He bit the skin around his thumb because of the shake in his hand, and lowered his hand, biting back a swear. It was Desdemona's call. It was Desdemona's call, and she'd proposed what was — a very reasonable course of action when he got over himself for a few minutes. Except that it still felt impossible to him, it felt impossible even removed from the blanket of laudanum, and — he could not stop gambling before his life had entered freefall because he had never stopped it before.

He could tell Ben the things he knew that Ben at least expected, or he could sit here talking morosely about Desdemona, trying not to think about the conversation they would have when he was sober and fine and able to drag himself home.

"It's like there's a hole," Art said quietly. He gestured at his chest with the hand he'd had on his pint of beer. "And it's always been there, and I don't know why. And I was done with it for a while. I thought I was — I thought things were different." He was supposed to be a different person. He had been a different person. He was the sort of reckless where he was fun at parties and sometimes a little too hungover; the sort of reckless where he could stay out too late and still build jigsaw puzzles with his daughter the next day; the sort of reckless where he proposed very publicly on a broomstick and people were like 'oh, okay.' He didn't gamble. He didn't make bets. He had wanted to, after the miscarriage, but he'd shied away from it for months, and now —

"It's like there's a hole," Art said, and he was talking more to his pint glass than he was to Ben. "And gambling fills it."

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