"Aaaaand here's the river," Ashley said, flipping over the fifth card, sneaking a glance at Lilac as she did. Lilac, for her part, peeked back at Ashley from behind her cards, trying to figure out just what was going on in her girlfriend's head.
The stakes of their friendly game of Texas Hold'em had gotten a little bigger once Lilac had begun to run out of chips and Ashley had, with a sly smile, suggested she start betting her clothes. "Make each one ten chips," she'd said cheerfully. "That should work!"
Lilac's socks were soon on Ashley's side of the table; the kitchen's tile floor was cool against her toes. Not yet ready to admit defeat, she'd wriggled out of her pants and put them defiantly on her side, ignoring the rising heat in her cheeks. She wasn't ready to lose just yet. She
knew
Ashley was up to something, and she had to figure out what it was.
Even purely based on chance, this game should've been going a lot differently. Lilac was positive that Ashley was using some kind of hypnotic trick, and the real game was figuring out what it was. She was fairly certain it was nothing to do with making her freeze and not register time passing; she'd been watching the clock at regular intervals, and she hadn't noticed it jumping forward. Her current theory was that she was giving Ashley some kind of signal about her own hand without realizing it, but she'd been watching herself carefully and she was running out of things that might constitute one.
"I'm good," Ashley said, putting her cards face down on the table and leaning back a little in her chair, watching Lilac carefully.
"Oh? Not gonna go all in again?" Lilac asked innocently, putting her cards face down as well. Ashley had been going all in a
lot
tonight, even from the very beginning. The first few times, Lilac hadn't had very good hands, so she'd simply folded instead of calling the bluff, but when Ashley kept doing it, she'd realized something was up.
The only reason Ashley would be trying to bait her that hard would be if she'd installed some kind of consequence for if Lilac responded, and who
knew
what that might be. Probably something really embarrassing, if she knew her girlfriend, and she wasn't keen on crawling on all fours for the rest of the night or something. Well...maybe she was, but she wasn't going to make it
easy
.
From that point on, as a matter of safety, she'd begun to play defensively: small bets only, and folding whenever Ashley went all in. Which she did a
lot
. It was so
obviously
a trap that it frustrated Lilac, because if she could just figure out how to get around it she was positive she'd be able to win her chips (and her clothes) back with ease. Ashley was no card shark, and she wasn't making much of an attempt to hide how good her cards were; Lilac could've called her bluffs easily if not for the risk.
"No need, my hand's pretty good this time," Ashley responded cheerfully. "Alright, flip 'em!" They both turned over their hands, and Lilac groaned; Ashley was right, her hand
was
pretty good this time.
Ashley eagerly reached out and grabbed Lilac's pants, pulling them across the table and off to the side where they wouldn't interfere with her carefully arranged stacks of chips. "So, ready to declare me the winner?" she asked smugly.
Lilac rolled her shirt over her head and laid it on her side, next to her remaining few chips. "Not a chance." She felt her cheeks burning, but she told herself this was why she always wore matching underwear; Ashley was the type to pull something anywhere, anytime.
Ashley whistled. "Black today, and lacy! Can't wait to have those over here, Ly." That was just for show; Ashley had been in the room when Lilac was getting dressed this morning, so of course she'd known she was wearing black underneath. She just liked to be theatrical.
Lilac drew herself a new pair of cards; it was down to the wire, and she was out of ideas. Time for something desperate. "If you want them, then you'll have to take them," she said, laying her cards face down on the table without even looking at them. "I'm ready when you are."
"You're not even going to look at them?" Ashley said, raising her eyebrows.
Lilac smiled and shook her head, watching Ashley's reaction carefully. Did she just swallow? Was she anxious? If Lilac was somehow giving Ashley a signal about whether her cards were good that she couldn't detect or stop, this might be the only way to save her underwear. It wouldn't suffice as a strategy for the rest of the game, but it might buy her a round or two.
Ashley drew her own cards and looked them over. "Are you suuuuuure? They might be garbage, you know."
It had already occurred to Lilac that she might be showing Ashley her cards as she dealt them to herself without registering it, but she'd thrown that idea out a while ago. She hadn't been losing
every
hand, just more than she felt she should have been, and there had been several times where they'd both upped their bets quite a bit and then Lilac's hand had just barely won. If Ashley knew
exactly
what cards she had, then close calls over big money like that wouldn't have happened. So it had to be some kind of general signal about whether her hand was good or bad; something that Ashley could use to influence the flow of the game, but not to control it perfectly.
Ashley flipped over the first three cards, then the fourth, then finally the fifth, all while watching Lilac carefully. She could've raised and forced Lilac to go all in or take off more clothes, but she didn't seem interested in rushing things. Lilac waited until she was done, then looked the cards over. This was the really tricky part; she and Ashley only played poker when they were feeling like it, so she didn't have enough game sense to be able to make an educated guess at what her hand might contain. On the plus side, she was pretty sure the same was true for Ashley.
She considered ignoring her two face down cards and just assuming the five in the center would become her hand; it wasn't a
bad