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It was better than where, during those first few weeks when I’d accepted that he’d truly just left, I’d ruthlessly and repeatedly screamed at him—in my head while showering and aggressively scrubbing my favorite orange-and-vanilla-scented soap up and down my arms. If that was an unfulfilling arena, then this was an equally absurd one.
Fortuna’s Finest Powder Room, which was also known as “The Million Dollar Room,” named so because it had cost approximately one million dollars to build, furnish, and adorn. A fourteen-stalled monstrosity of a space where each stall housed a different oil painting specifically commissioned for the bathroom. Most depicted scenes of great wealth or portraits of hoarders of said wealth, all fourteen fixed in elaborate baroque-style gold frames that matched the gold fixtures of the sinks perfectly.
It was beyond ridiculous, but like many things at Fortuna, I harbored fond, nostalgic feelings for it.
The bathroom had two entrances, one on each end of the high-limits slot machines. I’d hidden from Grandmother here countless times when I was younger, usually passing the time by sitting in one of the stalls with a book. In those few months before puberty truly struck and I started to value my bathroom privacy more, I’d snuck Cody in here to play cards on top of the toilet lids and eavesdrop on the casino gossip.
It only sounds weird because it is weird, as Cody would often say.
And hearing his voice, even just in a memory, snapped me out of my cowardice.
“No.” I stepped back.
This time both of his eyebrows rose in surprise. “That’s all you have to say after all this time? You don’t care to know how I’ve been? What I’ve accomplished?” He had the audacity to look hurt.
“I didn’t have a say in any of that, did I?”
He huffed, an irritated edge to the sound. “Look, sweetheart, I was happy to see you performing tonight, but obviously you’re still having some stage fright, so we still need to talk. Can I take you to dinner?” He rubbed the back of his neck, flashing a diamond-adorned white-gold Rolex before impatiently shoving his hand into the pocket of his suit pants.
Stage fright?
“It has to be at least two in the morning by now,” I countered as I took a few small backward steps toward the exit.
He smiled his full smile at me, showcasing a dimple on the right side that I used to think was so charming. “When has that ever mattered to you? We could just go down to the bar and get a nightcap if you don’t want to eat.” He eyed me knowingly and added, “I’m staying in the Virgo suite.”
Outrage flared through me, making my already irritated skin feel tight. It was beyond ballsy of him to assume I wanted, or needed, to know that information. As if I would be anything but hurt to know that he was staying in the last place I’d seen him. Ten months ago.
There was a time when Lady Luck felt like my future. I felt empowered in my role, even luxuriating in the feel of the silk on my skin and the energy of the crowd’s excitement and anticipation each time I threw the roulette ball or spun the wheel.
It was my part in the complex fabric of Fortuna’s tapestry. My legacy, my namesake.
His callousness tarnished everything.
My confidence in the life I thought I was building here as Fortuna Casino & Resort’s resident Lady Luck—the seventh floor’s main attraction—plummeted.
Lady Luck held no schedule and cast no judgments.
She did not dictate the whims of fate.
She illuminated them.
According to the casino’s website.
The goddess Fortuna was the primary icon of the resort and was depicted on almost all of Fortuna’s logos, advertisements, and signage—a cornucopia of coins held in her arms and sprigs of wheat in her dark-brown hair.
Always blindfolded.
She was me.
And she’d been my mother.
The thought sobered me enough that I glanced at my former friend and onetime potential everything. He was nothing now and had made that clear. AJ seemed surprised by the force of my glower, and that somehow comforted me.
Maybe I was stronger.
In all our years of friendship, I didn’t think he’d ever seen me truly angry. Grandmother wasn’t the only person I used the glossing method with, unfortunately.
Never one to allow himself to be at a disadvantage, he quickly masked his surprise as the tension between our gazes pulled like a taut string. We were in a standoff.
