AllFreeNovel
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The dealer plays by a simple set of rules.
Easy to gauge and understand.
Maybe more evidence I'm not fun.
I start to explain strategy, but Daphne shakes her head.
"I'm not here to win. I'm here for fun. And I like seventeen. The year I lost my virginity." She winks at the dealer and smiles at my frown.
I have a jack and a nine. Nineteen. A great hand. "Stay."
The dealer flips over his card. Sure enough, it's a ten. He hits. A five.
Twenty-one.
"Sorry, honey, bad luck." He takes our cards and our chips.
And that's it.
One hundred dollars gone. Our first dare finished.
Daphne nods her approval then she shifts straight into the strategy zone. "Let's ride this out." She tosses two chips on the table, taps the green felt, and shifts back to conversation.
He deals. "Would you look at that. Twenty-one. You win."
"Just like that?" she asks.
He nods. "Just like that."
She looks to me. "This is kinda fun."
It is, watching her. There's some sense I don't recognize. Not pride, exactly. Not amusement either.
The joy of seeing someone I care about having a great time, even if it's at my expense. More so because it's my expense.
And another layer to it—
A desire to expand her horizons elsewhere.
I try to ignore that impulse.
Daphne stays oblivious to my dirty thoughts. Or maybe it's apathy. She asks the dealer for Las Vegas recommendations as she plays.
He suggests a number of nightclubs and strip clubs, practically drooling at the mental image of Daphne in a tawdry strip club.
Or maybe that's me.
No, it's both of us.
She's lucky. She's up two hundred dollars when she calls it. She smiles at my loss and says goodbye to the dealer, who leaves her with a card for a free drink at the hotel's nightclub, LAX.
After we cash our chips, she holds up the card. "Is this our next stop?" She smiles at the absurdity of a nightclub themed after an airport. After the worst airport on the West Coast.
Why would anyone find that fun? "It's not open."
"Ah, that's good. You don't think LAX is fun yet. There's hope for you."
"I don't yet consider business trips fun?"
