I started to protest but realized he was kidding when a smile played on his lips. A tingling sensation went up my arms. I rubbed at them. It was colder than I thought. “I’m a great shuffler. You’re just lucky. Very, very lucky.”
“You got me. I’m the luckiest guy on earth.” His voice didn’t sound sarcastic, but I knew he was being sarcastic. And he was right. He wasn’t lucky outside of the card game. On top of that, even though he was beating me handily, this card game had been doing little for his mood. If anything, it had made him more withdrawn. I nodded toward the tattoo. “What does it stand for?”
“I have another sweatshirt.”
It took me a moment to understand he was not answering my question with that statement. But when I realized I was still rubbing at my arms instead of pushing him to talk, I nodded several times quickly. “Yes. I’m cold. It’s cold in here, right? Do you think there’s a way to break past the locked thermostat?”
“I don’t know.” He stood and walked over to his bag, where he retrieved a gray sweatshirt for me.
If I’d thought that his sleeping bag was clinging to his musky scent, his sweatshirt might as well have been on his body. It smelled amazing. I slid it on and then brought the collar to my nose before I thought better of it.
“It’s been in my bag a while,” he said as though I was disgusted by the smell and not trying to hold back a sigh.
“No, it’s good. It’s fine. Thanks.”
He sat back down while I dealt another hand. Now that he was avoiding my question, the only thing I could look at was his tattoo. I wondered what it stood for, why he wouldn’t tell me. There were so many things I wondered about him.
I picked up my hand. It was decent for once.
“You ready to play for questions yet?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
I folded my cards to look at him. “If I win, I get to ask you a question that you have to answer honestly. If you win, you get to ask me one.”
“You do realize that I’ve won the last nine hands.”
“Nine? Really? Have you been counting?”
“Yes.”
I laughed. “Then you have nothing to lose.”
He picked up his cards and looked at each one.
“So? Is that a yes?”
“Why not?”
I fanned out my cards and tried to keep my face even, blank. “Do you want to trade any cards?”
“One.”
I slid him a card then traded one as well. I couldn’t help but smile when it gave me a full house. He laid down a royal flush and my smile was gone.
Before I’d even shown my cards he said, “So my question is: Where do you think your friends are? Honestly.”
His question was like a punch to my gut. “How do you know you won?”
He put his forearms on the table and nodded toward my cards.
I laid them down, showing he’d guessed right. He looked at my cards, then at me again, waiting.
“I told you where I thought they were. Looking for me.”
“So the whole honesty part of this bet was just for show?”
“Fine. Honestly . . . I think they figured I went home because I was tired or upset or something.”
“How would you have gotten home?”
“They probably thought I called my mom or dad.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because I’ve done it before.”
He tilted his head. “You leave events often without telling anyone?”
“I have anxiety. I panic.” I’d never said that out loud before to anyone but my parents and brother. My friends probably thought I had some sleeping problem because I generally used sleep as an excuse to leave.
“Over what?”
“Everything. Nothing. I can work through it usually. But I’ve learned when I can’t, and that’s when I leave the situation.” I shuffled the cards and thought about putting an end to the game, but he’d already asked the worst question he could’ve; anything after this would be cake, and I was still dying to find out some things about him.
When he didn’t say anything, I added, “I take medication for it. It’s no big deal.” My medication that was now in my overnight bag in Jeff’s trunk. Missing three days wouldn’t be the end of the world, but still, it was something else to worry about.
I met his eyes, daring him to make me expound some more. He didn’t. I dealt another hand that he proceeded to win. I sighed and waited as he leaned back in his chair and stared me down, as if the perfect question would present itself. He had never looked at me for this long and I couldn’t maintain his gaze. I began tracing the grain of the wood on the tabletop. It was pretty sad that it was this hard for him to come up with a question for me when I had a million things I wanted to know about him.
“Why are you always hiding behind your camera?”
“What?” My eyes shot up to his. I wasn’t even sure how to answer that question because it was more of an untrue statement than a question. “I’m not. I like photography. End of story.”