Chapter 24
Evelyn
Jameson and I walked—no, trekked—all the way back to the Cosmopolitan after leaving Encore Beach Club.
We were both at the peak of drunkenness then, neither of us quite walking in a perfectly straight line, and I’m surprised we even made it back to our hotel without detouring headfirst into the Bellagio fountains.
Our eyes lit up at the flashing neon lights of the casino and we were drawn in by the hope of winning big, but my ass had barely touched the seat in front of a slot machine when a security guard told me I needed to cover up a little more.
Apparently, a sheer sarong over a skimpy bikini doesn’t cut it.
That’s how I’ve ended up wearing one of Jameson’s T-shirts.
He ran back to his suite to fetch it for me, and it drapes me like a dress.
It smells of his cologne and I wonder if maybe I can keep it after tonight, like a little Vegas souvenir to bring back to Florida with me, rather than some tacky keyring.
Considering I have spent most of my time with Jameson this weekend, it makes sense I should have a token to remember him by.
“Can I keep this?” I ask, tugging on the hem where it sits over my thighs.
Jameson glances sideways from the slot machine next to mine. “Sure. Any luck yet?” He squints at my giant LED screen, checking in on my balance, but the severe lack of celebratory jingles coming from my machine over the past thirty minutes should have given him a clue.
“My hundred bucks is now forty,” I mumble. I smack the button for another spin and, like a brat, throw myself back against my chair and cross my arms over my chest. My lower lip juts out sulkily. “I think I might just give up on slots and try something else. Maybe blackjack?”
“Do you even know how to play blackjack?”
“No.”
“How about roulette? No thinking involved,” Jameson says, and I glare at him.
“Do you think I’m just some dumb blonde or something?”
He laughs as he hits his cash-out—of course he is leaving his slot machine with a small profit, because every single person on this planet is luckier than me.
“No, Evie. I actually think you’re a seriously hot, seriously interesting blonde.
But you need to make some money, and I think you’d have a better shot over at the roulette table. ”
“Let’s try it,” I say, and I grab my cash-out voucher too.
It’s Saturday evening now, so the casino floor has the same bustling, vibrant energy as it did last night.
Everyone is in good spirits, cocktail waitresses weave from table to table, and there’s the occasional uproar of celebration that makes me seethe with jealousy, because goddamn it—all I want is to win once.
Just two grand is all I need, and then I can return to school for the fall semester without living in fear.
All of the roulette tables with a live dealer are pretty packed, but we finally find one with some space for Jameson and me to join.
I don’t dare admit I’ve never played roulette, so I simply copy everything Jameson does.
We hand over our cash to the dealer in exchange for our chips—mine are yellow, his are green—and then Jameson starts scattering a handful of his randomly across the board.
I panic, and throw three chips down. One on my lucky number, one on my birthday, and one on zero.
Each chip is worth five dollars, and when neither of my three numbers come in after the first spin, I realize just how quickly fifteen dollars evaporated before my eyes.
“Patience,” Jameson reassures me when he sees the panic on my face. He’s throwing a lot more chips down than me, which means he’s losing a lot more than me, too, because none of his numbers come in, either.
We go again. Jameson picks different numbers this time, whereas I stick to the same three. I’m glaring at the roulette wheel so intensely, manifesting some luck, that my vision starts to blur and it kind of makes me dizzy.
And then the ball circles into the number zero.
Both of us have a chip covering it, and I gasp in delight.
“There we go,” Jameson says coolly, slipping his arm around the small of my back and letting his hand rest on my hip. If I wasn’t so ecstatic about winning, I’d probably focus on that more, but right now all I see are dollar signs.
“How much do we get?” I whisper, not wanting the rest of the table to hear how much of an amateur I really am. I tuck myself in close to Jameson and bite my lip in anticipation as I watch the dealer count out the winnings.
“One hundred seventy-five,” Jameson says.
Okay, this is way better than the slot machines. Endorphins flood my system when the dealer pushes a stack of yellow chips toward me, and I snatch them embarrassingly quickly. Someone at the table calls it quits, opening up an empty chair.
“Sit down,” Jameson instructs. With his hand on my hip, he guides me onto the chair in front of him, and once we’ve repositioned our chips for the next spin, he places both his hands on my shoulders, his chest pressed up against my back. I like having him this close to me.
Over the next hour, we are ultimately two lucky motherfuckers—I’m up by around six hundred dollars, Jameson nearly eight hundred.
I’m so giddy with relief, watching my debt shrink right before my eyes, that I’m breaking out into a clammy sweat.
I’m very aware of just how quickly I could lose my juicy stack of winnings if I get too greedy, so I feel under immense pressure to quit at the right time.
After three losses in a row, I fear my luck has expired. I crane my neck to look at Jameson behind me. “I think I’m done.”
“Yeah?” I nod, and he gives my shoulder a squeeze. “Okay. Let’s color up,” he says, as though I know what the fuck that even means. He grabs the dealer’s attention and pushes both our stacks of chips across the board, and the dealer exchanges these for regular casino chips.
I take my pretty stack of chips and hug them to my chest for dear life, and as Jameson shoves his stack into the pockets of his swim shorts, he pauses. Suddenly, he looks serious.
“Hang on,” he says, and I do exactly that—I hang on with an eyebrow curiously raised, watching as he pulls out his wallet.
From the coin pocket, he removes a one-hundred-dollar gambling chip and holds it up between his thumb and forefinger.
“This is the chip I forgot to cash out the last time I was here in Vegas with my grandfather. It was seeing this in my wallet yesterday morning at the funeral that made me think: Fuck it, let’s go to Vegas. ”
“That’s a nice memory to keep,” I say, but Jameson only stares at the chip intensely.
“We’re on a lucky streak, Evie,” he says.
“I bet Gramps is up there right now cursing me out for letting this sit in my wallet, so I think now is the perfect time to use it. Here.” He holds out the chip to me, and I screw up my face at him, confused.
“I want you to use it. A hundred bucks, all on one number.”
“Jameson.” I shake my head, taking a step back from the plastic casino chip like it’s something sacred and valuable. “No.”
“Yes,” he says firmly. Carefully, he balances the chip on the stack already in my hands, and smiles.
“That chip is what brought me to Vegas this weekend, where I met a young woman named Evelyn Sinclair, who tried to rob me of my watch, threatened to sterilize me with a pair of stilettos, and then dragged me to a quiet corner of a pool party to stick her tongue down my throat. Trust me, I already got my money’s worth from that chip. ”
I roll my eyes, but why was that kind of . . . romantic? Shit, I do actually kind of like him.
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely sure,” Jameson confirms, gesturing back to the roulette table behind me. “You’re the one who needs money more than I do, so go ahead, Evie. Take your shot.”
I sit back down on the empty chair I just left behind, neatly setting out my stack of chips in front of me.
I hand the dealer the single one-hundred-dollar chip from Jameson and exchange it for another yellow roulette chip, then I look up at Jameson by my side, considering my choice wisely. I only have one chance at this.
“When was your grandfather’s birthday?” I ask him.
“April fourth.”
“Which decade?”
“The forties.”
“That’s a lot of fours, Jameson,” I say, then turn to the roulette board and confidently place the chip down on the number four.
“Evie, you don’t have to—”
I hold up my hand, silencing him, not tearing my eyes away from the wheel.
The dealer calls out for final bets, then whips the tiny ball into the wheel.
It spins so long I fear it’ll never stop.
Both Jameson and I watch on with bated breath.
It feels like my pulse is going to leap straight out my neck, it’s that pronounced.
The ball falls into the numbered segments, bouncing back and forth while it makes up its mind, and I close my eyes because I can’t even bear to look. The suspense is killing me.
“Holy fuck,” Jameson says, his voice a shocked whisper.
My eyes ping open. I press my hands to the edge of the table and push myself up from the chair, leaning forward to check the roulette wheel. The tiny little ball is sitting snug and comfortable.
Right on number fucking four.
Holy fuck, indeed. I won!
“What does that mean?” I splutter, turning desperately to Jameson as the adrenaline pumps through my veins. His jaw hangs open as he stares wide-eyed at the roulette board. The dealer has already started counting out my winnings. “What does it mean, Jameson? How much does that win?”
“Evie,” Jameson says, very seriously, as his eyes shift to mine. He looks kind of shell-shocked, actually, and my stomach churns with nausea. “You just won three and a half grand.”
“What?”
He nods very slowly. “Plus, you get your bet back. That’s three thousand six hundred dollars, Evelyn.”