Page 326 of Double or Nothing

Now, for the first time, here in my own apartment with a machine designed to toast sandwiches, a missing mug, and an obscenely expensive piece of crappy art on my bedroom wall, I’m beginning to understand what my mother might have been searching for.

The feeling that someone’s got your back and the desire to support you, whatever the consequences. The meaningful look in someone’s eyes because they see you for you and not the façade you put on trying to please them.

Someone noticing when you’re absent.

A place where your belongings gather together because you know there’s going to be a shared tomorrow.

Mum looked for it in the wrong people. She pursued it with a desperation that allowed them to smash her self-esteem to another low. Sometimes she pursued it at my expense, which hardly makes her a saint. I was just a kid, trying to be there for his mother, but idolising my dad. I was still a kid pushed to the side by both of them whenever something more appealing came along.

This spiral of self-reflection is never one I allow myself into. I normally get myself trashed and divert my attention before it takes the turn, but not today.

Not standing in front of the bathroom mirror, styling my hair while my suit lies waiting for me in the bedroom.

Perhaps needing connection doesn’t make a person weak, after all.

Perhaps pretending you’re immune from needing anyone turns you into a man like my father really was. A dickhead with a shit ton of money who liked to flash it around for cheap pleasure.

A man who smiled in every photograph and never had time for his son.

That realisation settles like a sack of shit in my guts.

I’ve been so determined not to become my mother that I copied the very person who broke her.

No wonder she wanted to push me to the side as I got older, because I got more and more like the sonofabitch each passing day. Not just in looks but in personality, too. I became a carbon copy.

I return to the dressing room and put on my suit.

White shirt.

Black tie.

Cufflinks.

No flair. No joke hidden in the lining. Nothing designed to play this off with banter.

I look at myself in the mirror.

The man staring back looks older than he did six days ago.

Not wiser. Let’s not get carried away. But sober, at least.

Sober and hurting inside.

I pick up my keys.

Commitment doesn’t begin with promising Alice a future, or strong-arming Bryce into forgiving me. It begins with turning up somewhere I signed up to be, and staying there. Doing my job.

Being responsible.

I leave my apartment with a weird sense of doom in my guts.

The fear of rejection.

The casino always looks different before opening. Without the lights, music and crowd, it’s not nearly such a glamourous spectacle. Gaming tables stand empty beneath the dimmed chandeliers. Chairs sit neatly. Chips locked away.

Nobody is winning or losing. It’s only a building full of people preparing for the night to come.

Morning staff are busy on the main floor right now, checking equipment and polishing surfaces.