One Night in Vegas

What Happens in Vegas

Chapter 4: What Happens in Vegas

He said nothing at first. Just looked at her, easy and unhurried, like he had nowhere else to be and wasn't pretending otherwise. The bar noise hummed around them — music, laughter, glass on glass — and none of it touched the small quiet that had opened up between them.

"You look like you don't belong here either," he said finally.

Ava felt her mouth curve. "What gives it away?"

"You've been holding that glass like it owes you something." His eyes were amused, watchful. "And you keep glancing at the exit."

"Maybe I'm just keeping my options open."

"Please don't," he said. "I just got here and you're the most interesting thing I've seen all night."

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know you came alone," he said. "And you stayed anyway." He tilted his head slightly. "Let's keep it that way for tonight. No names, no history. Just two people at a bar in Vegas who don't owe each other anything."

She should have found it strange. Instead, it felt like an exhale.

"Deal," she said.

He signalled the bartender, ordered whiskey, and clinked his glass against hers when it arrived. "To forget everything."

"To forgetting everything," she agreed, and they both drank.

The conversation found its own rhythm after that — easy, unhurried, the kind that happens when neither person is performing. They made fun of the terrible DJ, watched a couple attempt increasingly ambitious selfies near the railing, and argued sincerely about whether the view was better from up here or from the street where you could feel it. He was quick, a little dry, and said things that made her laugh before she saw them coming. She matched him, found herself leaning in without noticing, talking with her hands the way she only did when she forgot to be careful.

"Dance with me," he said, setting his glass down.

"I'm not really a dancer."

"Neither am I." He held out his hand. "We'll be terrible together."

They were. He had no sense of rhythm, stepped on her foot within the first thirty seconds, laughed when she winced and didn't apologise. She spun wrong and knocked her elbow into a stranger's shoulder. They laughed through all of it, loose and uncomplicated, and somewhere in the middle of being terrible at it his hands settled on her waist and the laughter quieted and they were just swaying, barely moving, the music almost beside the point.

"Why Vegas?" she asked. Her hands were on his shoulders. The city blazed below.

"Needed somewhere loud enough to drown things out for a while," he said. "You?"

"Same."

"Running toward or away?"

"Both," she said. "Neither. I haven't decided."

He nodded like that made complete sense, and she liked him for it — for not pushing, for letting the answer be unfinished. His thumb traced her cheekbone, slow and deliberate, and she stopped breathing for a second.

"This is crazy," she whispered.

"Good crazy?"

"I don't know yet."

He laughed, low and warm. "Me neither." He didn't pull away. Neither did she. "Want to get out of here?"

She knew she should hesitate. She didn't. "Yes."

They walked through the casino holding hands, past slot machines and card tables and the particular midnight energy of a place that never closes, and somewhere in the movement of it — the noise and the light and his hand warm around hers — the last of her hesitation dissolved. In the elevator he pulled her close and kissed her, unhurried, and she laughed against his mouth from the sheer improbability of it all.

"What's funny?" he murmured.

"Yesterday I fixed a printer," she said. "And now this."

He laughed, real and surprised, and kissed her again, and the elevator doors opened on the fortieth floor and they walked down the hall still close, his hand at the small of her back, neither of them speaking because nothing needed saying yet.

His suite had floor-to-ceiling windows, the Strip lay out below in all its shameless glowing excess. She stood at the glass for a moment and just looked. He came up behind her, hands light on her waist, and they stayed like that briefly — two people looking out at a city that didn't know or care they existed — before she turned and they poured drinks they mostly didn't finish and ended up on the couch talking about nothing consequential. Worst jobs. Foods they'd never eat again. Places they wanted to go someday. He made her laugh until her stomach hurt. She told him about fixing printers and staying late for people who didn't notice, and he listened with his full attention in a way she hadn't experienced in longer than she wanted to admit.

"You're not invisible," he said quietly.

"You don't know me."

"I know you flew to Vegas alone on no notice because someone told you that you were boring," he said. "That's not invisible. That's brave."

She looked at him for a moment. "I didn't tell you that part."

"You implied it."

She kissed him instead of answering, and the drinks were forgotten and the city kept burning outside the windows and what happened next was slow and a little clumsy at first — bumping foreheads, laughing at the tangled sheets, the particular awkwardness of two people learning each other from scratch — and then it wasn't clumsy anymore. It was just them, unhurried, the city blazing below like it was doing them a favour.

At some point, she noticed his hands weren't entirely steady. Not nerves — something else, something quieter, something he didn't mention and she didn't ask about. He held her like someone making the most of a thing he knew was temporary, and she understood that feeling more than he could know. She'd been living it for years, just in smaller, quieter ways.

Afterwards they lay with the sheet tangled around them, his arm around her, her head on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat, slow and steady. The city pulsed below, indifferent and endless.

"This feels real," she said, before she could stop herself.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "It does."

Neither of them said anything after that. Just lay there in the dark while the night stretched out around them and the city kept going without them, bright and indifferent and eternal.

Morning came hard. Sunlight sliced through the windows, bright and unforgiving, and Ava woke disoriented, took a few seconds to remember where she was. The suite. The windows. Him. She sat up slowly, pulled the sheet around herself, and felt reality settle back into place like a weight she'd set down for one night and now had to pick up again.

He stirred, opened his eyes, found her sitting up and watched her for a moment without speaking.

"Hey," he said finally.

"Hey."

The silence between them had a different texture than the one from last night. Those had been full. This one was careful.

"I don't usually—" she started.

"Me neither," he said.

She found her dress near the window, her scarf crumpled on the floor. He pulled on jeans, kept his back to her while she dressed, which she appreciated more than she could say. When she turned around he was watching her with a small smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"This was—" she tried.

"Yeah," he said. "It was."

She picked up her bag. He walked her to the door, held it open. She stepped into the hallway and turned back once. He was leaning against the doorframe, watching her with something she couldn't read. She lifted her hand. He lifted his.

The door closed.

Ava stood in the hallway for a moment, heart loud in her chest, and thought: I don't even know his name.

And somehow that was the part that hurt most.