Bet on It (21)

The room was warm—even hotter than it was outside. It was almost like they didn’t want to bother wasting money blasting the air conditioner for so few people. He was sure that by the time they left his clothes would be sticking to his body.

Even though plenty of seats were open, Aja insisted they sit towards the back. “We’ll probably be talking some,” she said.

Walker followed behind her, obedient as a puppy and without a single objection. Sure, his eyes had been so glued to her wide hips and full ass that he hadn’t even considered arguing, but still …

The area they chose was completely empty, but he still sat in the chair directly to her left. He rationalized that choosing that particular seat would allow them to keep their voices down. But he knew full well he mostly wanted to be close, to live in the possibility of the brush of their arms or thighs. It was pathetic, sure enough, but Walker’s sense of shame was wearing thinner the more time he spent in the presence of Aja Owens.

Once she’d set her purse and water bottle on the table in front of her, she cleared her throat.

“I feel like Ms. May threw you to the wolves with this, so I’m going to give you a rundown of my own.”

“Sounds good.”

“We always start with the blue sheets first.” She isolated the blue sheets from the stack of six they’d each gotten. “I don’t know why, but they always do.”

Instead of keeping the sheets in a stack like he’d seen most other people do, she laid them all out on the table in front of her.

“You’re not a pro at this,” she said. “You can’t just stack your sheets and expect to flip through them fast enough to find the numbers.”

“That’s how everybody else does it though,” he argued. “It’s how Gram told me to do it.”

“Everybody else has been playing this game since 1976, Walker. They all have some kind of superpower that allows them to memorize the sheets at a glance or something.” She paused to lick her lips and his eyes glued themselves to the shine her tongue left behind. “You and I don’t have that power, so I suggest you do what I do and make it easier on yourself.”

“People will look at me funny though,” he said, pouting.

Aja’s answering eye roll was more adorable than it had a right to be. “You’re a tall, handsome young man who spends multiple weeknights in a bingo hall surrounded by senior citizens. People are going to look at you funny either way.”

If his ears had been able to perk up like a dog’s, they would have. “Handsome?”

“No.” She snapped, then pointed a stern finger at him. “Focus.”

He pouted again, and she ignored him.

“You can’t memorize the sheets, but it doesn’t hurt to give them a good, long look to get familiar.”

As she began arranging her sheets, he did as she said. His eyes scanned over the numbers. Spread across six sheets with six different bingo cards on each one, there were hundreds of them. He started feeling overwhelmed all over again.

“You have any tricks you’d recommend?” he asked.

“It’s important to remember that you’re not just searching for random numbers across the sheets. If the number they call is B15, focus only on the B columns. Don’t let all the numbers make you feel like you’re going on a wild goose chase.”

That made sense. Perfect sense actually. He knew the rules of the game. Understood that the only way to get a bingo was to match both numbers and letters with the ones called. But in the previous games he’d played, he’d been disconnected from the point she’d made. His eyes had flitted across the pages with each call, searching for matches in places they couldn’t be. Aja’s words reminded him what he already knew but had failed to fully grasp in practice.

They both straightened up, eyes to the front as the bingo caller announced from the podium that they were about to begin.

Walker followed Aja’s lead as he unscrewed the top on his green dauber. The game started with little fanfare. He couldn’t remember the name of the woman calling the numbers, but she moved much slower than the other two callers he’d encountered. He wasn’t mad at it though; he got through the first three numbers easily. He didn’t have any matches, but he didn’t feel flustered the way he usually did.

“Maybe I don’t need as much practice as I thought,” he commented to Aja.

“Don’t get too cocky,” she laughed. “I told you, Mrs. Schofield likes to go at a snail’s pace—but this is how she always sounds, even in regular conversations. She talks so slow that sometimes people bring their kids on Monday nights because it’s the only time the little ones have a chance of keeping up.”

“And, just like that, my confidence is shot.”

“No!” Her hand shot out to touch his forearm, sparking lightning behind his skin. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was playing with you.”

“I know, Aja.” His voice was rough, his eyes on her hand resting against him. She’d gotten new nails. Pretty and pink and marbled, and he immediately thought about what they would look like clutching at his back or wrapped around his … “I’m just fuckin’ around. Don’t worry.”

“Right…”

He could tell she was embarrassed. Her eyes dropped to the table and her face morphed into a light grimace. “What kind of friends would we be if we couldn’t fuck with each other every now and then?”