emotions in. “What am I doing?” I whispered, hating the note of fear in my voice.
“You’re telling me where you’re at, so I can come pick you up. You sound scared. You’re not in one of my neighborhoods, are you?”
I couldn’t disguise the heartbreak in my voice. “How did I get here?”
The concern in Judge’s swift response tugged at me. “Tell me where. I’m getting in the car.”
“Not this place in the world, this place in my life. How did it come to this? What choices did I make to land myself here?”
He sighed, his voice velvety and tender. It was how he used
to sound before he became important. I’d loved that guy. “You’re a good person. I shouldn’t have asked you to go see Fender. I’m a little desperate, and frankly, I’ve missed our back and forths. Everyone on my payroll is either a pushover or not trustworthy. Plus, it’s the only way I can get you to have a conversation with me. But I shouldn’t have bothered you with this. I won’t ask again.” The comfort he tried to offer me was sincere – I could always tell when Judge was lying. “Now tell me where you are. I’ll come and get you.”
I shook my head, feeling weighted and very, very old, but still far too young. “I’m at home. I’m fine. I’m working tomorrow, so I can’t play board games with you. Thank you for the offer, though. I see that you’re trying.”
“Alright, baby girl. Stay in the house; I’ll come get you out of there.”
“Don’t bother. I’m in it now. There’s nothing else for me.” I rubbed my temple, not sure if I could feel any lower. “Goodnight, Judge,” I said as I turned off my phone.
I kept my eyes on my feet, wishing the floor would swallow me whole.
33
Getting Vonned
I was still sitting at the table a few minutes later when Danny, of all people, came and sat down next to me. He set a shot down in front of my line of vision and chucked my shoulder. “You alright? I caught the tail end of that.”
“You come to gloat? Because I get pretty violent when people slap me with an ‘I told you so.’”
“I’m not gloating. Just sitting.” He motioned to my face. “You’ve got that look. You just got Vonned, huh.”
“Please don’t make me a t-shirt that says that.” I drank the shot in one painful gulp, not caring what was in it. “It’s fine. I forgot that he and Katrina… It’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Because you’ve got it bad for him. If he wasn’t so stupid and immature, he’d realize he’s got it bad for you, too.”
Tempt (Terraway Book 4) Page 18
