Page 3 of A Fool's Game

This woman knows who I am, and for whatever reason, I should definitely know who she is as well.

“I’m sorry,” I say finally.

“No, you’re not.”

I look over at her. “I am. Really. I seem to be getting worse and worse at remembering people. I blame the last three and a half years of five classes a day. Names and faces all seem to blur together.”

She glances down at her hands, still saying nothing.

My nerves give way to dread. I’m not the kind of guy who sleeps with women and doesn’t remember them afterward, so at least I have that going for me. The drunker I am, the less likely I am to end up in bed with a stranger—unlike the majority of my classmates. But the vibes I’m suddenly getting from this encounter don’t sit well.

I decide a good old-fashioned introduction is the way to go.

I wipe my hand on my jeans and hold it out to her. “I’m Ainsley. I go to U-Dub. I live down the street.”

She looks at me then. Really looks at me, eye-to-eye, straight into my soul. “Gem. I go to U-Dub as well. And I used to live at your dad’s house.”

Chapter 2

Gemma

My statement lands with the exact effect I intended, and I almost feel sorry for the guy. Almost.

He frowns at his hands on the bar and shakes his head before turning back to give me one more squinty-eyed, searching look. I watch him come up short.

“Sorry,” he says again.

This time I believe him.

I shrug. “It’s okay. I’m sure that mausoleum was a revolving door of staff and their dumb kids.”

That’s sure how it seemed to me. When we moved there around my tenth birthday, it was the largest house I’d ever laid eyes on. Our posting before it, where my mom worked as a live-in maid for an elderly couple in Queens, ended with no warning, and she kept saying how lucky we were to have landed at the Adams estate.

I’d been too young to question her. I just took her at her word that this was what good fortune looked like—even if itcame with an extra-long bus ride to school, and one tiny, shared bedroom where I was forced to spend a lot of my time.

We weren’t technically allowed to use most of the house or grounds, confined to the staff quarters kitchen, living room, and side yard, but I was a kid. There were plenty of times I followed the other staff children out through the side staircase into the main yard where we would play tag, ride the estate bicycles, and try not to get in trouble. Most of the staff, and probably the family of the house, always seemed to have a blind eye for children.

“Yeah, I guess there were a lot of people working there. I never really paid all that much attention to who ran the house,” he says finally, still not meeting my eye.

“Well, I remember you.” It might be the beer talking, but I can’t seem to shut up.

I don’t know what I was thinking sitting down here next to him. Maybe it’s because the place is packed, and my only other option was sharing a table with a slimy looking guy who would for sure get the wrong idea. Maybe it’s because it’s Christmas and normal rules don’t seem to apply today.

Whatever the reason, I jumped from admiring this man’s easy smile and shaggy golden-brown curls from across campus the last few years to sitting next to him on a barstool, sharing stolen beer and rapidly cooling fried fish.

“What do you remember about me?” he asks with a smile.

Just as self-interested as I would expect from a guy in his position in life, but I don’t mind.

“I remember you being alone a lot of the time, but the other kids told me we couldn’t ask you to play.”

His eyebrows raise like I surprised him. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah. And I remember you didn’t have a mom, which I noticed because I didn’t have a dad. I imagined your dad andmy mom falling in love, you and I being siblings, and me getting to move into my own giant room in your giant house.”

His face expands in all directions as he smiles. “I can’t believe you just told me that.”

I shrug. “Why not? I’m not the servant’s kid any longer. I go to the same college as you. We’re peers. I’m not ashamed of my dumb childhood fantasies.”

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