Something Borrowed - Emily Giffin [82]
"What are we betting?" I ask.
"Betting? We're on the same team, baby," he says in a Queens accent, and then blows hard on his dice, his smooth cheeks puffing out like a little boy blowing the candles out on his birthday cake.
"Roll me double sixes right now."
"And if I do?"
I think to myself, You roll double sixes, we end up together. No wedding with Darcy. But instead I say, "It will mean good luck for us."
"All righty then. Double sixes coming right up for ya." He licks his lips and shakes his dice more vigorously.
The sun shines in my eyes as he tosses the dice in the air, catches them easily, and then dramatically lowers his arm toward the ground as if he's about to roll a bowling ball. He opens his hand, fingers splayed, as the cubes clatter to the concrete right at the busy Manhattan intersection.
One red die lands on six immediately. My heart skips with the thought,
What iff We are crouched over the landed die and its spinning twin, rotating on its axis for what seems like forever. If you tried to make a die go that long, you couldn't do it. But there it is, turning on its corner, a blur of gold dots and red background. And then it slows, slows, slows, and lands neatly beside the first one. Two rows of three dots on the second die.
Double sixes.
Boxcar Willy.
Holy shit, I think… No wedding with Darcy!… He wanted to talk about "no matter what happens" as if someone were steering from up above; well, here you go. Here you have it. Double sixes. Our fate.
I look up from the dice at Dex, debating whether to tell him what the roll had really been for. He looks at me with his mouth slightly open. Our eyes return to the dice as if maybe we got it wrong.
What are the chances?
Urn, that would be precisely one in thirty-six. Just under three percent.
So we aren't talking one-in-a-million odds. But those statistics are misleading when removed from our context. We have reached the end of a pivotal, meaningful weekend together. Right as we are minutes from parting ways (for the day? forever?), Dexter buys the dice on a whim, plays with them instead of putting them in the bag with his stuffed dinosaur, and adopts his boyish gambling persona. I play along, even though I'm in no mood for games. Then I decide, albeit silently, the terms of the roll. And he rolls double sixes! As if to say, we are foolproof, baby.
I look at his ninety-eight-cent (plus tax) dice with the reverence you would have for a crystal ball in a richly upholstered room with the world's greatest fortune-teller, wrinkled by the Persian sun, who has just told you how it was, how it is, and how it is going to be. Even Dex, who doesn't know what he just sealed for us, is impressed, telling me that he needs to take me to Atlantic City, Vegas, that we'd make a hell of a team.
Exactly.
He smiles at me and says, "There's your good luck, baby."
I say nothing, just pick up the dice and wedge them into the front pocket of my shorts.
"You stealing my dice?"
Our dice.
"I need them," I say.
We return to my apartment, where he collects his things and says good-bye.
"Thanks for an awesome weekend," he says, his face now mirroring mine. He is sad too.
"Yeah. It was great. Thank you." I strike the pose of a confident girl.
He bites his lower lip. "I better head back. As much as I don't want to."
"Yeah. You better go."
"I'll call you soon. Whenever I can. As soon as I can."
"Okay." I nod.
"Okay. Bye."
After one final kiss, he is gone.
I sit on my sofa, clutching my dice. They are a comfort—the roll is almost as good as a talk. Maybe better. We didn't have a talk because it is all so obvious. We are in love and meant to be together, and the dice confirmed everything. I place them reverently in his empty cinnamon Altoids container, nestled in the white paper liner with the sixes still facing up. I touch the rows of dots, like reverse Braille. They tell me that we will be together. It is our destiny. All of me believes it. I close the lid of the tin and push it against the base of my vase