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Hurley?

Chapter 4
    The North Woods Casino is a hopping place, with a packed parking lot and lots of people milling about outside. The inside is like its own little world, isolated from the cold, snow, and darkness, and filled with a cacophony of sounds. I hear people shouting, bells dinging, music playing, chimes going off, glasses clinking. And the lights! There are flashing lights of every size and color everywhere I look—an epileptic’s nightmare.
    As we walk through the main gaming area, I find myself drawn to the gambling going on. The hundreds of slot machines scattered throughout the place take everything from pennies to dollars. Interspersed with these are poker tables, blackjack tables, roulette wheels, and two craps tables. While most of the people look like they’re having fun, a few of the slots players look like automatons as they robotically push buttons on their one-armed bandits.
    “You’ve really never been to a casino before?” Hurley asks as I stare wide-eyed at the surroundings.
    “Nope, never. But I’ve seen all the Ocean’s movies. Does that count?”
    “Hardly,” he says with a snort. He reaches into his pocket and takes out a five-dollar bill. “Ready to lose your gambling virginity?” he says, arching one brow suggestively.
    I blush at the sexual innuendo and nod. A woman nearby abandons her penny slot machine with a kick and a look of disgust, and Hurley moves in. He slides the fiver into a slot and the machine sucks it up and displays five hundred credits. Hurley selects buttons that let us play five credits at a time and nine different lines. I watch as pictures spin inside the display window and stop.
    “Nothing that time,” Hurley says, stepping aside. “Why don’t you give it a try?” As I step in front of the machine and hit the button to start a spin, he leans down and whispers in my ear, “You did wear your lucky underwear, didn’t you?”
    The little pictures spin rapidly. This time when they stop, alarms and bells start going off. Our credit display starts chiming off numbers, mimicking the sound of coins dropping into a tray. A light atop the machine is flashing and spinning like the cherry on a cop car, and people stop what they’re doing to look over at us. Hurley hits a button that speed cycles the count, revealing the total amount.
    “Wow!” Hurley says. “You did wear your lucky undies.”
    “I just won five hundred bucks?” I say, not believing it.
    The woman who abandoned the slot machine right before we took it over is standing at a nearby machine. She looks over at us and mumbles, “Son of a bitch!” Then she stomps off.
    I hit a button marked Payout and the machine spits out a printed ticket with a bar code and the amount of money printed on it—our winnings, plus $4.10 left from our original five. “This is kind of fun,” I say to Hurley.
    “Yeah, it is when you win, but most people lose much more than they win because they don’t know when to stop. They take their winnings and gamble it again, losing hundreds or even thousands of dollars in the long run. Trust me, your experience tonight is the exception, not the rule.”
    “This should be yours,” I tell him, holding out the ticket. “It was your money that won it.”
    “True, but it wouldn’t have happened without your lucky undies.”
    Several people look over at us and smile.
    “I don’t have any lucky undies,” I tell Hurley, leaning in close and lowering my voice, hoping he’ll get the hint and do the same. “It was your money that won it, so you should keep the winnings.”
    Hurley looks down at me—something not many men can do when I’m standing—and his blue eyes darken. My hair is hanging in my face a bit, and he reaches up and tucks a stray lock behind my ear. “You’re an amazing woman, Winston, you know that?” he says softly.
    We share a pregnant pause, gazing into one another’s eyes, a million things unsaid between us. Our bodies drift imperceptibly closer.