Poker Night by Dusty Miller Page B

in a quirky little grin and Austin had a
look that smacked of disbelief. He was licking his lips and
breathing heavily, still finding it hard to accept that she really
liked him. She wanted Austin. She watched the thought go through
his head. His eyes clouded and then refocused. She nodded, a look
of serious intent on her brow.
    His left hand was on her outer thigh.
Bringing it up behind her head, as their right hands clasped back
and forth in unspoken communication, Austin kissed her again. Just
to let him know, Bethany squeezed his hand, parted her lips and
darted her tongue into his mouth.
    Staring, Austin rose up and around
her, enveloping her and totally immobilizing her. All she could do
was to grab on tight with her free hand and squeeze him.
    Austin pushed his tongue into her
mouth and she just let everything go, writhing and pushing back,
closing her eyes and breathing through her nose. He broke off, not
knowing how far to push it and not wanting to lose Bethany just
when things seemed to be going well. He was holding on to her boob.
His jaw dropped. He clasped at her hands, suddenly afraid to look
at her. She decided to let him think on it for a while. Repressing
a smirk, she sat up a little straighter.
     
     
    Scene Two

     
    They were very close, watching and
listening to the set in a distracted manner, drinking wine in
between bouts of heavy petting. Some other show was on TV now, but
that was the farthest thing from their minds.
    “ How about some
cards?”
    “ Huh?” His eyes searched
hers.
    There was a suspicious bulge in his
pants.
    She gave him a pat on the
shoulder.
    “ Uh, yeah.” Austin got up,
sort of carefully turning the groin area away from her, and still
in a slightly hunched-over posture turned the TV down.
    His back to her, he went over to the
stereo and put on some music, some long jazzy thing that wouldn’t
require constantly changing recordings. Half blinded by brain fog,
his hands trembling, he got lucky and it was just the thing. Austin
was a man of action. The strong, silent type. She smiled again, not
looking up. He had pretty good taste in music, too. Austin came
back and sat down.
    She was already riffling the deck,
always laying there on the side table beside a cribbage board that
had once belonged to Austin’s grandfather. His mother’s side of the
family was all hot for cards.
    It wasn’t exactly cribbage she had in
mind.
    “ So, ah. What do you want
to play?” Austin had played cribbage, and crazy-eights, Kings in
the Corner, a few simple games.
    “ Do you know euchre?
Cut-throat euchre?”
    “ No, sorry.” His aunts and
uncles were just nuts for euchre, but wouldn’t let him play with
the grown-ups.
    They took it pretty
seriously.
    “ How about
poker?”
    Her sister’s boyfriend knew Austin and
said he thought he could play poker. According to Joe, who played
for fairly big money Thursday nights with friends, Austin wasn’t
very good at it. Bethany had learned poker from her dad, an
engineer who built refineries all over the world. Her dad was very
good at it.
    “ Jeez, I don’t know.”
Austin shrugged. “Whatever you want. You can teach me
how.”
    Whatever Bethany wanted was fine with
Austin, still reeling with the kisses. He liked her so much. He
couldn’t believe his luck, and that was just truth. He was always
horny, and sooner or later it would happen. This was as far as he
had ever gotten with a girl. Lately his mind just reeled with
thoughts of Bethany, especially when he was at work, soul-crushing
in its boredom. The night shifts were very long for Austin these
days.
    For whatever reason, the real obvious
sluts—the ones everyone talked about, they just never really
appealed to him. He was too afraid to try, and they were always
surrounded by dead-beats and half-wits, football jocks and rich
boys anyway. Bethany was a nice girl and the fact that she went out
with him at all was a big surprise.
    He still couldn’t believe it in some
ways. Asking her