Page 2 of All Bets Are Off

He called me a tattletale, and maybe I was when I was small. There’s no way I was now, though. I’d matured. I never tattled on my brother. Not even when he and Zach snuck out in the middle of the night to watch the showgirls strut their stuff between casinos on the strip.

Living close to downtown Las Vegas was both a blessing and a curse according to my mother. We were close enough to get anywhere—run to any grocery store or pharmacy—in five minutes. Other sorts of temptations were out there, too, though. Since Zach’s parents owned one of the casinos, that meant he had access to the sort of stuff that my parents frowned upon. Showgirls were the least offensive thing he’d introduced my brother to. I still remember the night Rex first came home drunk. My parents lost it. Weirdly, they didn’t seem to hold it against Zach. They weren’t happy by any stretch of the imagination, but they didn’t ban him from the house or anything. They did ground Rex for a month. That had been a great time to be alive because it meant Zach had to visit our house multiple times a week if he wanted to see my brother.

Yup. It had been glorious.

I let loose a deep sigh of relief when I was alone in my room later that night. I could hear my parents talking in measuredtones in their bedroom. I couldn’t make out all their words, but I could make out enough to get a clear picture.

Lonely kid.

Parents don’t spend enough time with him.

He’s been shown money, not love.

I understood what all of that meant, but I couldn’t wrap my head around what it had to do with Zach. He seemed to have the best life in the world. His parents had more money than God. He got to travel to exotic locations at every turn. He never had to buy back-to-school clothes from Target or Kohl’s. Even his loafers were really expensive.

How could that be a bad thing?

Still, my parents started monitoring Rex more closely after that. Time spent with Zach was spent at our house, not on the strip. Rex had complained that it was embarrassing, but Zach hadn’t seemed to mind. He even got excited for family dinner.

I’d never been to a casino—I wasn’t old enough—but I’d heard that the food was to die for. There weren’t buckets of chicken being hastily scattered across a table. No, they were getting lobster … and prime rib … and lamb chops. Yet Zach seemed perfectly happy to fight over biscuits when Dad brought home Popeye’s. It was all so weird.

Thankfully, Zach was hot because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to put up with how weird he was. He spent all his time flicking my ear when I walked past him and telling weird jokes with my brother. I knew Zach had three sisters of his own, but I’d never met them. The way Zach talked about them, they were the worst people on earth.

Thankfully, I wasn’t that sort of sister. I was fun, and when it was just Rex and me, we got along fine. It was only when he had friends over that he wanted me to get lost.

“I’ll be quiet,” I said to Rex when he continued to stare.

“No.” Rex shook his head. “You need to go far, far away. Mom said we could have the basement. That means you have to go that way.” He pointed toward the stairs.

I frowned at the finger he’d so easily thrown out there. It was my father’s finger. They pointed the same way. They bossed me around the same way, too.

“I’m good,” I said as I readjusted on the chair. “I’m not in your way. I don’t even want to play the winner.”

Rex snorted. “That’s good, because you’re not invited to play.”

“Girls can’t play pool anyway,” Zach said as he chalked up the cue.

“I can play pool,” I argued. I was actually quite good. Rex had taught me … on a day when he had no friends to hang out with so he lowered himself to spend time with his little sister.

“Sure you can, Shortstuff.” Zach winked.

I hated—absolutely loathed—it when he called me Shortstuff. I hated it when he called me Shorty too. Don’t even get me started on Little Miss Shortcakes. Or Squirt. That was the worst. It wasn’t my fault that Rex had gotten all the height in the family. I was only two years younger than him, but most people thought he was at least four years older than me because of my height.

I’d asked my mother if she thought it was possible that I would still hit a growth spurt. She’d been quiet for a long time, then smiled in a way that told me she was about to drop a whopper of a lie on me.

“It’s totally possible,” she said brightly. “I don’t see why you would want to be taller, though. Everybody knows that short girls have it better. Men prefer short women to tall.”

“Then why are models all tall?” I’d challenged.

“Because they prefer romancing clothes rather than men.” She said it in such a way that warned me not to argue with her. She seemed to believe it. I was still unsure.

“Whatever.” That was my response to everything when I didn’t want to fight. It wasn’t that I was afraid to fight—I could give it as good as I received it when fighting with Rex—but sometimes I took the path of least resistance because I was trying to ascertain if the fight was worth it. I spent more time wondering if it was worth fighting than I actually did fighting.

“Go upstairs!” Rex exploded, jerking me out of the momentary reverie I’d lost myself in. “You can’t stay here. I won’t allow it.”

That was enough to raise my hackles, and I gripped my notebook in my left hand as I stood. “You won’t allow it? Since when are you king of the house?”

“Just go, Livvie,” Rex complained. “Nobody wants you here. You’re annoying.” He looked to Zach for support. “Tell her that sisters are the worst.”

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