You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello
When I woke up that Friday afternoon Marcy was gone. She had left me some texts about going to Kendra's, and I was getting the feeling that this "situation" that we had was not going to work out in the long term. One of my favorite books, The Lords of Discipline, the protagonist had a short affair with a young pregnant girl who was hidden from her shame, and he was dropped like a rock once he wasn't needed anymore. I sympathized with him in that book, and decided not to make the same mistakes that he did. I had also heard from some locals that Kendra had been getting pretty hooked on opiates, something she had tried to hide from me in plain sight. I'm sure many people on here have known someone that has had an opiate addiction, but this was a common occurrence in Florida. You couldn't find heroin to save your life in Sarasota but a 16 year old could get Oxys easier than he/she could get beer or cigs. I have had too many friends go down the tubes, and I somehow managed to never get addicted, I guess I was lucky. I told Marcy that she was no longer welcome in the house, and wished her the best with her sugar daddy child. After all, TIF (This is Florida).
I checked my emails - something I didn't do often these days, and saw that I had gotten one from a previously huge client. His property was my masterpiece of botanical collections. Back in 2008, he had flown down from Michigan with his brother-in-law to find me at my house and ask me to work for them. The owner was an Iranian cardiologist who also had ties to the oil industry. I had heard a lot of stories of people with sick houses, but this guy seemed to be pretty legit. They were building a 8500 square foot house with separate guest quarters on a 16 acre island in the Sanibel area. Fast forward to 2015 with spring approaching, he was ready to open up a new area of the island to planting exclusively Cuban plants. The thing about Cuban plants is they were very hard to obtain, only a few species got out of Cuba before 1959, and they were endangered in habitat. You could ask whatever you wanted for these plants if you could find them. He wanted me to go to the island and find some sites for planting, and acquire plants.
The on Saturday I drove down to the area and took the private bridge, had a look around, and was done by noon. I figured I would order a Publix sub online and pick it up at the closest store. I walked into Publix (a grocery store chain) and looked for my sub in the take out area. There is a bin that has your name, what your ordered, and your phone number. I must have shown up too early because there was only one, for a Nicole. I wondered if Nicole was hot, I mean what better place to meet someone than in a grocery store? I am walking around trying to kill time and tired of smelling fresh cooked food and look back in the bin. There it was, and as I picked it up I heard a voice behind me.
"Is that your sub?"
"Well, my name is Liam, and I did order turkey, so I think it is."
"Is there one that says Nicole?"
"No....wait, yes, it's right here. Sorry I have had a rough couple of days."
"It couldn't have been as rough as mine. Did you find out your boyfriend of 7 years cheated on you?"
"No, my boyfriend never cheats on me." She started laughing.
I turned around to see Nicole. She was in her late 20s, early 30s, about 5'7, 120 pounds. She was basically wearing pajamas but looked pretty hot nonetheless. She wasn't just hot, she was beautiful. She ended up sitting down in the eating area and like an awkward middle school cafeteria moment, I asked her if she cared if I sat down too.
I started asking her about the situation with her boyfriend. Apparently she found him cheating on her with some girl from Home Depot. She has an 8 year old daughter, and she works in the insurance business. I ended up telling her about the situation I had been in with Marcy to try to sympathize with her. I was starving and ended up finishing my sub pretty fast, and said goodbye to her and wished her the best with the situation. I felt like being a friend to her, but my instincts said to give her my number and told her I would be working in the area. She took my card and plugged it into her phone - that was definitely a good sign.
It was only 1pm, and the Fort Myers-Naples track was calling my name. I headed down there and got a seat at 2-5-10 PLO and noticed a few regulars. Season was ending, but there were still plenty of snowbirds around. I picked up A
A
9
9
UTG and make it 35 and get one caller who I had never seen before, but did not appear to be a snowbird. The flop of A
9
3
was so beautiful, but so bittersweet, as it was basically impossible for him to have much. I hadn't seen him to be too aggro, so he either had a piece of this board, or wasn't going to put a dime in unless he had me beat. I led into him for 60 and was met with a raise to 200. The only draw out there was 245x and was unlikely in PLO hi only, I doubt A9 raises me, and that leaves 33xx. On this kind of board I want a clean runout, a turn 9 or A would deter him from continuing with the hand. I call and a 6
appears on the turn. In what appeared to be one fluid motion I check/shoved and got snapped off for all his chips with 2
3
3
4
. The river was paint, and I dragged a $1400 pot.
I could not get much going for the next few hours, raising the right hands and getting called 4 ways to be led into where I had no equity and wasn't last to act. I had whittled down to 1400 and decided to call it a day. An hour before, I had gotten a text from Nicole that she had enjoyed eating lunch with me and would like to hang out sometime. I didn't know what I was ready for - I had just been through a very odd situation with Marcy and Kendra, and didn't know if I should focus on work. She lived a little over an hour away, but it wasn't a terrible drive, just the wrong way from most of my points of interest. We talked on the phone the whole ride home, and I felt like she was mature, not looking/expecting for a whole lot, and what could it hurt? My only concern is that I would like her too much and I would end up emotionally face down in a ditch. It was worth it, and we decided that next weekend she would come up and we would hang out at the beach. It was a light of hope in a sea of uncertainty in my life. I thought if I found the right person to spend time with, my outlook on life would improve and the gears of life-progression would turn once again.