Page 35 of Sinful Abandon

“All right, old man. Respect the lady,” Andrea says. She pushes someone from the table and then ushers me toward the chair. “Sit here.”

“No, I’m good.”

“Please, sit,” Fred says.

I find myself having a hard time saying no to him.

He signs to Andrea.

She looks down at me and asks, “Dad wants to know what you’d like to drink.”

“Nothing for me. I’m not staying long!” I shout toward Fred. I feel like people are silently laughing at me.

Fred picks up a beer from the table. He points to it and then makes a thumbs-up. His head is bobbing, looking for a yes.

“Yes, that’s perfect,” I answer.

Andrea leans down and places a hand on my shoulder. With her other, she points to various people around the table. “Heather, these are our cousins—Nancy, Gia, Quinn, Mila, Amanda, and Brody. Uncle Hal and Aunt Maria. That’s our neighbor Glen and my other uncle—John. Over there”—she points to the barbeque area—“are Uncles Bill and Tony and their wives, Sarah Jane and Leora. More cousins—Jack, Lucy, and Stacy. And my dad’s friends from the Knights of Columbus—Gene, Frank, Mike K., and Mike P.” She looks around the yard to see whom she’s missing. “Oh, and that mess by the cooler are my friends Lisa and Anne.”

“And this”—Hal holds up the three dice—“is Left Center Right. Have you ever played?”

I shake my head as he places three dollar bills in front of me.

“What’s this for?” I ask.

“It’s your ante. This is entirely a game of chance. You make no decisions of any kind. Just roll the die.”

Hesitantly, I take the dice from him and roll them into the middle of the table. The letters L, R, and a dot appear on the dice.

“That’s good,” Andrea says, shaking my shoulders. “The L means you hand one of your dollars to the left, the R means you give one to the person to the right, and the dot means you keep one. As long as you have a dollar in front of you, you’re in the game.”

I hand one dollar to Nancy and another to John.

The dice get passed to Nancy, who rolls. She gets three dots. Everyone yells at the table that she fixed the roll.

“It’s been a long time since Ryan brought a girl home,” one of the cousins—I think her name is Mila—says.

“She’s wearing a ring, moron,” Quinn says as she rolls the dice. She gets R, R, and C.

The C means she has to put a dollar in the center. That dollar is now in the winner’s pot and out of play for the rest of the game. Her other two dollars get passed to the right.

“Still, it’s nice to see him bringing someone home, other than that whore, Maxine,” Mila says as she takes her turn.

“They were on the fritz before everything happened,” Aunt Maria says.

“Bullshit,” Andrea utters from behind me. “She was just sticking around to see if he was gonna go pro.”

Fred walks over and places a beer in front of me. I take a long swig of it and listen in on the conversation around me, getting whiplash from keeping up with the family banter.

“They dated for a year. That’s a long time to devote to someone, only to have them dump your ass as soon as you get hurt,” Hal says. Then, he hollers when he gets C, C, and R. “Goddamn it!”

The dice come around to John. He has to give me two dollars. I roll the dice and take my turn. Then, I pass the dice with three singles in front of me.

Jenny comes over and places a platter of chips and dip onto the table. The cousins start diving into the salsa. Jenny signs to Andrea.

She signs back to her mom as she says, “We were just talking about Maxine.”

Jenny makes a pissed off face and then sticks her finger in her mouth, like she’s gagging. The table laughs.