He missed Gehna.

He missed her more than he could believe it was possible to miss someone. Not that he had had a lot of practice at it—other than a vague notion that having a mother around while he was growing up might have been nice, hungering to be near another body was a novel experience for Eram. He wasn’t enjoying it much.

I’m not prepared for this shit, he thought. What would Tom Ferguson do? Probably tell me to drop the girl and focus on poker. Bet the Baron never knew a girl like Gehna though. If I had half the brains God gave a goat, I’d already be on my knees somewhere begging her to forgive me.

The trouble was, Eram knew that he had meant what he had said, even if he had said it in an asshole-y kinda way. Gehna plus her family plus her forthcoming baby plus her extreme moodiness equalled unnecessary drama in his life, and he wasn’t sure being with her was worth that. Eram wasn’t even sure that he was with her. What did it mean anyway, being with someone? Sure they were friends—best friends—but they hadn’t done it with each other. And even if they had done it, would that then mean that they were with each other? Did friendship plus sex equal soulmate? It seemed terribly important to Eram to figure out the equation, but it was as if some information vital to finding the answer had been withheld from him.

Raised voices nearby shook him out of his reverie. Two young men, dressed almost identically in jeans, trimmed beards and expensive loafers, were having a go at each other while sharing a fat spliff.

‘You don’t have the heart for Texas,’ one was saying. ‘I shove my stack against you, you’re insta-folding. Every single time.’

‘Who needs heart when you got balls,’ the other cupped his crotch to demonstrate. ‘I’m going to beat your ass all day long.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘No, you fuck off.’

Eram turned away from them, jerking the hood of his lucky hoodie over his head. There were probably a few math geeks like him around but, mostly, the guys participating in the tournament were like these two, depending on naked aggression and Lady Luck to see them through. Eram wasn’t worried. He went back to brooding about the Gehna situation until the ferry bumped up alongside the casino boat.

Overnight, the Delta Queen had been tricked out for the poker tournament. When Eram had visited it yesterday to deposit his buy-in money and pick up a registration kit, the place had been lousy with roulette wheels and slot machines and drunk tourists. It was all gone now; what remained were four bare floors, one per deck, with twenty-five felted tables on each. With nine players seated around a table, there was little in the way of elbow room, but that was to be expected at the start of an open tournament. Things would get less cosy as the day progressed and eliminations thinned the field.