After leaving San Francisco, I tried to shake off the memory of Remy. Sure, it had been fucking wild to see her. It had drudged up sensual memories of years past, when sex and love had been intricately linked. Tasting her lips, feeling at the curve of her breast—it had all been the same, yet different. Like we’d both become fine wines over the years, both simmering with experience, yet excited to see what came next.

But she’d rebuked me. And now I was tearing across the American continent, hunting for what came next. I felt the cash burning out of my pocket, forcing me into shit motels, between dirty, muggy sheets as I neared the desert. The lights of Las Vegas—and the promise of making a hefty profit simply by buying up a few chips—lured me closer. I’d done it before. Twenty-five years old and marching from the Bellagio with over twenty-thousand dollars. I'd been fresh, alive, unafraid to rip apart my life and start over. Now, I wanted to bottle that feeling, to generate new cash flow. Maybe I could hunker down in Las Vegas for the better part of the year. Make enough to get by. Enough to toss something in my father’s face, tell him, “See. I don’t fucking need your cash.”

Las Vegas was a bizarro alien world—all flashing lights, neon, tourists milling about with domestic beers sloshing in their hands. I revved the bike up to one of the larger casinos, tossed the keys to the valet driver, and strutted into the lobby. I bought five hundred dollars’ worth of chips and sauntered into the main area of the casino, taking up residence at a blackjack table. And in that first evening, I made more than three thousand dollars—enough to book a room on the fiftieth floor of the grand casino hotel. I stood out on the balcony, feeling the air whizz through my hair. Some girl I’d met in at the casino bar smashed around behind me in the room, sipping premium champagne and rattling on and on about how she was going to be an actress someday. She was maybe twenty-three, twenty-four years old. Her eyes glittered with stupidity. Naivety. She tried to touch my chest, to kiss me, but I stomped away from her, wanting only to sit alone with my thoughts.

Of course, I was incredibly conscious that whatever girl I brought in with me could give me an heir in a second. I knew this girl from the bar would spread her legs and fuck till the sun came up, in hopes one of those fuckfests produced a son. She would have done anything for the cash. But imagining my baby… in her? I’d brought up this gorgeous image of my Remy, pregnant, sleeping in the sunlight on a bed we, in this fantasy, shared. She wore a white nightdress, and her hair curled wet with sweat. She was angelic, dammit.

I couldn’t fucking shake it.

But no. This wasn’t the man I was. I’d never really been a lover. In the back of my mind, I’d always had this wild streak, this affinity to tear through the world and take no fucking prisoners. Remy, and any child we created, couldn’t have any part of that.

“Hey! Are you going to come back in here? Drink this champagne?” the girl called out to me, her voice high-pitched. “Because otherwise, I’m going to drink it myself. All of it. It’s gonna be like a fountain down my throat.”

What was it about people you couldn’t ever shake? I wondered. Every second on the road, I’d grabbed at whatever opportunity I could. Had raucous conversations with men at divebars from San Francisco to Florida to Maine and everywhere in between. Yet Quintin and Remy? They remained my family. My blood. Hank had always been just an afterthought, God fucking rest his soul. No one I’d ever connected to, as an adult. “You still doing that vagabond bullshit?” he’d asked me a few Christmases back, his arm slung around his near-perfect biddy. That poor fucking widow.

“Drink whatever the hell you want. Just get out,” I called back to the girl, who was now wearing only a bra and underwear. The strap of the thong snaked up over her hipbone. The bone gleamed beneath her porcelain skin.

“Fine. Asshole,” she scoffed. “Not like I wanted to fuck you, anyway.”

I heard her clip the door shut behind me. Only my heartbeat echoed in the silence. I was awash in confusion.

Over the next three days, I spent countless hours at the blackjack table. Things didn’t begin to go south until day two, when I lost almost two thousand dollars in a single run. I felt the money slipping away from me. But it twitched on, just beyond my reach, and I strained for it—remaining at the blackjack table for almost eight hours, trying to make it back. By the end, the dealer had begun to look at me down his nose. He muttered, “If you stop now, you’ll still have enough to stay in your hotel room another night, mate. You better get the hell off.”

I did. I flung my fist into the counter as I left, feeling my anger echo against the walls of the casino. “Fuck all of this,” I muttered to myself, leering at the passersby. “Fuck all of you.”

Hours later, I returned to the balcony, feeling broken. I gazed out at the strange, glowing city in the center of the desert. After a long sigh, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. It had been a long fucking time since someone had called me. No one currently knew my location—not Quintin, and certainly not Remy. Probably, they had ideas I was sitting in some jazz bar in New Orleans or cleaning up with girls somewhere in Brooklyn. I’d been that man. That man high on life, on the world. But now, I felt like nothing.

---

I didn’t recognize the number, but I answered it anyway.

“Hello, Wesley Adams here,” I said, my voice gruff, even in my own ears. The words almost slurred, showing the number of whiskeys I’d drank.

After a pause, I heard the sweet voice, so tiny in my ear. “Hey, Wes,” Remy said. “It’s… me. It’s Remy.”

“Remy.” Her name tasted so goddamn good against my tongue. I remained gruff with her, remembering the last time we’d spoken. She’d kicked me from the pub. She hadn’t wanted my heir. “Surprised to hear from you.”

“Yes. Yes, I bet,” she said, sounding tentative. “Where did you go? Quintin said you rode out a few days ago.”

I marveled at how much she’d wanted to speak to me. I knew she normally kept thoughts of me to herself, choosing not to involve Quintin. But it was clear that she’d had to ask Quintin for my phone number.

“I’m in beautiful Las Vegas,” I sighed, chuckling. “You know, it really is the fucking armpit of the world, this place. You should see what these tourists look like. We always thought San Francisco tourists were ugly.”

“Ha,” she said. “I can only imagine. I never made it over there, when I was in LA. Course, I never had the cash for it. Tyler always wanted to go. Said we could get married over there or something. How romantic, right? Getting married in Las Vegas. What I always wanted.” She spoke sarcastically, already letting me in on her game.

“Sure. I’ve spotted about ten happy couples here. Wonder how long it’ll last,” I said, matching her tone. “Probably forever.”

“Or a few hours,” she snickered.

“Or that.” I paused for a moment, drawing my finger along the railing of the balcony. “Why are you calling, Rem?” I asked.

“I was just up late again, working on the script,” Remy said, sounding anxious. “And I realized… Well, I realized that maybe you had a point.”

“A point?” I asked her. My heart began to pump wildly in my chest. Was she actually going to go along with it? Was she actually going to give in?

“It’s not like I’m living for anything,” Remy continued. “I’m washed up, more or less.”

“Don’t fucking say that,” I told her, surprising even myself. I sounded arrogant, wild—as if her putting herself down like that was an affront to me.

“Well, it’s not important. Rather, Wes, what I’m trying to say is…” She paused.

I tried to visualize her on the other end of the phone, drawing up the courage to say what she wanted to say. But instead, I just pictured the eighteen-year-old her, screaming at me during the “last fight” of our relationship. How fucking focused we’d been on our “careers,” on “what we were going to become.”

“I just. I don’t know. Get back here. And we can talk about it,” Remy finally said. “If you can muster the energy to get back to San Francisco. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll consider doing this for you.”

“For us, you mean,” I told her, hating the way my voice had grown so soft, so eager. “For us.”

“I don’t know. Just get back here. Stop wasting your time in that armpit of America, or whatever, and come back to the Bay.”

It was all I needed to hear. After hanging up the phone, I barreled toward the hotel room refrigerator, yanking out several energy drinks and filling my backpack pockets. I lurched my head back, glugging one and feeling it scald my tongue. Soon, I’d be back in the Bay. I’d convince Remy to birth my kid—thus fill my bank account. And then, I wouldn’t have to hunker down at odd jobs. The world would be mine.

Of course, as I raced down the hallway, that now-familiar image of Remy, pregnant and glowing in the sunlight, swarmed my brain. I tried to stamp it out, to avoid the way it sizzled in my heart. Remy and I had been down that road of love. I knew already I was incapable. That whatever happened between us would be something of convenience, rather than emotion. I had to resist it.