Vegas Baby

“We’re really not-”

Ugh. I could see that he was still trying to pull the wool over my eyes and slide that sales grease all over me. If there was one thing that I had learned in my year and a half of call center work, there was a good way to sell things and a bad way, and this guy was screaming the bad way.

“You have a good day now.” I said, dropping my hand and turning around to leave.

I was able to find my way out, the man following me the whole time and telling me that I was making a mistake, but I ignored him.

He was lucky I didn’t pop him one. But thankfully, I had gotten most of my temper issues out when I was a young kid who was tired of being called racial slurs on the playground.

By the time I made it to the door, he was screaming at me that I would regret my choice, but I was so done. Rage and disappointment mixed inside of me, making me more nauseous than anything else.

Walking back over to the McDonalds, I logged into their wifi and checked the bus schedule.

“Well isn’t it my lucky day,” I groused to myself, seeing there was going to be an hour and a half until a bus came by that I could take to another bus before finally getting to the neighborhood where my hostel was.

Or… I could take a bus in fifteen minutes right down to the strip and get drunk in a casino bar just for being there.

…that was a good way to accidentally spend too much, but honestly, I needed the break.

Treating myself to a cold glass of water and the cheapest food item they had, I headed back to the bus stop.

I could start everything over tomorrow. For tonight, I just wanted to forget.

Chapter Two

~James~

“I’m gonna get so wasted tonight!”

“Calm down, Jake, we’re going to a magic show. You don’t want to be messy.”

“Yeah, why the hell you chose to go to a magic show on our first night in Vegas is beyond me, Missy.”

I listened as the ten people in the limo with me bantered about. They were my top sales people from the past quarter, and they were certainly a lively bunch.

Then again, I knew that. While my company had just hit our first billion in profit in a fiscal year, we were still small enough where I knew all of them, their names and their quirks.

Perhaps it was a waste of resources to take my board and my top ten to an all-expenses paid, three-day getaway to Vegas, but we had earned it. We had been working so hard for so long, I had to do something amazing to reward them.

Of course, part of that had involved a contest where the first place person got to pick what show we went to on the first night and the second place winning on the second night. Melissa Decanther had blown everyone away, winning the chance to choose for our premier night in Vegas.

Unfortunately for some of our group, Missy was a magic enthusiast. She adored everything mildly hocus or pocus and when she found out one of her favorite magicians was going to be performing, she claimed that faster than a wildfire in California.

Personally, I couldn’t care less. If I didn’t like the show, I could just slip down to the casino and have some fun. I was in the mood to go with the flow and have some fun; I wasn’t going to be particular about it.

We arrived and pulled into the valet lane to get dropped off. We lucked out that there was room at the hotel connected to the casino where the magician was performing, and I booked all of my top earners fairly nice accommodations while I bought myself one of the most expansive suites with my own money.

I honestly never would have thought that we would come so far in such a short amount of time. My business had been an idea for nearly a decade, but only up and running for three years. We had spent fourteen months completely in the red, so the thought that twenty-two months later we would be in our first billion of pure profit was insane.

I felt no shortage of pride as I watched them all hid in. I took up the end of the procession, preferring to watch over them like little ducks parading through the hotel.

We had our own guide waiting for us, one that I had made my secretary set up and everything. I had offered for her to join us as well, but she had declined as she would prefer to stay out of the city of sin. I, of course, thought that was ridiculous, but I didn’t tell her as much.