Chapter 4 - Neon and Rupture
Saturday night in Las Vegas smells like ozone, stale air conditioning, cheap tequila, and desperation.
Three hundred and fifty miles away, inside the noisy, kaleidoscopic casino floor of the Bellagio, Jake stood near a craps table with a half-drunk bourbon in his plastic cup. Brad was shouting at the shooter, waving a stack of red twenty-five-dollar chips, while Tyler was trying to flirt with a cocktail waitress carrying a tray of gin and tonics.
"Put fifty on the pass line, Miller!" Brad yelled, slamming a heavy hand between Jake’s shoulder blades. "Stop checking your damn phone every thirty seconds! You look like a golden retriever waiting for its owner to come home from school!"
Jake forced a hollow laugh and slipped the iPhone back into his pocket. But his palm was sweaty against the glass.
He felt sick.
The beer in Utah hadn't worked. The wind in his face hadn't worked. The high-speed drive through the red rocks hadn't made him feel free; it had made him feel like an escaped convict running from a sentence he knew he deserved to serve. Every mile they put between Denver and the truck had felt like pulling a metal wire tighter and tighter around his own ribs until he could barely draw a full breath.
Her voicemail had sounded awful. The tremor in her voice wasn't her usual anger. It wasn't the righteous fury she had shown in the driveway. It had sounded like… fear.
*She’s just anxious,* he told himself for the hundredth time, taking a burn of the cheap bourbon. *Feldman said first babies are late. Everybody says first babies are late. She’s thirty-seven weeks. It’s impossible.*
"Hey, look at this," Tyler shoved his phone in front of Jake’s face. It was an Instagram story from a girl Brad had met at a pool club earlier that afternoon. She had tagged their group with the caption: *"Denver boys know how to party."*
In the background of the video, Jake was visible sitting on a lounge chair, his sunglasses crooked, looking thoroughly miserable, while a girl in a string bikini danced two feet in front of him.
"Brad, don't let people tag us in that shit," Jake said, his voice instantly sharp. "I’m married. My wife is nine months pregnant."
"Oh, cry me a river, Papa Smurf!" Brad laughed, throwing two red chips onto the green felt. "She’s not on Instagram right now, she’s sleeping! Live a little! You’ve got eighteen years of diaper duty starting next week! Have some damn fun!"
Jake looked down at his watch. 8:15 PM.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A violent, sustained vibration. Not a text. A call.
He pulled it out.
*Clara.* Maya’s older sister.
Jake’s heart violently seized in his throat. Clara never called him. Clara despised him on a good day; she thought he was immature, self-centered, and undeserving of Maya. If Clara was calling him on a Saturday night…
He turned his back on the craps table, pressing his finger into his left ear to block out the shouting of the casino floor. "Hello? Clara?"
"You pathetic, cowardly piece of garbage," Clara’s voice didn't just come through the speaker; it tore through it, shaking with a fury so pure and unfiltered that Jake’s knees instantly went weak.
"Clara? What’s going on? Where is Maya?"
"Her water broke an hour ago in the kitchen!" Clara screamed, the sound of car windshield wipers and a blaring siren audible in the background of her call. "She slipped in it, Jake! She fell on the tile! Do you hear me? She fell on her stomach while you’re in Vegas pretending you’re twenty-one!"
The plastic cup dropped from Jake’s hand. The brown liquid splashed across his boots and the carpeted floor of the Bellagio casino. The dice clattered against the wall of the craps table behind him, someone cheered, but the sound was distant, muffled, as if he had just been dropped into the bottom of an ocean.
"Is she—is the baby—" Jake choked out, the world spinning in nauseating circles of neon red and gold.
"She’s in an ambulance right now on the way to St. Anthony’s! She’s bleeding! The contractions are two minutes apart! If anything happens to my sister or my nephew because you decided to play frat boy in the desert, I swear to God, Jake, I will destroy you with my bare hands! Don't you dare come back here! Don't you dare touch them!"
The line clicked dead.
Jake stood frozen in the middle of the casino floor. People brushed past him—tourists in sequined dresses, drunk bachelor parties, elderly women pulling slot machine levers.
Brad turned around from the table, a pile of chips scooped into his arms, grinning ear to ear. "Hey! Seven out! We’re up three hundred bucks! Where are we going for dinner, boys?"
Jake looked at Brad. He looked at Tyler.
He saw them clearly for the first time in his life: two thirty-year-old men who had never built anything, never sacrificed anything, never loved anyone enough to let it hurt them. They weren't free. They were hollow. They were running away from adulthood because they were terrified of becoming men, and he had let them drag him straight into their pathetic, empty circus.
"I have to go," Jake whispered.
"What? Speak up, man!"
"Her water broke!" Jake screamed, the roar tearing from his throat with such savage violence that the pit boss and three dealers snapped their heads in his direction. "She fell! The baby is coming right now!"
Brad blinked, his smile wavering, then turning into an annoyed sneer. "Dude… chill. First labors take forever. We’ll finish dinner, get a good night's sleep, and drive back tomorrow morning. You’ll be there by noon—"
Before Brad could finish the sentence, Jake lunged forward, grabbed Brad by the collar of his designer linen shirt, and slammed him against the padded bumper of the craps table with terrifying force.
"Give me the keys to the 4Runner," Jake snarled, his face inches from Brad’s, his spit hitting the other man’s sunglasses. "Give me the keys right now, or I swear to God I will beat you into this floor until security shoots me."
Brad’s eyes widened in genuine, paralyzing terror. He fumbled in his pocket with shaking hands, pulled out the key fob, and dropped it into Jake’s trembling palm.
Jake didn't look back. He ran.
May you like
He sprinted through the Bellagio lobby, knocking over a stanchion, shoving through the revolving brass doors, out into the scorching neon heat of the Las Vegas Strip, sprinted toward the parking garage like a man running out of a burning house with his soul trapped inside.
***
