Talia
“Not helpful,” she grumbled.
(In poker, they said “levels” instead of “rounds.” So Sam had made it through the first five levels.) Good, good, good.
Confidence? Or a bluff?
He faced a decision—call the bet or fold his cards.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t see Louise’s cards, but Talia could.
“Fold, Sam,” she urged.
He did the opposite and called.
The dealer spread three community cards: an ace of clubs, seven of spades, and two of diamonds.
“Shit,” Talia said. The ace changed everything—anyone holding one would be ahead of his kings.
Louise bet more, and Sam took the bait.
Then Louise pushed forward her entire stack of chips—enough to eliminate Sam if he called and lost.
He studied her for almost two full minutes in silence.
Please, Sam, please… Talia’s heart was in her throat. He needed to fold. He would be fine if he did. He’d still be in the tournament.
But Sam took a deep breath and said, “Call,” while pushing all his chips forward.
Louise turned over two aces.
“Shit!” Talia punched her mattress.
Sam had lost everything. His $5,000 buy-in was gone, which he really couldn’t afford to lose, and at 734th place, he was going to have to walk away with nothing.
Talia watched as he stood from the table.
“Seat open at table twenty-three,” the tournament director announced, making Sam’s exit official.
“No,” Talia said. “This is not okay.”
She got up to retrieve the watch from her nightstand.
But halfway across the room, she stopped. Last night, she had stashed the watch away because she’d made the decision to finally stop this madness of constantly turning back time.
True emergencies only, she’d told herself.
This was Sam, though. His future was more important to her than almost anyone else’s.
He would hate me using this on him.
But he won’t know… He never does.
All of her muscles felt too tight, her insides too tangled, but Talia got the watch out of the drawer and rewound anyway.
Back to the beginning of level 6. She had gone back slightly more than thirty minutes before the live stream, since that was on delay.
While she waited to watch, Talia brushed the nasty old-sock taste from her mouth, took a quick shower, and brewed some coffee.
Summer Million update: Level 6 live stream starts now!
“You got it this time, Sam.”
Table 23. He had the same cards as before. Louise Enger also had her original starting hand.
Sam put in 1,200 chips.
Louise pushed in 3,600.
Talia sat at the edge of her couch as she watched. Everything so far was the same. She gulped down her coffee and willed the dealer’s cards to change.
Ace of clubs. Seven of spades. Two of diamonds. Just like last time.
“Oh no,” Talia said.
The rest of the hand happened exactly the same, too. Sam kept calling, and Louise kept escalating.
All in.
Sam pushed all his chips forward.
“Seat open at table twenty-three.”
“I refuse to accept this,” Talia said and rewound again.
She did it a total of seven times. By the last undo, she was nauseous and her head felt like it was cracking open, and then she fell asleep before the level 6 live stream even started.
When she woke up, level 6—version eight—had ended, and Sam had lost identically.
“Seat open at table twenty-three.”
Talia staggered into her bed, so ill that it felt as if every single cell in her body was throbbing, threatening to burst and spill out their insides.
Her skull was all migraine and no brain; she’d had to shut down Ideal Life Queen Elizabeth after the second rewind because the royal bee was whirling herself into a tizzy with concern.
Short of rewinding and calling Sam during his earlier break to tell him Louise’s future cards, it seemed nothing would change.
Sam would never cheat, of course. She had only hoped that by turning back time, it would have given him an opportunity to make a different decision.
But he hadn’t. Why not? Talia tried her best to think through her pounding headache, and all she could conclude from the evidence of all these “microexperiments” was that things didn’t change when she rewound, unless she was there to effect the change.
Talia buried her face in a pillow.
Sam needed the winnings to keep Lighthouse Books afloat.
He was such an earnest person, doing the work of running a bookstore to encourage a love of reading in a world where shallower, more passive entertainment was easier to achieve.
People who swam upstream to try to do good ought to be rewarded.
It wasn’t fair that life was harder for them.
But was this really about Sam? Or was it subconsciously about herself?
Because it wasn’t only about wishing that Sam could have made a different decision in the tournament, was it?
It was also about wishing that she could have made a different choice about signing the acquisition agreement with Omni.
But now Talia and Ideal Life were trapped on a path they couldn’t veer from, like being locked in on a roller coaster.
You couldn’t get out once the car left the station.
Not unless she magically had a million dollars with which to pay the termination fee to stop the ride and get out of the deal.
Talia bolted upright in her bed, even though a flash of pain shot through her head.
The prize at the poker tournament was a million dollars. And it was only half an hour away in San Jose. It was also an open competition that anyone could enter. Registration had closed only last night, and her recent stock market investments meant she had enough money for the $5,000 buy-in fee.
Sam couldn’t win the Summer Million. But maybe Talia could.