Page 73 of Forged By Sacrifice

My family’s obsession with their poker became increasingly obvious the more people lost their chips. Their faces closed down until they were almost mannequins. After calling on one particularly long hand, I looked at Georgie only to find her hiding a smile behind her cards. I leaned close to her ear, hid my lips behind my cards, and said, “If you keep smiling, they’ll know your tells instantly, and you’ll be out before you’ve even started.”

She chuckled, and Bee called out, “No cheating!”

“Let him woo the girl in peace,” Dad said, and Dani snorted.

“Woo? Really, Dad? What are you, Grandma now?”

“Just for that, Gooberpants, I’m taking all your chips.” Dad waved his cards in her face before pulling all the chips in the middle toward him while Dani groaned.

The sucky thing about playing poker with your family was that they knew all your tells. You had to get really, really good at covering them up, or they would eat you alive. I tried to explain this to Georgie, but she just laughed her way through the game, losing her twenty dollars without a care in the world. But she stuck around to watch as Dad and I battled it out, even when many of the others made their way back to the kitchen for dessert.

Dad started in on the stories about my younger days in an attempt to rattle me.

“So, Georgie, did Mac tell you about the Mercedes incident?”

“Oh, that’s a good one,” Dani said, coming back in with chocolate cake and offering a plate to Georgie.

“Mac was, what, in the third grade?” Dad looked at me.

“Fifth, and you aren’t getting away from this hand, Dad. I raise you five,” I said, tossing more chips in the middle.

“He and this girl at school had decided they were a couple, ‘going together,’ whatever the term was, and had arranged a date night, dinner and all. When I told him he was too young to date, he snuck into the garage, started up Clare’s Mercedes, and ended up crashing it into the gates.”

Georgie turned to me, eyes big, smile glowing, and I must have let my guard down, because Dad folded instead of calling.

“What did the girl think when you didn’t show?” Georgie wanted to know.

I scratched my chin. “You know, I don’t remember.”

“Liar,” Bee said, coming into the room with her own piece of chocolate cake. “He was devastated because she broke up with him, saying if he didn’t know how to drive, she couldn’t possibly continue to date him. He cried for a week.”

Everyone laughed, and Georgie tried to hold back her own laughter but failed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t…but it’s so sweet, and sad, and funny at the same time.”

I stole her fork, taking a bite of her cake. She watched me eat it, and I lost my concentration again.

“Did you just steal my cake?” she asked.

“Oh my God, you can’t leave anything sweet within ten feet of the man; it’ll be gone in a flash,” Gabi continued to torture me.

Georgie got up and returned shortly with a new piece of cake, and I was watching everything she did instead of paying attention to the game. Dad knew it as much as I did. For the first time in a really long time, my heart wasn’t in the game. It was somewhere else. When I lost my final chips to him, my sisters all groaned.

“It’s your fault,” I said, waving at them. “You were distracting me with your stories.”

“Yeah, it was us that was distracting you, um-hmm,” Bee said with a pointed glance at Georgie who was talking to Dani.

“Someday, Robbie. Someday, you’ll be able to beat the master.” Gabi patted me on the shoulder.

“Never,” Dad hissed playfully.

“Don’t let Grandma hear you call Dad the master,” I retorted.

There were mumbled agreements because we all knew Grandma was the real poker queen. Everyone slowly started meandering away to bed with yawns and talk of tennis. I walked with Georgie to the Blue Room and stopped her before she could go in.

“I’m really glad you came,” I told her.

“I am, too.”

“But don’t believe everything they tell you.”

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