1
REMY
“No more bets.”I scan the faces of the guests seated around the roulette table, making sure that they’re aware the betting is closed.
Working on the casino floor is strangely therapeutic. There’s a bubble around me. I’m untouchable, elevated, respected, because I’m the one calling the shots. Maybe George, my ex, was right, and I’m a control freak who gets off on telling people what to do. Or maybe I allowed his gaslighting to stick a little too tightly to my skin, and this is how it feels to be free.
“The wheel is spinning.”
Perhaps this is why the roulette wheel is my favorite. A script to follow. Very little interaction with the guests.
I never enjoyed math at high school. I didn’t hang out with the geeky kids, numbers and science experiments were not my friends, and I didn’t fit in with the popular kids either. My mom always said I would find my tribe when I went to college. But even she never considered the possibility that I might be happy without one. Safer without one too.
My sister Danielle found her tribe in ninth grade. She never made it to college because they worshipped the god of medically induced highs that quickly descended into a black hole of self-loathing and fixes that stopped fixing anything worth living for.
“The ball has dropped.”
The wheel stops spinning. The pill settles on black 28. My hands move automatically, collecting chips from the losers while my brain calculates the winner’s rewards. It’s only my second week here at the Rinse casino, and I see chips in my dreams.
Every. Damned. Night.
Better than replaying my final conversation with George, you know, the one where he said,“I’m too young for commitment, Remy. I need to fly, and you’re holding me back.”
So, I did what any self-respecting control freak would do: I let him go and watched him fly straight into the arms of another woman who became his fiancée three months later.
The guests around the table slide their chips onto their chosen number.
I’m invisible. The tailored black pants, crisp white shirt, and neat gold waistcoat helps, the uniform turning me into someone who exists inside a different reality to theirs. Invisibility, I’ve discovered, is my superpower. I feel a bit like a ghost peering down on them from above, reading their minds, breathing their perfume, and never giving them a second thought when they walk away.
There’s the Asian man in the expensive black suit who has already lost close to twenty thousand dollars this evening. He’sa regular. Sometimes he brings Lady Luck with him; tonight, he left her at home. It doesn’t seem to spoil his enjoyment.
Next to him is the woman in the sparkly gold dress that reveals a little too much wobbly cleavage. Blonde. Well-groomed. I can’t see her legs from my position, but I’m guessing from the way the other guests check her out when they approach the table that she also reveals a little too much thigh.
Ms. Cleavage wins this round, flexes her scarlet talons, already choosing her next bet.
I lose track of time, another bonus for working the casino floor. No clocks. The pit boss moves us around like pawns on a chess board, meaning there’s just us and the game. Regular breaks, and the money is decent.
What’s not to like.
“The boss has his eye on you tonight,” Fran whispers in my ear when she comes to replace me. She’s wearing the same uniform; her dark curls pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. I follow her gaze and quickly lower my eyes. “Bash Murray,” she continues. “One of four brothers and they all look like that.”
We switch places, and Fran steps into the neutral expression that will be her mask for the next sixty minutes.
I scan the floor for the pit boss as I head towards his empty station. I can’t see him anywhere, but now that Fran has brought Bash Murray to my attention, my gaze keeps drifting his way, and there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it. I’m a control freak with absolutely zero control over my body, apparently.
His hair is sandy, but it catches the light from the lamps set into the wall behind him on the mezzanine floor and glints red like he attached tinsel to the roots when he was getting ready for work. His eyes are deep-set, his jawline strong, his clothes unaffordable to any regular individual. Not my usual type. Not that I have a type since George.
Men fuck with your brains and then move on, instantly forgetting that they ever told you they loved you.
But my heart is pumping blood around my veins as though it’s preparing to enter a boxing ring. I shake my head. I’m done with boxing matches. The referee is always biased in the wrong corner, and the odds areneverin the woman’s favor.
Pit boss. I mentally shake myself back on track. I’m working. I need to grab my bottle of water and move onto the next table. I don’t need to get the attention of Bastien Murray, for all the wrong reasons, and find myself unemployed by the end of the night for taking an unplanned break.
But my head is scrambled by eyes that miss nothing and a chiseled jawline that Hollywood would latch onto if they ever spotted it. So, I don’t see the server until the tray of drinks he’s carrying collides with my chest.
For one horrible moment, the world stops spinning as glasses topple onto the floor, their contents saturating the front of my uniform and splashing my face.
Then, time speeds up again as a whiskey tumbler hits my foot.
