2. “Poker Face” - Lady Gaga #2
“Why did she leave in the first place?” Maeve says.
Apparently they have no intention of dropping the topic anytime soon.
“Probably hiding from the law,” Rhett suggests.
“Walker wouldn’t break the law,” Lux says. “I’ll bet she’s in witness protection from like, the mafia or something.”
Maeve rolls her eyes. “More likely she’s hiding from the government. You know how she is about stuff like that.”
“Maybe she had a stalker.”
“Gambling debts?”
Pierce shakes his head. “You lot are a bunch of idiots.”
“I’ll bet Heath knows why she left.” Rhett’s eyes bore into me as he takes a sip of his drink.
I’m going to punch that guy before the night is over. I drop the chips onto the stack. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.
“It’s probably just some big scandal with her family,” Maeve says.
“Oh my god, Heath,” Lux says. “What if you have a secret baby out there?”
The last chip drops from my fingers, and I push my chair back. “I need some air,” I announce.
It’s hot and muggy outside, but it feels one thousand times better than the aggressively air-conditioned flat. I place my hands on the glass partition of the “terrace” keeping me from plummeting to a swift death on the concrete below.
It’s important that I remain calm. No matter what’s going on inside my chest, the key is to make sure no one can tell.
The murmur of traffic is muted by the height. I wish I could be in the ocean, the crash of the waves the only sound, the feel of icy water lashing against my skin again and again. Maybe I’ll still have time for a late-night swim before high tide.
I head back inside, intent on wishing everyone goodbye and getting the hell out of here. Lux, Maeve, and Rhett are all standing and talking when I walk into the game room. They stop abruptly when they see me, the way people instinctively tap their brakes when they meet a police cruiser on the road.
“Let’s let Heath decide,” Lux suggests.
“Heath doesn’t care.” Maeve holds a hand out to me, like See? He doesn’t give a shit about anything.
“What’s it going to be, buddy?” Rhett crosses his arms over his chest. The silver chain around his neck glints in the dim light.
“I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about,” I say before draining the last of my whiskey. “But I’m heading out.”
“Nooo,” Lux whines. “You can’t leave yet. We haven’t planned our revenge plot.”
“I didn’t think you’d finished the game,” I say.
“We didn’t,” Pierce says. Judging by his tone, that wasn’t his choice.
“We unanimously decided that Walker should be the victim,” Lux says. “Playing seemed redundant.”
“You decided that,” Maeve says.
Lux spins a curl around her finger. “She left all of us. I figured you’d be dying for the chance to get back at her.”
“I am.” Maeve straightens to her full height, which still puts her a full twelve inches below me. “But it’s still fair to take a vote if we’re not going to finish the game.”
“Fine.” Pierce gets to his feet. “We’ll take a vote.” There’s a note of finality in his voice that not even Maeve dares challenge. “Everyone in favor of getting revenge on Walker, raise your hand.”
Three hands shoot up around the table. Pierce keeps his eyes on me and slowly raises his own hand, as if he’s waiting to see what my reaction will be. All too late, I realize I’m the only one who hasn’t voted. They’re all staring at me.
I quickly lift my hand.
Maeve claps her palms together once. “Okay, it’s settled. Walker will be our next victim.” She sits, and Lux and Rhett do the same. They look at me expectantly.
“I’m leaving, but I’ll see you guys on the links tomorrow,” I say.
“Heath, you can’t leave yet,” Maeve announces. “You have insider intel.”
Rhett snorts and mutters “insider” under his breath. Maeve kicks his shin again.
I prop my hands on the back of my chair. “I don’t have anything that will be helpful.”
“All the same,” she says. “This is a team effort. We need you.”
I stifle the sigh that wants to make its way out of my mouth and show her how much it is taking for me to stay here for another second. Instead I pull out my chair and flop into it, brushing my hair out of my eyes.
She smiles her thanks and turns her attention to the iPad she’s pulled out of thin air, which is now lying on the table in front of her. I pull my phone from my pocket—not all of us can command thin air—and tap the Candy Crush app.
Maeve drones on and on about the process these things take, a process I think we all have etched deeply into our brains, right between “Always mount a horse on the left side” and “If forced to choose between money and power, choose power. Money can be replaced.”
I keep punching the little candies with my thumb. It’s nothing like the relief I’d get from being on a surfboard, but until this prison warden has freed me, I’m stuck here with nothing but the next level to keep me from losing my bloody fucking mind.
“Heath?” Maeve is staring at me the way my English teacher used to when I texted during school instead of paying attention to her nails-on-a-chalkboard voice.
“Hey,” I say.
“Well? Do you?” she says.
I scramble backward over the past few minutes, but I have no idea what she’s been talking about. “Do I what?”
“Do you have any idea,” she says in a slow voice, like I’m a toddler, “what Walker’s weakness is?”
I knew the essence of what they were talking about, but it still slams into me with the force of a wrecking ball. “Uhh . . . no?” I say.
“You must know something,” Maeve insists.
“I haven’t seen her any more recently than you have.”
“You’re not . . . bothered by this, are you?” Maeve asks. The concern on her face is . . . concerning.
I force myself to chuckle. “You forget who you’re talking to.”
“Lothario, my man!” Rhett claps me on the back, reaching around Lux to do so.
“Do you even know who that is?” Maeve asks, glaring at him.
“Despite what you may think, May-eve, I’m not a juvenile dipshit.”
Her face flushes until it’s the same shade as her lipstick. She hates when he pronounces her name like that. “Just a full-grown dipshit, then.”
He flips her off, a grin splitting his face.
Lux sighs and rests her face in her palms. “We’re screwed. There’s no way Walker will tell us anything.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Pierce says.
“You didn’t see her face in the restroom,” Lux says. “I thought she was going to scream.”
“I meant that I think Maeve has an idea,” he adds, nodding at Maeve.
She clears her throat. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
I twitch my foot where it’s perched on my left knee. My fingers drum a quiet beat on the underside of my chair.
“I was thinking,” she continues. “What if we invite her to poker night?”
This is met with the same level of silence as Lux’s initial announcement was. Eventually Pierce says, “What makes you think she’ll come?”
Maeve grins, already knee-deep in her plot. “I’m sure we’ll come up with something. If we can get her here, ply her with alcohol, and make her warm up to us”—she twirls her hand through the air like she’s bowing for an audience—“we can find out exactly where to strike her.”