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Everywhere was tooloud to talk, but they didn’t want to wander too far from Jay and Michelle, so they ended up taking their drinks—a tequila for Zach and a Sea Breeze for Lyra—and finding a bench tucked into a nook near the lobby. Plants and rushing water surrounded them, but the people were at a distance.
“If I’d known only your brother liked to gamble, I’d have suggested something else.”
“No worries. Casinos are fine, I just don’t get a rush blowing money on nothing. I play poker, but that’s more about hanging with my friends than trying to win money. Besides,isthere anything else to do in Laughlin?”
Lyra laughed and sipped at the straw in her drink. “I mean, technically, yeah. There’s a movie theater, and there are shows at the casinos—”
“I think I’ll be fine missing that Goo Goo Dolls show.” He’d seen the band’s name flashing on another casino’s sign on the strip and had thought something snarky about the difference in the acts Vegas and Laughlin attracted.
Her laugh was soft and breathy, almost shy. It brushed over all Zach’s nerve endings like a feather. “Okay, point made. Unless you’re outdoorsy, there’s not a lot to do off the Strip. It’s a small town. Not even officially a town.”
“No?”
“Nope. We’re an unincorporated area at the junction of three states.”
“Huh.” Apollo and Jazz, doing the work to prepare for the charter, probably knew that. Hell, they might have said as much at the table at some point, but as interested as Zach was in this big move, there was a lot of information flowing around the chapel, and it was occasionally hard to keep track of it all. But if there was no mayor or governmental structure in Laughlin at all, that seemed like a good thing for their plans. Fewer palms to grease, maybe, and more room to maneuver unnoticed.
No police department, for instance. County sheriffs and state troopers, with bigger jurisdictions, tended to pay less attention to the daily doings in any particular place.
As that was not remotely a topic to discuss now, Zach picked up another thing she’d said. “What about if youareoutdoorsy?”
“Are you?”
“Outdoorsy? I guess that depends on what you mean. I’m not into hiking with all my gear on my back, rock-climbing, or any of that Patagonia crap, but I like being outside.”
“On your bike, you mean.” She said that with a touch of weariness. Her dad and brother rode, and her dad had been a one-percenter once. She was probably as tired of bike talk as every woman in the Bulls.
“I mean, yeah, of course. I could ride all day every day. But not just that. I like to just ... be outside, in nature. Whatever I’m doing, I like it outside better.” Her look was blank, so he tried to think of a way to describe his meaning so it didn’t sound so lame. “Earlier today, we were out on the Fort Mojave reservation, and I was thinking how beautiful it is out here. It’s not lush and dense like”—he waved his hand to indicate the lab-created forest around them—“it’s bare and stark, but it’s really beautiful, and I just sat there and tried to name all the colors I saw in that flat, dry earth and the sky above it.”
Convinced he’d made himself sound more lame, not less, Zach stopped his ramble and put a period on it with, “I don’t know. I just like it.” He finished off the rest of his tequila with a swallow.
“I like it, too. I don’t rock-climb or backpack camp, anything like that, but I like to hike around here, and go out on the lakes, or just ... I don’t know. Yeah, just be outside.”
“Not really something to do at night.”
“I don’t know. If you get away from the Strip, the night sky is beautiful.”
“Yeah, true.”
In that painful thing that happened in conversations with new people, an awkward silence descended on them. Lyra focused on sipping her drink with the determination only someone desperate to look busy could conjure. Having finished his drink, Zach looked around. From this somewhat secluded position, there wasn’t much to see but an Amazon rainforest worth of greenery.
A guy with a dark ponytail passed by. It wasn’t Tommy, but the stranger brought that asshole to mind, so Zach started a new topic with, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What’s your story with that Tommy guy?”
She twitched a little. “We don’t know each other nearly well enough for that conversation.”
Zach heard the warning, but he liked this girl, and that guy was not in her league. Not even close. He couldn’t believe crusty old Ben Haddon would have let a douche like that near his daughter. So he pushed a little. “I’m just saying, he’s a roach, that’s obvious just to look at him. What was the appeal?”
Lyra’s brow furrowed in obvious irritation, but she gave him an answer. “We went to high school together. He wasn’t like that back then.”
“Were you together then?”
She nodded. “For more than five years, yeah. He was my first boyfriend, and he was sweet for a long time. He started to ... I don’t know, change gears ... a year or so after high school, but I didn’t see it at first. It’s not so easy to see somebody change when you’re that close. Not until it’s too late.”