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Aja didn’t get a number from one of her sheets called until the eighth ball was pulled.
“B90—the end of the line.”
Aja loved the quirky, sometimes totally bizarre sayings that accompanied the numbers in bingo. When the number 90 was called, it was accompanied by the phrase “top of the shop” or the “end of the line.” Not because the game was over, but because 90 was the last number used in a bingo roll call. There was “legs 11” for the number 11 simply because two ones next to each other looked like a pair of legs. There was also “buckle my shoe,” which came after the number 32, because it rhymed.
There was technically a phrase for every number in the roll, but the callers themselves decided which ones to use and when. Aja had heard them hundreds of times by now and she still got a kick out of them. She didn’t think they’d ever get old.
She took a peek at Walker’s stack and immediately spotted the same number, right there on top. He was running his eyes over the cards frantically, completely missing it. Moving her pinkie finger across the table, she slid it towards the little square on the upper far left of the top card. The second she touched the square she heard his intake of breath.
“Thank you,” he mouthed, and the gratitude in his eyes was so palpable it made her throat tighten.
She had no idea what came over her. The pluckiness that welled up inside was something she hadn’t felt in… forever. It didn’t sit with her for long though, spending only enough time in her chest for her to shoot Walker a wink of her own. Then, it was gone. Leaving her with a racing heart and a look from the man next to her that made her light-headed.
