14. Evie
EVIE
Briggs insists on driving his rental rather than taking my car. It’s a black SUV that smells aggressively new and has obviously never once known struggle. He handles it with a casual wrist draped over the wheel while I give him directions.
“I grew up here,” he reminds me, turning onto Boulder Highway.
“Yeah, and you’ve been gone for a while.” I point at the windshield. “Tonight, you’re a tourist, and I’m the only guide in this town who works Christmas Eve. Downtown, please.”
“Not the Strip?”
“God, no.” I settle into the seat. “Told you. This is Evie’s Vegas adventure, not a bachelorette party.”
He looks over, and under the flicker of the streetlights, a smile fights its way out from beneath the mustache. He resists it, so I make it my personal mission for the night to ensure he loses that battle at every turn.
Our first stop is the El Cortez on Fremont. The carpet is hideous, the ceilings are claustrophobic, and the entire room is bathed in a stubborn, retro orange glow. I love it here for no logical reason.
I guide him to the craps table and drop forty dollars I definitely shouldn’t be spending, which he covers before the dealer can even reach for my bills.
“This is on my tab,” he says.
“Alright.”
He lifts a brow. “Just like that? You’re not even going to put up a fight?”
“No, I’m quite fond of the division of labor. You provide the capital, I provide the personality.” I stack the chips. “Do you actually know how to play this?”
“I’m aware there are dice involved.”
I stare at him. He meets my gaze without blinking.
“You’re serious.”
“As mentioned, I left this town at eighteen. When was I supposed to learn craps?” He gestures to the layout, all those boxes and chaotic numbers. “This looks like a tax form.”
So I give him a tutorial, and it’s a delight. The man can dissect defensive rotations at professional speed, but the pass line has him defeated for three full rounds. He keeps hunting for the logic. There isn’t any.
You’re a winner until the exact second the universe decides you aren’t. That’s the beauty of craps.
An elderly woman with a glittering brooch starts a streak, and our end of the table erupts. Briggs wins sixty dollars and actually punches the air.
“This is basically an organized scam,” he declares, gathering his chips. “I hope you’re aware of that.”
“It’s just probability.” I bump his arm. “Just say thank you, Mother Vegas.”
“Hell no.”
We cash out before I can waste all his money, and we wander Fremont for a stretch. Past the main canopy, the crowd thins, and the vintage motel signs take over—a neon diving lady, a starburst missing half its wattage.
“I have a whole portfolio of sketches like these,” I say, gesturing to the glowing woman. “Did a series of historic signs for a gallery show in college.”
“Yeah?” He pivots, walking backward so we’re facing each other. “Any of the ones we just passed?”
“No, mostly from the Neon Museum.”
“Ah, I thought the goal was proving you weren’t a tourist.”
I roll my eyes. “That place is magnificent. It’s a Vegas staple.”
“I’ve never been there.”
My jaw drops. “That is genuinely criminal.”
“Take me, then,” he says with a smirk. “I’ll pay double for the extended VIP tour.”
I laugh. “Yeah, next time you’re back.”
“Next time,” he agrees.
At a taco window on Eleventh with no name and no seating to speak of, I order for both of us. We eat leaning against the cinder-block wall in the cold, balancing paper trays in our hands.
“Okay,” I say. “One favorite thing about this city. Go.”
He chews for a while, likely ranking his lack of options. Then he swallows and says, “There isn’t one. I hate this town with everything I’ve got.”
I lower my taco. “You can’t hate an entire municipality.”
“Watch me,” he mutters. “Everyone here is selling a version of something. The lights, the odds, the whole of it. If you glitter hard enough, nobody bothers checking what you’re actually made of. That’s what this town taught me.”
The night air works through my coat as I process that. “For what it’s worth,” I say, “you’re not as good at faking it as you think. If you recall, you’re the one who told me your father was difficult during your job pitch.”
A short, real laugh escapes him. “He is difficult.”
“He’s a lamb.” I swipe his last taco as a tax. “And for the record, this city has me in it. So it can’t be all bad.”
He turns his head, looking at me for a heartbeat longer than the joke warrants. My pulse kicks up and refuses to settle.
“No,” he says. “It can’t be. Can it?”
I clear my throat, crumpling the empty tray. The plan was the Cherry Bomb, but the thought of it sits wrong now. That bar belongs to me and Hazel. It feels like too much exposure for one night.
“Change of itinerary,” I say. “Can you dance?”
“Define dance.”
“That’s a no, which is perfect. Back to the car.”
The Ricochet is a converted warehouse off Main I haven’t visited since the Obama years. Christmas Eve should have killed the turnout, but it did the opposite—the line stretches half a block, girls in tinsel earrings and guys clutching their jackets, everyone breathing steam under the marquee.
I catch Briggs’s sleeve before he can join the end, towing him toward the front. “Come on.”
“Are we cutting?”
“We’re borrowing fame.”
The bouncer frowns, gesturing toward the back, which is fair. I’m not exactly in club attire, and Briggs is, for all intents and purposes, a man with a mustache and a mullet. We don’t exactly scream bottle service.
I flip my phone around, pulling up the first Google image of him I find—helmet off after a win, looking properly miserable. “Can you manage a Christmas miracle for us?”
The bouncer looks from the screen to Briggs and back. “. . . Holy shit.”
Briggs pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Merry Christmas, you two,” the bouncer says with a grin, unhooking the velvet rope.
Briggs pays our covers and stops dead at the threshold. “There are a lot of people in there.”
I take his hand and pull him straight onto the floor before he can think too hard about it. The room swallows us—a surge of body heat, heavy bass, and a hundred strangers who couldn’t care less who we are.
It’s exactly what he needs. Under the flashing lights, no one sees a famous athlete or a grieving brother. For a little while, we both get to just forget.
But Briggs has absolutely zero rhythm. He moves like he’s guarding an invisible net, with rigid footing and stiff shoulders. I laugh at him openly, but he takes it in stride. By the second track, his athletic instincts finally kick in, the tension burns off, and he loosens up.
We move through a string of remixes, including an unhinged Mariah Carey club edit that sets off the entire floor. Eventually, the tracks bleed together. My hair tumbles out of its pins. When Briggs reaches out to guide me away from a stray elbow, his hand settles on my waist.
I notice the staying. He notices me noticing. Neither of us fixes it.
The next song drops slow and low, and the crowd presses us closer. His hand spreads across the small of my back. My palm lands flat on his chest, and under it, his heart is beating quickly.
The discovery does something reckless to me.
When I tilt my chin, he’s already looking down at me, red light along his jaw, his expression stripped of every deflection I’ve ever seen him use. Nobody has looked at me like this in years. Maybe ever.
We move together easily. His thumb traces the line of my spine through my shirt. My fingers curl into his jacket. He bends his head, and his mouth grazes the air over my neck, close enough that his breath lands warm on my skin.
Every nerve ending in my body gathers at that half inch and waits.
I tilt my head to close the gap.
Then the song ends, and the lights swing white for the transition. I can feel him surface—the exact second he comes back into himself. His hand leaves my back, cold air rushing into the space where he was.
“I don’t think we should do this.”
My chest is heaving, sweat at my temple. “Do what, exactly?”
He gestures between us. “This. You and me. It shouldn’t happen.”
“Why not?” The music has started again, and I have to say it loudly, which strips it of any dignity. “Give me one reason.”
“You work for my family. I live two thousand miles away. In three days, I get back on a plane, and you’re the person keeping my father steady.” He recites it like a list he prepared earlier, eyes fixed somewhere past my shoulder. “It’s a bad idea, Evie. You know it is.”
I do know it. Every word is true. Still, I stand there in the strobing dark, understanding that none of those excuses matter. The real reason is behind his eyes, behind that door I glimpsed at the cemetery, and he’s just closed it with me on the outside.
“Okay,” I say. “Understood.”
We drive back to Henderson without music. Briggs offers, twice, to have my car towed and fixed. When we get out of his rented SUV, I stumble over a root in the driveway and cringe at myself.
“Let me drive you home?” he asks, one last time. “It’s really no problem.”
I give him a tight smile. “That’s okay. The alternator and I have an understanding. It’ll be fine for another week or so.”
“Good night, then,” he murmurs, his voice sanded down to nothing.
“Good night.”
He stands there with a hand on the back of his neck while I get in my Corolla. The car starts on the second try, loyal to the end. I back out of the driveway and don’t cry, because there’s nothing to cry about.
Nothing happened. Briggs made sure of that.
That’s the danger of letting someone see you want something, isn’t it? I’ve spent my whole adult life setting my wants down gently, out of reach, before anyone can judge me for holding them. Tonight, for three minutes under a red light, I picked one up in front of a witness.
Lesson learned. Back on the shelf it goes.