Page 2 of Gang of Roses: Dice

My cousin Coca was out of the country right now; I had no one. I had to feel this bullshit, and Dice didn’t do feelings.

My heart and my mind needed a temporary release, and I could only think of one thing before I landed where the fuel got low…Monroe’s Casino.

The sounds of machines going off were like music to my ears. Bells. Buzzers. The clinking of chips. All of it blended together into the distraction I desperately needed.

The plan tonight was simple…Feel numb…very numb.

Kash had already disappeared, and I could only imagine what Rebel was going through in her mind right now. The wound was fresh for all of us. We were each grieving Rose in our own way, and I wasn't about to tell anybody how to mourn when I was doing a piss-poor job of it myself.

I sashayed my wide hips toward the tables, snatching a drink from the first waitress I saw and gripping the glass tighter than necessary.

Gambling wasn't new to me; hell, I got the nickname Dice from my Uncle Tim. That man taught me how to roll before I was old enough to understand what losing really meant. By the time I was a teenager, I was taking the neighborhood kids' money. A few years later, I graduated to the corner boys. That’s when I had to learn how to shoot because those niggas were gonna try to cheat you every time.

Tonight wasn't about winning, though. Tonight was about forgetting.

The second I stepped into the poker room, I felt their eyes. I always did.

A plus-size Black woman sitting down at a high-stakes poker table full of cigar-smoking men in thousand-dollar suits tended to turn heads. One looked at me like I had wandered into the wrong room. The nigga in the black suit looked at me like he was trying to figure out how a woman built like me carried herself with so much confidence. The rest? Well, they weren't even pretending not to stare; they knew who I was.

I ignored every last one of them. Hell, people had been underestimating me my entire life. I slid into an empty seat and ordered another drink. The dealer started passing out cards, and for the first time all day, my mind got quiet. There was no funeral, no casket, or thoughts about the future regarding Gang of Roses…only cards, numbers, probability, and the game.

That was the thing about poker. It demanded your attention. The second your mind wandered, somebody took your money.

Unfortunately, my damn mind kept wandering.

One minute, I was looking at a pair of queens. The next, I was hearing Rose laugh. I'd glance down at my chips and remember helping pick out flowers for her funeral. Then I'd hear somebody mention a wife or a sister, and I'd be right back at the cemetery all over again. One girl came through wearing yellow, and I had to shut my eyes for a second.

Just great! Yellow was Rose's favorite color.

The liquor wasn’t helping either.

Every hand I lost had me chasing the next one. Every bad decision felt like it could be fixed with one good card. Before long, I wasn’t playing to win anymore.

I was playing to forget. The hours slipped by without me noticing.

The stack in front of me got smaller, then smaller. Before I knew it, the chips were damn near nonexistent.

I should’ve gotten up. I should’ve called it a night. Instead, I reached for another drink from the waitress and watched the dealer pull away the last of my chips.

“Shiddd.”

The curse slipped out before I could stop it.

Across the table, a few men tried and failed to hide their satisfaction. Nothing made people happier than watching somebody fall apart.

Muthafuckin’ fat tailor-made fucks!

I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my hand through my red curls.

I wasn’t broke. Hell, far from it, actually.

The problem was that all my money wasn’t sitting in some neat little bank account waiting to be transferred. Most of my cash was tied up elsewhere or buried in different locations, and at the moment, I didn’t have enough on me to keep feeding the beast sitting in front of me.

“Rough night?”

I looked up to find one of the casino managers standing beside my chair.

“You could say that.”