CHAPTER 21
S he sat, nervously tapping her foot against the faux tile floor as she stared at the door of the diner, waiting impatiently for Rory to walk in. Logan had really done it now; she had promised she would tell Rory everything. She’d done that the previous night, which was really only a few hours ago, because she knew she would try to wiggle out of doing it, and if she put the promise out there, it meant that she couldn’t, and she’d have to tell Rory at least part of what was going on with her. As nervous as she was right now, though, she knew she wanted to tell her. Logan wanted Rory to know, to have all the facts, and to form her own opinions and feelings from them. The woman Logan had met at the meeting had been right: it was the only way to know if Rory could or would ever be interested in more with her.
Logan hadn’t slept much. After hanging up to allow Rory to get to sleep, she had fallen asleep, too, but she had woken up around six in the morning, and she’d been jonesing for her poker app. She could see herself turning the sound all the way up on her phone, adding some money into her account, playing a few hands of Texas Hold’em, and going all-in. She was out of practice, of course, so she’d end up losing everything, only to add more to her account and do it all over again. Her gambling philosophy had always been to only have a small amount of money in her actual possession because if she used it all up, she’d just leave. The only problem with that philosophy was that she would always go and get more, and that was where the addiction came in.
“Good morning,” Rory said.
Logan looked up, leg still shaking and tapping, and said, “Morning. How did you sleep?”
“Someone kept me up watching episodes of a TV show I’ve already seen a million times,” Rory replied with a smile as she sat down across from Logan. “Did you not order yet?”
“No, I was waiting for you. Coffee?”
When Rory nodded, Logan held up two fingers in the direction of their waiter, who saw the gesture.
“So, how did you sleep?” Rory asked.
“I got a few hours,” Logan replied.
“We shouldn’t have done a breakfast thing. You need more sleep.”
“Do I look that bad?” she asked.
“You never look bad.”
Logan smiled at that response before two coffees were placed in front of them.
“What can I get for you?” the waiter asked.
“Um… Pancakes?” Rory said.
“Yeah,” Logan added. “Can I get the three-stack and bacon?”
“Same for me, I guess,” Rory said. “But can I get two instead of three, please? I can’t eat that many pancakes.”
“Sure. Anything else to drink besides coffee?” he asked.
“Not for me,” Logan replied.
“Orange juice,” Rory requested.
He nodded, and off he went.
“So, you have class soon?”
“Eleven,” Rory told her, repeating what Logan already knew.
“And is it a good class? One you like?”
“It’s fine,” Rory replied with a small smile. “It’s actually a class called, ‘Delaying the conversation you don’t want to have.’ Have you taken it?”
Logan laughed a little and said, “I have , actually. I teach it now. You just must not be in my class, or I would’ve seen you.”
Rory smiled wider at her before saying, “I need to leave here by ten so that I can get to campus, park, walk, like, a mile from my parking spot to the building, and get there on time. I don’t say that to pressure you or anything. Just want you to know.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Logan replied and swallowed. “So, give me a minute to get through this because, like I told you, I’ve never really had to tell anyone I know any or all of this before. Strangers, yes – it’s part of the process, and I’ve only done that recently – but not someone I like and have asked out on a date.”
“Okay,” Rory said and slid her coffee mug toward her.
She then reached for the stainless-steel container with the cream in it, poured in a little, and added a packet of the real sugar. She stirred it with her spoon and waited patiently.
“I’m a gambling addict, Rory.”
Rory stopped the stirring, looked up at Logan, and said, “Okay.”
“I’ve had a problem since probably forever, but it got bad when I turned twenty-one and I could legally gamble. I stopped about two years ago. Well, a year and two hundred and seventy-four days.”
“Okay,” Rory repeated and removed her spoon from the coffee, placing it on top of her paper napkin.
“Just okay?”
“I assume there’s more. I wanted to let you get through whatever you wanted to tell me.”
“Isn’t that already a lot?” Logan asked.
“Yes, but also no.”
“Explain that one,” Logan told her with a chuckle before she took a drink of the too-hot coffee.
“It’s a new thing that I didn’t know about you, but you seemed worried that it would change how I feel about you. It doesn’t.”
“You’ve only heard part of the story.”
“I’m all ears,” Rory replied.
“Well, like I said, I’ve always been somewhat of a gambler. I remember playing Monopoly as a kid and taking it a little too seriously. I wanted all of the little fake paper money. When I got it, there was this feeling that came over me, and I wanted even more. I learned to play poker from my dad at the shop. He and the guys would play once a week or so, and I started joining in, but not with real money. They played with pretzels and candy mostly. I wanted all the pretzels, though. I loved the feeling of winning a hand, especially against a big burly guy who never expected a teenage girl to kick his ass. When I started trade school, I found other games to play that I liked and had games on my phone. Most of them didn’t involve money, but I found a few that did, and I made a few bets here and there. When I started working for my dad, I was making good money, and it was legal for me to gamble by then, so I put more money into my online accounts, and I started hitting up casinos. I went to the ones here and took a few trips to Vegas and some to Atlantic City. There’s this high you get, even when you lose, that is so confusing. It’s like, I just lost this money, and I have to win it back. On and on it goes until you literally have nothing left.” She paused to check on Rory, who wasn’t saying anything but was still watching Logan thoughtfully. “When I ran out of money, I started stealing it. I found my mom’s stash in the house and took that first. When I got back from Vegas, none of it was left. She didn’t notice at first, but I felt horrible.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t believe I did that, but I knew I’d do it again, too. I started on my dad’s business next. I found ways to fudge invoices, and I knew where he kept the petty cash. I got away with that for a while, but there was a big poker tournament in town that I wanted to play in. It wasn’t exactly legal, and it had an entry fee of a hundred grand, but I found a way to bet my dad’s business to get in.”
Rory’s eyes went wide.
“That’s a much longer story that I won’t tell you all of right now, but I needed to be there to play with these people,” Logan continued. “They were high-rollers, and if I won, I’d be set up for a long time. I’d get the business back to my dad with interest. Of course, I would have gambled that all away again anyway, but in my mind, that’s not how it worked. So, I showed up, I paid the fee, and I had my chips. I sat at that table, and I remember feeling confident. I had no reason to – I’d lost all my own money – but I sat there, somehow knowing I was going to win. And here’s the thing, Rory: I did win.”
“You did?”
Logan nodded and said, “I won. I went all-in on a hand toward the end of the night, and I had a full house. The other guy bluffed. He had a pair of tens. I couldn’t believe it. The guy asked for a chance to win his money back, and I should have walked away – that’s what a sane person would’ve done – but I didn’t. I basked in my victory for all of thirty seconds before I put my dad’s business back on the table, and I lost. I got cocky. I stayed in the hand with a pair of fours, thinking I’d get a third, but I didn’t. I lost my dad’s company on a pair of fours, a three, a Jack, and a ten.”
“What happened?” Rory asked.
“I had to tell him. He ended up taking care of it for me. The guy I lost to wasn’t a nice man, and my dad sacrificed his business to save me. I was friends with Ava by this point, and she didn’t know about the gambling. We started dating, and it didn’t last long because I stole from her, too. She found out. I had to confess. She would’ve forgiven me, I think, had I really been sorry, but I wasn’t ready yet to admit that I had a problem. Even after what I had done to my family, I still wasn’t ready. She broke up with me, and we didn’t talk for a while after that. My parents still don’t talk to me. I get it. I don’t deserve their forgiveness. I’ve paid Ava back already, but it wasn’t all that much that I took from her, moneywise at least. I send my parents a check every month with however much I can afford to send them, which is usually only a few hundred bucks, at most, sometimes less, but they cash them at least, so there’s that. It will take me decades to pay them back, but I will do it.” Logan took a deep breath. “I got clean a couple of years ago, and I haven’t gambled since. I can’t tell you that it’s over because it’s not, and it won’t ever be. I miss it all the time, that high. I loved the sounds of the casinos, and my poker app has the same sound effects that I miss. I didn’t use to go to meetings consistently, but I’m trying to do that more now. There are way more AA meetings than GA ones, so sometimes, I sit in AA meetings because addiction is addiction.”
Rory nodded and asked, “That’s where you were yesterday?”
“Yes. I didn’t want Candace to know. Imagine finding out that your new bartender is a gambling addict. It’s still a cash business a lot of times in New Orleans. She’d fire me, or she’d at least look over my shoulder a lot. I’ve never taken money from an employer unless you count my dad, which is more awful, but I worried that if Candace knew, things would change. If twenty bucks went missing, she’d assume I took it when it might just be a mistake of two wet bills sticking together or something. I’ll tell her if you want me to, but yes, I was at a meeting yesterday. I went to a couple of them after I saw you in the Square. I thought about…” Logan cleared her throat. “Doing something.”
“You saw me and thought about gambling?”
“No. I saw you with Jill, and I thought about finding a woman to hook up with.”
“Oh,” Rory let out, and for the first time in this whole conversation, she looked away from Logan.
“I didn’t , Rory. Since I stopped gambling, I’ve used sex as my replacement drug of choice. I told you before that it’s a distraction, and it is. It has distracted me from wanting to gamble. I don’t enjoy it. I told you that, too. I did it because it helped me not screw up the rest of my life even worse than I already had.”
“Okay,” Rory said, turning back to her. “I get it.”
“I never let them touch me,” Logan confessed.
“What do you mean?”
“The last time I gambled, I had a random hookup, and she touched me, but that’s it. No one since. That was nearly two years ago.”
“You don’t want them to touch you?”
Logan shook her head and replied, “No, I don’t. I don’t want it, but I also don’t deserve it. I’ve been punishing myself for what I did. Touching a woman who is offering to make me feel good and not letting her give me that is my way of saying that I can’t have nice things.”
“Logan, you made mistakes, yes, but you don’t–”
“I don’t want that for myself anymore, Rory,” she interrupted. “I don’t want random sex. I don’t want to keep punishing myself. I want to try to be happy. I don’t want to go backward. I went to a meeting this morning, too, and I’ll go to one after we leave here. I’ll keep going, and I’m going to get a sponsor. I’ll work the steps and be a better person because that’s what I want for myself finally. I’ll work at the bar and keep driving Lyft or find another job that pays better because I have to get this money back to my parents. I hope I can mend that relationship, but I don’t know. Right now, all I know is that I’ve met this woman who makes me feel different than I’ve ever felt before, and I can’t explain it, but it’s there. It’s new, and I know she wants us to be friends, so I’ll do that, but I’m hoping she still wants that after everything I just told her.”
“I told you last night, Logan: I care about you,” Rory said. “This doesn’t change that.” She leaned forward in her chair and added, “There’s something inside you that I see. I don’t know how to explain it, either, but it’s there. I can see it in your eyes, too. You’re in mourning almost, aren’t you?”
“Mourning?” Logan asked.
“Grieving what you’ve lost because of the mistakes you made.”
“I guess that’s a good way of putting it,” Logan replied, having never thought of it that way before.
“I can see it. I can see how much it matters to you that you don’t do that again; make those mistakes.”
“It does matter,” she said quickly.
“I believe you,” Rory replied.
Logan let out a deep breath and said, “Thank you.”
“Thank you for telling me. You really didn’t have to.”
“I did if I ever want a real chance with you, Rory. I know what you said. And I’ll respect it. But I needed you to know about this part of me because if you ever do change your mind, you should have all the facts and understand what you’d be getting into.”
“Are you sure you should be dating now?” Rory asked.
“No,” Logan said with a laugh. “They recommend waiting at least a year after stopping before you start dating, and it’s been longer than that for me, but either way, I am done with the whole hookup thing, Rory. Ava helped me figure out what I was doing. The other day when we–” Logan stopped. “When I initiated something with her that I shouldn’t have, we talked, and she made me realize what I was doing. I don’t want that anymore. I’m not telling you that because I expect anything from you. I just wanted you to know.” Logan held up her phone and waved it around a bit. “While I was waiting for you, I deleted phone numbers that I only have first names for, if you know what I mean, and I deleted the dating app I used for hookups. I also deleted some text messages that were awaiting my response. I’m ready for something new, something better.”
Rory gave her a soft smile and said, “And pancakes.”
“Huh?” Logan asked, confused.
Then, she looked over and saw their waiter arrive with their food.