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“I like it so far. This is the first casino I’ve been in, but I am staying here, so that doesn’t really say much. I would like to check out more casinos and see what the differences are.”
“This is one of my favorites. It’s so elegant. Reminds me of what Venice would be like. So, you said that your fiancé plays?”
“Yes, she was taught by her Uncle Vinnie. He used to play a lot in Atlantic City back in the 40s and 50s.”
“Oh, she learned from some of the greats,” he said. “I would love to play with someone of his caliber. I bet he has a lot of tricks up his sleeve.”
“According to her, he does,” Spencer laughed. The two continued to talk for hours. They had so much in common. More than just their fascination with poker.”
Spencer shared a lot about his fiancé, Jessica. To the point where Matt felt like he knew her himself. “Want to see our engagement photo?” Spencer flipped open his wallet and pulled out a wallet-size photo that showed his arms around the waist of a raven-haired woman with piercing emerald green eyes and olive-kissed skin. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The more Spencer talked about her, the more Matt wanted to get to know this woman in person.
“What do you think?” Spencer asked, bringing Matt back to reality.
“What do I think about what?”
“Teaching me how to play poker at a casino level.”
“This is going to take some time,” Matt told him. “It’s not something that I can teach you over a series of days. However, I do have a busy schedule, and I would have to find time to be able to teach you. First of all, how are we going to do this if you live all the way in New York?”
“Well, you wouldn’t be doing this for free. I’ll pay you for the lessons, of course, and, to answer your question, my job’s sending me out here once a month or so, and when they’re not, we can always meet in Atlantic City.”
Matt thought about it for a second. He could always use the challenge. It would help save him from the monotony that had become his life because the next poker tour was still a couple of months away, and he needed things to do with his extra time. Plus, this could be a fulfilling venture. Something he had never really tried before, and he could hear more about Jessica. “Sounds great to me. When do we start?”
Matt and Spencer met up a few times a month and started to form a strong business relationship. Spencer was a terrible poker player. Matt started out with the basics: observation. They would attend various poker games at different casinos, and they would observe the players. Afterward, Matt would quiz him on each of the players and see if he could tell when they were bluffing, their certain mannerisms, and tells. Spencer had a hard time figuring that out, so Matt moved on to teaching him the basics of the game, and they would come back to the observation part of the lessons later.
Even though Spencer was awful, he never gave up. He was determined he could learn how to be a great poker player. He just needed to keep practicing, and that is exactly what they did, practice, but what Spencer didn’t know was that Matt was observing him the whole time, especially when he talked about Jessica. In the beginning, Spencer talked about Jessica like he worshiped the ground she walked on.
At one of their meetings in Vegas, Spencer started complaining about Jessica and her family.
“They think they’re God’s gift to the earth. I swear,” he started off the conversation.
Matt was confused. He had no idea who Spencer was talking about. “Who?”
“Jessica and her parents. They keep telling me that we should have the wedding this way or that way, — I know what I want, and I’m not going to back down. I mean, my family comes from money, and I know what is classy and what’s not. Just because they’re paying for the wedding doesn’t mean that I don’t get a say.”
“What about Jessica? You don’t care what she wants?” he asked.
“Of course, I do, but there should be some sort of compromise.”The rest of the night continued like that. That was until Spencer let something slip, and he said Melissa instead of Jessica.
“Who’s Melissa?”Matt asked.
A wide grin went up Spencer’s face.“She’s the showgirl I met the last time I was here. She’s incredible. So reckless and full of adventure. I’m seeing her tomorrow night.”
“What about your fiancé?”
“What she won’t know won’t hurt her. It’s all harmless fun. I’m still getting married,”he responded like he wasn’t doing anything wrong, like he wasn’t deceiving his best friend, the woman who was loyal to him.“I just need a little relaxation from the stress of wedding planning itself. Every time I came home, she would hound me with questions about making decisions about trivial things like flowers. I know I wanted to be involved, but she could get off my back. I sometimes wish that we could go back to the night before I proposed. Where we just made passionate love before we even thought about dinner. Sometimes I wish for the old days. Is that so wrong?”
Matt kept his mouth shut. Again, he was observing Spencer and learning how to play him. This was going to be the biggest game of his life, and he needed to make sure that he knew every single detail about Spencer Garcia. This would be the ultimate test of how good of a player he was. His mentor had taught him something valuable about poker, which made Matt so good. He told him that poker was very much a game of life. How players acted when playing was similar to how they dealt with situations in real life. Now, he knew how Spencer dealt with stress. Instead of fixing the problem or communicating with his soon-to-be wife, he decided to cheat on her or, as he called it, have a little relaxation. At this point, Matt knew what his end game would be and what hands he would be holding for the win, so he just went along with the lessons for the next few months.
That was until they met the Coretti brothers.
8
Jessica realized that she had been talking about herself for over an hour. Matt must be severely bored. She commended him for sitting there, listening to her vent about her ex. What kind of guy would be really interested to hear a girl complain about her ex and how he did her wrong?
“I’m so sorry,” she said, pulling herself out of her sorrow. “I’ve been talking about myself for the past hour. You must be bored out of your mind.”
“No, I like hearing about you. I’m sorry that he put you through that. No one deserves that. I know that if it were me and my fiancé felt different about the wedding, all they had to do was communicate with me. I would rather postpone the wedding and work on things than not have it happen altogether, but some people are more cowardly than others,” he said with a shrug. “No matter what happened, remember that you did nothing wrong, and you are not the problem. He didn’t deserve you.”
