Pocket Eights
Dom came back to the table and stopped behind June's chair.
He didn't sit. He put one hand on the back of her chair, right behind her shoulder blades, and looked down at what was left of his chips. Three short stacks. An hour ago there had been eight.
"What happened to my stack?"
"I'm bad at this," June said.
"She's not bad." Rook's chair was still tipped back on two legs. He didn't look at Dom. He looked at June. "She's polite. She folded a flush to me so I wouldn't feel bad."
The table got quiet. Boone stopped chewing his ice.
Dom's hand stayed on the back of June's chair. She could feel his knuckles through her dress.
"Up," Dom said quietly.
June got up. Dom sat down in his seat and pulled his chips in close. He didn't look at her. He was looking at Rook.
June had seen Dom play poker a thousand times. She had never seen him play like this.
He didn't talk. He didn't joke with Boone. He just watched Rook's hands, and every chip he pushed into the middle made a hard little click on the felt.
Rook played the same way he did everything, loose and lazy, one arm hanging over the back of his chair. The pots went back and forth between them. Nobody else at the table bothered to stay in a hand.
June stood a few feet back with her arms folded. She knew something was happening. She just didn't know what it was.
The summer she was seventeen, Dom got called out to the yard one Saturday and left Rook waiting in the Reyes garage. Aunt Pat sent June out to be polite. June asked if he wanted to shoot pool. Rook ran the table on her twice without saying a word. When she started racking the balls to quit, he leaned on his cue and said, "Lose and run. Classy." She didn't touch a pool cue for a year.
He was doing the same thing to Dom now. He was just doing it slower.
During a long hand, June drifted around the table. She ended up behind Rook's chair. His chips were a mess, every color mixed together, a couple of them knocked over on their sides.
She leaned in a little, trying to see the two cards under his hand.
Rook didn't turn around. His hand came up off the felt and closed around her wrist.
He didn't squeeze. He just held it. His fingers were warm and rough, and his thumb rested on the same spot on the inside of her wrist where Dom's thumb had been an hour ago.
June could feel her own pulse jumping against it.
"Get a good look?" Rook said. "Little spy."
Every head at the table turned.
"I wasn't—"
"Pocket eights." Rook let go of her wrist. He still didn't look at her. He looked across the table at Dom. "Go tell your brother."
Boone slapped the felt. "That's why Dom keeps winning! He's had a scout this whole time!"
June's face burned. She went back around the table and stood behind Dom's chair. Her wrist felt hot where Rook had held it.
Dom didn't say anything. He tapped his cigarette on the ashtray. Then he pushed all his chips into the middle.
"Call."
The dealer turned over the last card. An eight.
Rook flipped his cards over without looking at them. Two eights. Four of a kind.
"Thanks for the call," Rook said.
He raked the pot toward himself with one arm. Then he picked a single red chip off the top of the pile and flicked it across the table. It bounced once on the felt and landed against June's hand.
"Your cut," Rook said. "Spy."
June looked down at the chip. She didn't pick it up. She didn't push it away, either.
Dom looked at the chip by June's hand. Then he looked at Rook. Neither of them said anything.
Boone suddenly found something very interesting at the bottom of his glass.
Dom looked back down at the cards for a long second. A muscle moved in his jaw. Then he stood up, and the legs of his chair scraped loud on the concrete.
"Cake," he said, to nobody, and walked off.
At midnight somebody killed the jukebox. The real cake came out, chocolate, with candles stuck all over it.
Everybody crowded around the pool table where they set it down, and the whole clubhouse started singing.
June ended up in the back, three rows of people deep.
Then Dom looked up from the candles, over everybody's heads, straight to her.
"June. C'mere."
The crowd moved out of her way. Dom reached through the last row and took her by the wrist. It was the same wrist. He pulled her in front of him so she was standing right in front of the cake.
Then he put both hands on her shoulders and stood close behind her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his chest against her back.
He bent his head. His mouth was right next to her ear.
"Make a wish," he said.
She'd made his birthday wish every year since she was seven. It had started as a joke and never stopped. Every single wish she'd ever made, Dom had found a way to make it happen.
His thumbs moved once on her shoulders, slow. June stopped breathing.
There was only one thing she wanted. It was standing right behind her. And it was the one thing he could never give her.
"I don't have one," she said. "It's your birthday. You make it."
Dom was quiet for a second. His hands didn't move.
"Then save it," he said. His voice was low and rough, and only she could hear it. "It'll keep."
He leaned past her and blew out the candles himself. When he straightened up, his cheek brushed her hair.
Everybody cheered.
June looked up across the cake. Rook was leaning against the cue rack on the far wall with his arms crossed. He was watching Dom's hands on her shoulders.
Then his eyes came up to June's face, and stayed there.
June didn't remember falling asleep. She woke up on the old leather couch in the back room. Something heavy was lying over her. A leather jacket, worn soft, still warm on the inside. It smelled like cigarette smoke and lemon candy.
June sat up slowly and held the jacket in her lap.
Nico was sitting in a folding chair by the door. He looked up from his phone.
"Rook threw that on you," he said. "On his way out back."
Through the doorway, June could see the main room. The party had shrunk down to its late-night size.
Dom was on the big couch with Boone and a few of the older guys. His shirt was open at the collar. A cigarette had burned down almost to his fingers, and he hadn't taken one drag of it.
The singer was sitting next to him. The one who'd flown in late. She laughed at something Boone said and laid her head down on Dom's shoulder like she'd done it a hundred times.
Dom didn't move away. He didn't lean in, either. He just sat there and let her, staring at nothing across the room, the cigarette burning down between his fingers.
June used to do that. That exact shoulder, on couches just like this one, late at night. He'd never moved away from her either.
Her fingers had dug into the leather jacket in her lap so hard the knuckles were white. She made herself let go.
She stood up and put the jacket over her arm.
"Where's Rook now?" she asked Nico.
"Out in the lot, I think. Might be leaving."
June walked out through the back hall, past the kegs and the bathrooms. She didn't run. She pushed the side door open with her shoulder, and the cold air off the water hit her in the face.
Behind her, Nico came stumbling out of the back room. "Wait, you're leaving? Should I tell Dom—"
"Don't bother him," June said. She didn't turn around. "He's busy."
