“It would be a waste to eat it.”
She blinked. “I’m going to translate that from, like, rich people’s language. You don’t eat packaged foods. You don’t batch cook for a week. Every meal you have is fresh.”
“It’s not a rich person thing. Food is objectively better when it is fresh.”
“Yeah, but…” How was she supposed to explain to this man that most people did not have the luxury of cooking three meals from scratch or tossing an entire box of energy bars if they hated them? She looked down at the bar. Who was she kidding? He wasn’t cooking anything ever. He had a private freaking chef cooking fresh meals three times a day.
“Aces high, one marshmallow ante,” she said abruptly as she picked up the cards.
“We don’t have to eat all the marshmallows, right?”
She snickered. “Had enough of s’mores?”
“It was good!”
She dealt five cards to each of them. “What, they’re not sold at your fancy five-star New York restaurants?”
“Three stars,” he said as he picked up his cards.
She watched him carefully, not taking her eyes off of him even to look at her own cards until he put two down and said, “I will raise you one marshmallow. Though I’m unfamiliar with the currency, and therefore I don’t know how big a bet it is.”
“Oh, it will break the bank.”
She wanted to peer just a little bit into the future. She could probably use the window behind him, but she also didn’t want to see that bizarre white explosion or the haunted, freezing faces of kids, so she would have to trust that his laugh lines had deepened for half a second. He had the beginnings of something, but he was going to have to get lucky for it to pan out. The cards in his hands were currently worthless
Finally, she looked at her own and kept her face still. She had a one and a two of hearts, an ace, and random others. She had no idea of her odds of getting a straight flush, but she knew they weren’t good. She bit her lip. She could probably ask him. “Why do you only eat at three-star restaurants?”
“Common misconception. The Michelin guide for the best restaurants in the world only has three stars. So the best restaurants in New York have three stars. No restaurant has five.”
“Two marshmallows,” she said, and he nodded and added one more after her. “Cards?”
“Two.”
She slid them over and watched him again. While he tried to hide it, he did not get the ones he needed, which meant his hand was probably worthless.
She discarded everything but the one and two. She should have kept the ace. If he truly had nothing, that would take the pot, but, hey, the odds of the best poker hand were long, not impossible.
Miraculously, she got the three of hearts, but not the four or five she needed. Still, she took an aborted breath like it was something good and threw another marshmallow in the pot.
“Another,” she said.
“Fold,” he said immediately, and she grinned and took the pot. He had more control over his face than many she’d played with, or maybe he just wasn’t very expressive in general, but he did play it straight. He bet when he thought he had a chance, and he folded when he knew he didn’t.
“What are your cards?” he asked.
“I don’t have to show you. You folded.”
“Wait—” he looked offended. “You had nothing?”
She turned over the one, two, three slowly, and saw his eyes go wide, and then flipped the six of spades, and he laughed.
“I forgot how fast this game goes,” he said as she held out the deck.
“It’s your turn.”
He examined the deck like it were a foreign object. “You can just keep dealing. I trust you.”
She paused. Why did that hit so hard?
