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“We… we both habitually avoid the ones we love most and then yowl pitifully that they’re not around even though it’s our own faults?”
“Deep fucking cut and it’s self-inflicted.”
“I’m not some kind of fashion business kingpin,” I said. “I’m not convincing the brand ownership to keep Cameron on. And I can’t exactly make up for the loss of a mega-millions brand…”
“But something’s on your mind,” she said, her voice quiet. I pursed my lips.
“Just that I want to go turn Kevin’s face inside-out. Probably shouldn’t.”
“I’d go with you,” she said.
“Don’t tempt me.”
She shrugged wildly. “I’m trying to tempt you to do something. Even if it doesn’t work. I just can’t stand seeing this black cloud hanging over you.”
That black cloud again… maybe all of Miami was a black cloud right now. Sure looked like it outside the window, distant flashes of lightning out over the water.
Either way, she was right to call it that. I was probably no better now than I had been when Queen Pearl had collapsed—than when I’d first met Adam Garcia and he’d seen that black cloud.
To be fair, it was hardly my fault this time. I’d tried everything I damn well could. Just that sometimes, no matter how damn hard you tried…
The coin was still going to land on tails again eventually. No coin could keep landing on heads forever, no matter how many times it had landed on tails before.
Still… funny how the black cloud was the worst part of it all. That the most painful part of this whole experience was the way I found myself drifting now, aimless—was this sensation of being powerless. I’d wanted so badly to give up and just accept that I couldn’t do anything, that I’d done all I could—wanted so badly for someone to come along and tell me I’d done everything possible, that nobody could have made it work in that scenario, that I’d truly just had terrible luck and that it really wasn’t fair—but now I was here. And I wasn’t happy.
“What are you brooding about?” Ruth said, and I turned to my bag without even realizing it, reaching inside.
“Just thinking,” I said.
“About what?”
I pulled a coin out, holding it up to gleam in the low light from the window. “Heads I do something even if it kills me. Tails I go to Vegas.”
She gave me a dirty look. “Are you fucking kidding me? This kind of thing, and you’re putting it on a coinflip?”
“Isn’t everything in life just on a coinflip or two?”
“But—”
I flipped the coin. The rest of the universe faded out into the background as it flicked into the air, hung there, and dropped back into the palm of my hand, where I clapped it over the back of my other hand, keeping it covered. Ruth leaned over her side of the table, watching, gripping the table tightly, and I found myself holding onto it longer than I should have, my breath short, my heart pounding.
Now or never.
I lifted my hand to see it from my side, my throat tight, and my stomach dropped when I saw it, barely visible in the dim light under my cupped hand.
Tails.
“Well?” Ruth said, and I found myself staring at it, a cold sensation down my back—clammy, heavy, sticky. This oppressive weight that settled in, dragging me down with it… the black cloud.
That damn cloud was going to follow me to the desert. Out in Las Vegas and the rain would pour down.
“Well?” Ruth said, and I clapped my hand over the coin again, putting it in my bag.
“Heads.”
∞∞∞
Cameron
