CRYPTO: Infidelity (Book 1)

CHAPTER 22: POKER

When Tuesday rolled around, Rockie knocked on the front door and I came to answer since I was expecting him. Standing beside him was another mountain lion, but she was a female.

"Hey, Crypto," Rockie said. "This is my girlfriend, Birdie."

"Nice to meet you, Birdie," I said.

She leaned in and kissed my cheek.

I backed off, shocked. I had never been kissed by a lady, other than my mom. I looked to Rockie to see his reaction to his girlfriend kissing another male, but he seemed unfazed by it.

"So are you ready to go?" he asked me.

"Yep," I said.

Rockie drove us to a casino where we met up with Duke, Jordan, Cam, and Cam's girlfriend, Willow. I watched them all individually give Birdie a hug when we walked in. She was clearly well-liked by them all and seemed to enjoy the attention.

We sat at one of the tables. Birdie was on my right side with Rockie beside her and Cam was on my left with Willow beside him. Jordan and Duke sat across from me; Jordan beside Rockie, and Duke beside Willow.

"Someone's gonna have to explain the game to me," I said. "I've never played."

"Oh, it's simple," Rockie said and proceeded to explain everything to me. "We'll do a practice round so you can see what I'm talking about."

"So we won't be using real money then?" Jordan asked.

"Not this round," he said.

We played a round of Poker and Rockie kinda led me through it so I could understand better and then we were ready to play the real thing.

We played with real money so I folded more times than anyone else. I just didn't feel comfortable betting with more experienced players. I quickly realized that it was mostly a game of luck and decided to bet more, but still within reason. In the end, Jordan had won all the money.

"Why don't we play Joker Poker?" Rockie suggested.

"What's Joker Poker?" I asked.

"It's a game he made up so I don't win all the time," Jordan said.

"We put a joker in the deck of cards we hand out," Rockie explained, "and we shuffle them so we don't know who gets the joker. Whoever has the joker, wins all the money put in at the end."

"What's the point in playing if you don't have the joker?" I asked.

"That's the fun part. If you can guess who has the joker first, you win all the money that is out there when you guess, but if you guess wrong, you're out of the game."

"Sounds like fun," I said.

We played a game of Joker Poker and Rockie was the first to guess that I had the joker but he was wrong. Later on, Birdie guessed correctly and won all the money. It was Cam who had the joker.

I actually had a lot of fun playing with those six. For a moment, I had forgotten who they really were and what they had done, with the exception of Willow and Birdie who weren't involved as far as I knew. The other four were my enemies, but I realized that pretending to be their friend would be easier than I thought. They were actually kinda likable.