Page 55 of The Odds of Happily Ever After
“Did Ate ever teach you pusoy?”
“No. We never played.” The fact that I couldn’t remember the last time I played at all told me it had been far too long.
She grinned. “You game to learn?”
I could already imagine the card edges flipping from my thumbs. “Sure.”
This was going to be fun.
chapter eighteen
luna
Kriz
Sooo how was the road trip??
Luna
Great! We’re on our way back now
Kriz
Call me as soon as you get here!
“I still can’tbelieve you won twice!” I said as we drove down the highway. Gabe had shocked us all, and Miles declared him one of the best card players he’d ever seen. Even Lonzo had been impressed, though he tried to hide it. “Swear it was your first time playing pusoy?”
“I swear.” Gabe’s lips twitched. “Lucky night, I guess.”
“Uh huh. You’re a hustler, aren’t you?”
His grin popped out. “I had to pay for school somehow. It’s called leveraging my strengths.”
I gaped at him. “You played cards to pay for school?” That didn’t sound like the Gabe I knew. “Was this in college?”
“And part of high school.”
My chest tightened. Did that mean his parents didn’t cover his tuition? I knew it was normal for students to pay their way through college, buthigh school?
“Ma sent some money, but my father couldn’t pay for his half of my tuition after he moved to Rio,” he said, as if he could read my mind. He raised his shoulder. “I found a way.”
I ached for the boy he had been. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“Don’t be. It taught me that I could count only on myself. That was the best lesson my parents gave me.”
Maybe it was, but it seemed like the saddest one too. I bit my lip and gripped my hands on my thighs to keep from reaching out to him. Sneaking a sideways glance, I caught him looking at me.
Whatever he saw in my expression had him facing the front again. He clenched his jaw. “Don’t pity me, Luna.”
“I don’t. You succeeded on your own. I admire you for that,” I told him.
“The funny thing is my girlfriend back then, Inez, broke up with me because she didn’t think I could give her a stable future,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.
My mouth fell open.
“I can’t blame her, given my track record.”
Thatsnapped my jaw back into place. “What track record? Your parents messed up—not you. If she loved you, she should have understood that and backed you up. Hell, if she knew you at all, she should have known you would find a way to get ahead.”
