Sell it? Well, maybe it was worth a shot. Lucas might like to bet for the sky, but he had certainly demonstrated in the past that he was willing to fold under the right circumstances. Robert I didn’t know so well. I had learned from my research that his drinking habits made him unpredictable, but he was still reasonably sober at the moment. I tried to envision myself back in the store, and look as these two men not as opponents in a poker tournament but rather as customers who I had to sell a product to. Operating with practiced precision, my face muscles pulled themselves into the friendly smile I had affected so many times in the past.

“Alright, what do you fellas have in the pocket?” I asked with the same tone that I had used to ask How can I help you find what you’re looking for today? to more people than I could count.

Lucas seemed a little taken aback by my sudden change in demeanor. For a second he looked confused, but then his regular smirk returned. “Oh look, the amateur is trying to get a read. I don’t know, newbie, why don’t you tell me. What do I have in the pocket?”

Of course, there was no way I could do that. Instead, I launched straight into my “helpful salesman” routine, acting as though I were telling a customer about all the best deals that the store was offering. “I don’t really know what you have. It’s probably better than my hand to be honest, although I think Robert there might be winning this time around. Really, it’s probably Robert you need to worry about. I’m not going to be doing much without a good card on the river.”

Both of my opponents looked like they were having trouble figuring out what to make of this. All I had done was tell them the truth, but the tone in which I had been speaking, while very typical for a sales floor, was entirely out of place in a conversational environment like a poker table. I could almost hear the gears turning in their heads. What were they supposed to make of my strange behavior? Was I trying to bluff them? Or was I playing on the next level of mind games where I was trying to make them think I was bluffing while I squeezed some extra value out of them? While they both struggled to figure out the meaning behind my odd behavior, I slid some chips into the middle to call the current bet. We proceeded to the river, which turned out to be a rather unexciting five of hearts. Robert checked, and Lucas fixed me with a stare as he tried to figure out just what it was I was trying to do.

I could feel my heart beating a mile a minute in my chest. I hoped there wasn’t a vein pulsing on my neck or anything like that which might tip Lucas off as to just how much I was relying on him to buy my routine. I fervently hoped that he took my odd mannerisms as an attempt to bait him, which was what I was trying to sell him on, rather than an attempt to bluff him, which was what was actually happening. I kept my “friendly salesman” look frozen on my face while Lucas stared at me, trying to decipher my intentions. Then he slowly lifted his hand and tapped it on the table to check.

I immediately reached for my chips and put a moderately-sized bet in the pot, one large enough that it would be a significant number of chips for the others to lose, but not so large that it would give away my bluff. “I guess I’ll just go ahead and throw these out there,” I said. It was a neutral expression on the face of it, but it was one I had no real reason to make. That in and of itself, I hoped, would arouse suspicion in the other two that I was placing a value bet.

Robert peeked at his hand, drained his bloody mary, then looked at his hand again. With a sigh, he pushed his cards to the center. I fought to keep the excitement off my face. Step one of two was complete, now all that remained was for Lucas to fold. Once again the Belgian stared at me.

“What’s gotten into you?” the Belgian asked. He was fishing for information, not necessarily in the form of an answer to his question, but in the form of any reaction that might tip him off as to what was going on in my head. “You’re acting weird. Then again, I suppose that’s what happens to a man when he’s in love, right Casanova?” He waited to see if this would get a rise out of me, but I kept my cool. He decided to try an even more shameless strategy. “You know, maybe if you win Alva will show you her goods. Nothing gets her going quite like a winning poker player.”

Even though I made a point of not looking towards Alva to see how she was taking this, I heard the little high-pitched noise in her throat again. The poor girl. I really wanted to stick my foot through Lucas’s sneering face so he would keep her name out of his mouth, but I managed to keep my composure. After all, how many customers had I dealt with over the years who I had wanted to beat to a pulp? I had stayed professional with them then and I’d stay professional now. I simply kept my practiced expression on my face and waited for Lucas to make a move. Finally, to my immeasurable relief, he folded his cards and gave them back to the dealer. I pushed my hand over to the dealer too, and collected my chips. After a series of significant bets from two different players, my pot was actually starting to look pretty healthy. It was a drastic change from when I had entered today as a short stack.

“Good hand,” I heard Alva’s voice say quietly beside me.

I looked over to her, and to my surprise I saw a weak smile on her face. It was a far cry from her usual radiant expression, but it looked genuine nonetheless.

“Thank you. I really thought I was in trouble for a minute there,” I said, glad that Alva was at least willing to talk to me again. “I’m sorry about what Lucas was saying, by the way. I never meant for you to have to deal with any of this.”

“I know you didn’t, I… I think I probably overreacted a bit last night.” Alva confessed, “I mean, it was a shock for me to see you here, and I think that maybe I jumped to some conclusions that I shouldn’t have.”

“No, you were right,” I said, folding a bad hand that had just been dealt to me, “if some woman I had only met once followed me halfway across the world I’d be pretty freaked out too. It’s a weird thing to do, and I certainly wasn’t helping my own case running away from the proposal like that.”

Alva folded her own hand and pushed the cards back to the dealer. “I guess it would be weird if you were a weird person, but the more I think about it the more I have trouble seeing you as the type of guy who could be that kind of creep. I’ve had strange men pursue me in the past, but there was always something fundamentally off about them, you know? I don’t see that in you.”

“I’ll take that for what it’s worth I suppose,” I laughed, “So you and Vincente, huh? I didn’t have a clue you two were together.”

“Oh yes, he’s been a huge fixture in my life since well before we started dating.” Alva told me, “He was the first one who really took notice of me when I was coming up. He spotted me playing at a table in Vegas and told me I was one of the most promising players he’d ever seen. That was a big part of how I was able to find the courage to make this into a full-time career.”

“He’s a smart man. He’s a fantastic man in general, if I’m being honest. You’ve got yourself a winner for sure.” I tried to smile, even though the words pained me to say.

“Thanks for being such a good sport about it,” she replied, “I hate it when guys act all jealous over me.”

“Well, I’m not going to pretend like I’m not jealous,” I admitted, “but I really can’t find fault with the guy. Trust me, I tried, and the only thing I can come up with is that Alva Alcon isn’t a great sounding name.”

She laughed, and to my delight I saw her face light up into her full, glowing smile. “It is pretty horrible, isn’t it? Maybe I can convince him to let me keep my maiden name.”

“You should insist on it,” I agreed, folding another hand. “Giving up a poetic name like Alva Lorensen for something like that would be downright criminal.”

“I’ll see what he says. I want him to be happy, and the name is something I’m willing to compromise on if he really has his heart set on giving me his. Still, I’d definitely rather not.”

“I’m sure he won’t mind. He’s got to know what a lucky… what a lucky guy he is.” the sentence got stuck briefly in my throat as a sudden and unexpected upwelling of emotion caused me to choke up. I turned my face away from Alva, just in case the tears started flowing. Where had this come from? All I had been saying was that Vincente was a lucky man… I felt the lump form in my throat again, and my breath hitched as it tried to fight its way through the obstruction.

“Are you okay?” Alva sounded concerned.

“I’ll be fine, it’s just… when I think about Vincente and how lucky he is to have you… You know what? Never mind, it’s stupid.”

"You start to wonder why some fraction of that luck didn’t go to you?” she finished.

“I… yeah. I think that’s it,” I said. What I didn’t say was The only fraction of his luck I really care about is the part that won him your heart.

“Don’t worry,” she assured me, “things will go your way eventually. If you keep playing like you did in that one hand they might start to go your way a lot sooner than you think.”

“Thanks,” I said, not really sure I believed it. Sure, luck was a fickle thing, but there was no way that it was ever going to go my way to such a degree that I’d be able to land myself a girl like Alva. After all, I was one hundred percent sure that girls like Alva didn’t even exist. There could only ever be the one. Still, at least she and I were back on friendly terms. She was such a sweet girl that in retrospect I doubted it was possible for her to remain angry forever. Her smile had even made a brief reappearance, although it was still a little touch-and-go, like the sun trying to break through a cloud cover after a hard rain. With things between us on the mend, I wondered why I still felt so hollow inside. I could still feel the diminished but very much present lump in my throat. My mind said that I should be happy with what I had, and that a friendship with Alva was the best thing I could hope for. My heart vehemently disagreed. I hoped that one day maybe I could move on and find someone else who would make me happy, but I didn’t see any possibility getting over Alva for as long as we were so close to each other. It seemed certain that I would have to deal with pining for her for the remainder of the tournament. In the meantime, there was still a lot of poker to be played. I took a look at another hand, decided it was worth playing, and prepared to jump back into the fray.