Page 55 of Rhodes

Sully and Deuce come in together, arguing about something that happened at weight lifting, and just like that my house stops being mine and becomes the frat house, the way it does whenever I host poker night.

Somebody drops onto the couch and starts flipping the TV channels while Deuce lifts the lid off the top pizza box, inspects it, and takes a slice before he's even set his keys down.

"You got the good one," Deuce says with his mouth full. "The one with actual meat on it."

"There are three boxes, you savage."

"I know. I'm claiming this one."

They sort themselves around the table, with Sully insisting on the seat by the window and Ford telling him that tradition is for people who win. I stack the chips and let the noise roll over me. This part I could do asleep.

Tallulah's door opens down the hall, and she comes out barefoot, in a James Taylor T-shirt and cutoffs, hair shoved up off her neck. She doesn't check the room or wait to be told it's fine. She crosses straight to the open chair between Nash and Sully, pulls it out, and sits.

"Deal me in."

"Oh, hell yeah." Deuce grins around his pizza. "Tilly Maybank. You just upped the value of Poker Night by a factor of ten."

"Watch out, D. She says she's good," I say with a laugh, pulling out my chair.

"Our boy said you're going to take some of my money," Deuce says. He thinks he's being cute, but he sounds ridiculous. She's way out of his league.

"Rhodes was being generous. I'm going to take all of it." She reaches across the table, flips open the second pizza box, and slides out a slice like she's one of the boys.

Nash laughs. "You want a beer, or —"

"Water's fine." She says it flatly, no story attached. Nash just nods and doesn't make it a thing. I love him a little for that.

"You always played this loose?" Sully asks her.

"I grew up with Coop. You learn to bluff, or you learn to lose."

That's the whole introduction. Nobody needs more. They already know exactly who she is, whose sister, whose people, and she settles into the table like a stone dropping into water and closing over. Deuce is already telling her about the last hand he lost, and she's already telling him it's because he counts cards out loud with his lips moving. Ford loses it, and she has been in the room ninety seconds.

I pick up the deck and shuffle once, then twice. The cards are perfectly crisp under my thumbs, and it’s oddly satisfying as I watch her steal my pizza in my chair at my table.

She fits. That's the part that gets me.

"You dealing or fondling those?" Sully asks.

I set the deck in front of Deuce.

"You deal. I need my hands free to take your money." He cuts the deck and starts sending cards around the table.

Two hours in, the pizza boxes are empty, and Ford's stack has shrunk to a sad little pile he keeps rearranging so it'll look bigger.

Tallulah leans back in her chair, arms crossed, watching the flop hit the table. She hasn't touched her cards since she picked them up. That's the thing I keep noticing. She doesn't fidget. She watches, doing the math on everybody else's faces.

It hits me she'd clean out Keller's tables. Not this, the real ones, the invitation-only game uptown where the city's best liars sit down to lose their shirts to each other. She'd walk out owning the room.

Ford bets big. He does that when he's got nothing and he's hoping to buy the pot.

"Careful," Sully says. "She's got that look."

"What look?" Ford asks.

"The one where she already knows what you have," I say.

Tallulah smiles at Ford, slow and sweet, and pushes her whole stack in. "All of it."