Hooked 3 (Hooked #3)(13)

Drew pulled in front of me, blocking me from entering the casino. He shook his head, disallowing me to take another step forward. I could hear loud music and the sound of slots from the inside. I felt like my heart was going to explode. I thought only of my father; never at home, always at the casino. Always spending our money away, leaving my mother and I with nothing after he died of that goddamned heart attack. My mother, her face teary-eyed, blotched. She hadn’t allowed me to drink or gamble. Once, a friend and I had played a scratch off game at the kitchen table, and my mother had cried in the other room. The memories were too deep. The innocence bled into terror too quickly.


“Please. Tell me what’s going on,” he whispered.

I cleared my throat. I could hardly look at him. “I just. My father died when I was really, really young. Nine. But before that, I remember the alcohol. The gambling. The drugs. He did it all at a casino outside of Indianapolis. It disgusted me, the way he used our money. He just completely obliterated my family, and then he left us.” I felt my body shaking.

Drew placed his fingers on my shoulders, kneading into my skin with his strong thumb. He sighed. We continued to listen to the music rollicking from the casino. “Molly. I’m so sorry to hear this.” His eyes were so firm, so stoic. “You know I lost my father when I was quite young, as well.”

I shook my head, feeling my heart break all over again. “What happened?” But he just shook his head; he didn’t want to go into it. I didn’t want anyone else to go through that sheer pain I had gone through; I didn’t want anyone to have to endure the loss of a parent. This was still so strong in me—this pain—all these years later. “I’m so sorry.” My voice broke.

The silence between us drove us to listen to the humming conversation of the people, the roll of the great machines. He kneaded more and more against my skin, helping me to relax. “Tell you what,” he murmured. “We’re already here, yeah? We’ve driven all this way?”

I nodded. I was adamant about not playing, but this didn’t mean we couldn’t enter. He had come all the way to Iowa for this place; it had to be special to him. I wanted to know what was important to him. Could I be important to him? Or was I a floozy, just another woman? Perhaps he did this with all the girls.

“We’re already here. And I won’t spend very much, okay? I’ll just spend five thousand at a time.”

My eyes widened, shocked at his throwing away five thousand dollars, just at a time. To me, this was more money than I had ever seen in one place. This money would save my life. And to him—it was like betting five dollars. Maybe ten.

“Just five thousand,” he assured me again, looking for a nod, a yes, anything.

And so I gave it. “Of course,” I murmured. “Five is good.”

He traced my face with his finger and leaned down, giving my nose a small tap with his lips. Something trembled inside of me. “It’s going to be all right.”

We waltzed into the immaculate casino. I stood on his arm like a queen. A few of the most beautiful people I had ever seen—again and again—looked toward us, eyeing us as the competition. Their eyes flashed. I poised my face in such a way that seemed high and mighty. I arched my eyebrow toward the women who glared at me and they turned away, frightened, suddenly, at my appearance of wealth.

If they only knew, I thought, about my smelly apartment and my cat Boomer. The thought made me giddy with happiness. How we can pretend to be people we’re absolutely not, even when we’re so starkly ourselves on the inside.

Drew rounded the corner and traded his five thousand for chips. I looked at the chips in his hand as he slipped them into his pocket. He pulled one out and looked at me, kissing it precisely. He handed it to me. “For good luck,” he murmured. I felt its frigidness in my fingers as I folded it back and forth in my hands. How much was each one worth? Did I want to know?

We walked toward the blackjack table. In my head, I knew Drew would be a blackjack player, so much like my losing father. My father always told my mother and me that he started out winning, every evening. That he got hot. And then—and then—the tables changed. They altered. I arched my eyebrow toward Drew, uncertain. Was he a winner? He sat down at the table and patted the soft green. The man dealt him and the others in. I stood behind him, watching his cards, watching how so many of the other players lost and lost, while Drew continued to win. Did these people all have millions of dollars to blow? Were they all maintaining the five thousand dollar rule?

“And another one for Thompson,” the dealer declared to the world, hitting Drew with more and more coins. Drew looked at the coins dispassionately, as if un-amused by them. He aligned them in a little colony on his right. I watched as the stacks grew higher and higher.

I was holding onto his arm, my eyes bright in my head. I had given up on sad thoughts of my father, especially on my third martini. I remembered how my mother had turned so hateful, so riotous in the days after his death. She had disallowed everything, and thusly, I had fled. I didn’t belong there.

But this man—this handsome man before me—was such a winner. He understood the intricacies of money; he understood how it lived, how it breathed. He could manipulate it however he wanted. “You are so talented,” I murmured, kissing him on the forehead. I didn’t know why I did it; it just felt right.


“Talent has nothing to do with it,” Drew said toward me. “It’s luck.” He turned back toward the dealer, declaring that he was ready to take a break. The dealer bowed his head toward him, and Drew marched from the table, taking me on his arm. I looked back at the other sad sacks who remained on, looking at their chips in confusion. How had they lost so much? How would they tell their wives, their husbands about what had happened there that evening? I imagined the world beyond the glamor, beyond the high heels, beyond the make-up; the world that had existed, for example, in my own home. It hadn’t been beautiful. It had been lonely, desolate. We had had to make tough decisions, like trading in televisions for food money or giving up on ideas of vacations just to keep the house.