He was the boy in my class that always wore a blue tracksuit, with white stripes down the sides of the arms and legs. He pocketed a deck of cards in his pants and asked me to play card games with him. He taught me Rummy, and Poker and how to shuffle cards the “dealer” way. With Poker, he used to cheat. Kept two aces up his sleeve for when I got too cocky with my hand.
When I foolishly placed down my ten on the cards for disposal, he slapped the table hard and called “RUMMY!” too loud for the teacher to appreciate.
He was the teenager in my class who began to dress nicely. He wore button-downs with the sleeves neatly rolled up to his elbows, khaki slacks with colorless shirts and black slacks with his signature cherry polo. He kept the same deck of cards in his pocket. They were cream-and-coffee colored, the reds had since turned periwinkle-pink. He asked me to play a game of Poker. I spoke sweetly to him, trying to persuade the aces up his sleeve to come out.
He let me win.
He was the first boyfriend I had going into college. We went to the same university and told ourselves that, if anything were to get in our way, we’d play cards to sort it out. With every fight that we carried on, I brought out his deck of cards and asked him to play a game of Rummy. The cards were brown and bleeding; the pink suits finally gave in to mere outlines while the black suits bled and ran down the sides of the cards. “Whoever wins, wins the argument,” I said.
He won almost every argument with his pocket of aces, and the sly smile he always gave me afterwards.
He was a casino owner by the age of 30. We had moved in different directions once we graduated. I had found out about his ownership when I took my new friend to the casino. He was dealing that night at a poker table full of spectators. He wore his cherry polo and black slacks with gold chains around his neck. He knew how to work a crowd, flourishing the same deck of cards from when we were young in front of people.
I took my seat across from him, placing my glass of whiskey on the table. The forest-green Poker table looked brand-new. I looked to my friend and asked for a light, balancing a cigarette between my lips. I blew the smoke into his face once I took a heavy inhale. He looked up at me.
He asked me, sweetly, to a game of Poker. I asked him to clear his sleeves.
Out came two aces.
Ashleigh is an English major who practices writing and drawing. As an intermediate writer and a beginner artist, she crafts her work in ten to fifteen minutes but revises for days on end. She enjoys a lot of music and utilizes alternative and indie in order to create a more powerful piece. Ashleigh has been published in University Park’s 2023 Folio with her piece “1930”, as well as Any Other Word at PSU York in 2022 for “Oil/Stool/Palette/Paintbrush”.
Follow Ashleigh on Instagram: @aearyes