Free Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) by L B Gschwandtner Page A

down as if he hadn’t eaten for
years. Just like a man, Alanna thought and, as the thought formed, she had
another feeling behind it, a sort of gentle happiness, a sense of being buoyed
up by something, of being safe and cherished but also a feeling of being
stifled. It was a confused mix.
    “Okay, I’m really tired now,”
Shelly said, pushing back from her seat with a sigh, “ I’m going back to my
suite and fall into that big bed. Wherever you came from and whoever you are,
just make sure you’re around tomorrow because you promised I was going to win.
I didn’t come all the way out here to prove everybody was right about me being
a loser.”
    They all stood up and, with
an elaborate sigh, Shelly turned away and wobbled toward the door. Alanna and
Joe simply de-manifested.
    It says a lot about Vegas
that not a single soul noticed they were gone.

Chapter Sixteen
     
     
    When Shelly passed a large
mirror and got a good look at herself, she was horrified to discover that
indeed she did look a lot like those other people who’d been plying the slots
for days on end. And she had just started. Instead of going straight to bed,
she found the beauty shop nearby—open
24 hours
every day—and pulled out the hotel upgrade
certificate. S
helly
marched in and told the first beautician in line to fix her up.
    They went to work on her hair
first and then sat her down at a manicure station.
    “What have you been doing?”
the girl asked her. “Looks like you’ve been working as a brick layer or
something. I suppose you want acrylic?”
    “Yes,” Shelly studied her
haircut in the mirror behind the manicurist’s head. “And I want a really hot
red.”
    “Big date?” asked the woman.
    “Yes,” Shelly nodded. “I have
a date with success.”
    The woman giggled. They got
all kinds in the salon. Winners who wanted to congratulate themselves and
losers who wanted a new beginning. Tourists who came for the shows and threw a
few dollars at the roulette wheel, retirees who drove campers cross country and
stopped in Vegas to gawk, and families who came for the spectacles and
specials. There were also the down
-
and
-
outers, the ones who’d lost everything and
were looking for a job just to make enough to get back in the game.
    “Maybe you’ll find it,” the
manicurist said. “Not everyone does.” She held up a bottle of nail polish. “Is
this the color you want?”
    Shelly studied it and nodded
slowly. She was feeling the loser’s low now.
    “Well this one’s empty so I
have to go to the back room to find another bottle while your nails are drying.
I’ll just be a few minutes. It’s kind of a mess in there. We got a huge
shipment today.”
    Shelly reached into her purse
and found her cell.
It was
two a.m.
back in Virginia.

Ben had
finally
stopped
texting and calling. She
lly
tapped in his number and the message: in
vegas miss u 2 suite @bellagio really great .
    When she dropped her phone
into her purse, she looked at her new acrylic nails, plain as pudding in the
fluorescent light, waiting for their red lacquer. She sighed and thought, poor
Shelly. Tired of always running and never getting there. She wondered if Joe
and Alanna were watching her. Maybe they were really guardian angels. No, she
thought, not in this glitzy fake palace of a place. This was not the place to
separate the real from the fake. And there was no way
a girl like
Alanna could
ever understand
Shelly
who’d always operated on the assumption that when you have nothing, faking it
is all
that’s left.
     
     
    *****
     
     
    This time Joe wasn’t
surprised to find Morgan at the small juice bar.
    “Hmmm,” Morgan was saying as
Joe looked up at the menu above the juicers. “She’s not doing too well, is
she?”
    “That’s not our fault,” Joe
protested. “She’s playing slots. No one wins big at slots.” He parked himself
on one of the tall stools flanking the counter and Morgan placed a mug in front
of him, which Joe ignored for the