Yesterday at the pool was the first time since I was sixteen that I’d wanted to climb someone like a tree. My sexuality had been so dormant in recent years, I hadn’t realized it was still buried inside me.
“Oh. I don’t know. I think I’ll just go for the fruit machines.”
Translation: I couldn’t afford anything else.
He shook his head. “C’mon, Tennessee. You’re more hardcore than that.”
“I may be hardcore, but I’m also broke.”
“I’ll foot the bill.”
“You’ve done enough of that already.”
“Not nearly. The truth of the matter is, I want to have a good time on this cruise, and if that means spending a few bucks, then I’m all for it. It’s not about you, Tennessee, it’s about me. If you really want to be like Gabriella Holland, you should let me treat you well.”
“I don’t want to be like Gabriella Holland,” I corrected him. “And I don’t want your charity.”
“You call that charity?” He snorted out. “Sweetheart, if I didn’t enjoy you, I’d leave you in the room and find someone else to keep me entertained.”
That was a backhanded compliment if I’d ever been slapped with one.
“You don’t expect me to put out, do you?” I cocked my head sideways.
“Expect? No. Hope? Always.”
I mulled this over.
It was true that I didn’t let men treat me well. In fact, I didn’t let them treat me at all. The very few men in town who had wanted more than a tumble between the sheets with me and actually went through the effort of so-called courting me were met with a cold shoulder.
I threw Tim Trapp’s flowers into the trash in front of his very eyes, donated the gifts Roy McCarthy sent me to charity, and flat-out refused a job with Eamon Levy as a secretary at his workshop, even though it had great benefits and medical insurance, because I knew he was going to ask me out.
But maybe this was the perfect solution. To play make-believe with a man I could never have in real life. To heal myself and practice a little through this little adventure.
“All right. Teach me your ways, Master Costello.”
“Miss Turner, I thought you’d never ask.”
There were a few things that immediately stood out to me the first time I stepped into a casino.
First things first—this was not a place for people suffering from epilepsy.
The bright colors, blinding lights, constant ding-ding-dings echoing in your ears and dark surroundings made the place look like what could have happened to Alice had she stepped into Wonderland under the influence of LSD and way too many tequila shots.
It looked like the grown-up version of an arcade, only slimy instead of fun. With waitresses dressed in uniforms that made my Jerry & Sons outfit look like it belonged in a nunnery, floating between tables and handing drinks to sweaty men and women.
Cruz was right that the slot machines were probably a bad call. The only people occupying them were seventy-five and over, and it looked like you had to rely solely on luck, which, I was aware, was something I was not endowed with.
Plus, obtaining control of a situation—or at least having the illusion of having control—was important to me.
My eyes immediately drifted to the blackjack tables and the roulette. There was something downright sinister about them. Some magnetic force that made people look extra alert and nervous when the dealers slid cards on the tables.
I felt Cruz’s arm brush mine, and a shudder rippled through me again. I had to be careful. My inhibitions around him were already loose.
He stood beside me, glancing in the direction my head was turned.
“I think you’ll enjoy blackjack.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Lax rules, low-house edge, and fast pace. You’re a straight-to-business type of girl. You’ll like it.”
“I don’t know how to play.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
He laced my arm in his and tugged me forward, toward one of the velvet-green tables with the cards and the chips. The croupier gave us a quick smile as he dealt the players their cards, and I followed everyone’s hands carefully as Cruz’s lips skimmed over my ear tenderly.
Desire ripped through my skin, veins, and bones. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was press my body to his and drink him in like fine champagne. He was waking the volcano again.
“Here’s the skinny of it. Each player wants to beat the dealer, meaning you don’t play against one another, you play against that gentleman over there. The way you do that is by getting a count as close as possible to twenty-one, without actually going over the number.”
My nipples puckered to attention at his husky voice, but I was entirely uninterested in the game and fully invested in feeling more of his body pressed against mine.
Yesterday’s brief kisses left me breathless, and now, semi-drunk and fully-horny, I wanted all of Cruz Costello.
“It’s your choice whether your ace will be worth one or eleven. Face cards are ten, and any other card is its pip value. So far so good?”
“Yup.”
I didn’t register anything he just said.
Something about a pimp. The only thing that got to me was the way he smelled, the way his lips moved over the shell of my ear, and his heavy arm against mine.
Cruz went on to explain about the betting, the shuffle and cut, the deal, splitting pairs, doubling down, and the naturals.
I successfully blocked every bit of the information with my piece-of-rock brain, instead focusing on the rhythm of my breaths as I wondered what would happen if I rubbed myself against him.
Note to self: do not drink and think. You are not good at that.
Cruz played a couple rounds, patiently reciting all the things he’d explained to me about blackjack throughout, even though I could tell it was annoying the men around us and entertaining the women draped on their arms.
I nodded vehemently, flagging down the waitresses for more and more cocktails whenever he looked away. I’d never gotten drunk publicly. Actually, I very rarely had more than a couple glasses on my own.
I got knocked up before I had the pleasure of getting trashed, and getting trashed after bearing a kid seemed unwise, if not completely impossible. Even if I’d wanted to, I was no longer attending high school and therefore hadn’t hung out with my former classmates. Drinking alone while breastfeeding? Not even on my worst day.
This meant that now, at the ripe age of twenty-nine, I was finally checking the box on my bucket list and getting completely tanked.
Cruz wasn’t aware of how much I drank.
He was too engrossed in his game and in explaining the game to me. Plus, I did a pretty good job at holding my drink under the table and being sneaky with my straw.
All in all, I still sported the mental age of a preteen.
Awesome.
When it was my turn to play, I proved to be talented in more than just being a fashion criminal and a terrible waitress, and lost him a whooping three-hundred bucks in three consecutive games.
It was swift and painless, seeing as I had no idea what I was doing, and slow to react when the dealer explained my next moves to me. But Cruz had a remarkable poker face and seemed casually amused, as opposed to murderous and upset.
“Wanna try again?”