Page 89 of A Fool's Game

I don’t have to ask what she means.

My hand moves of its own accord, lifting and balling into a fist that I place right over my own heart.

Gem’s teary eyes close briefly before she takes a steadying breath and leans down to place a kiss on my hand. Then she lifts my fist and places her lips right to the place on my chest I was covering. The place I always try to hide.

My eyes fall closed, and I can barely breathe around the tornado of unwelcome emotions.

I feel Taylor curl in close to my side and when I open my eyes, I find his lips pressed to the center of my chest as well.

A sob wracks out of me, and I cover my face with my hands, not wanting to be seen like this.

“Tell us, Ainsley,” Taylor says, his voice gentle but firm.

When I lock eyes with him, I don’t see the confusion I carry, or the shame, or even the secret, smoldering passion. All I see is the man.

My man.

“She was—” I break off and breathe for a moment before collecting myself enough to fill my lungs. My partners wait patiently, holding space for my body and my grief. “She was as tall as my dad. I remember thinking that people had to be the same size to get married. All our housekeepers were shorter than her, and I thought they were single because they couldn’t find men the same size.” My sob is half laugh, and it relaxes the knot in my chest just a bit.

“She loved picture books. More than I did, I think. She had a whole library of them in her own room, ones she collected during college. She went to school to be an illustrator, and she told me that one day she would write the story of us and draw all the pictures. At night, she would bring one of her books in and read it to me, but I would always watch her. She would say, look at the pictures, Ains, and I did it to make her happy, but when she looked away, I would go back to watching her face as she read.”

I fall back in time, to a house that felt like a home. Much smaller than the family estate my dad and I moved to after we lost her. There was carpet on the floors and steps up from the street. She and I would hold hands as we went up and down.

“My dad watched her the same way. No matter what she was doing, his eyes were on her face. You could see everything she was thinking on her face. Her eyes twinkled and stormed. She had a smile for everything. A library of smiles, my dad called it.”

My breaths are coming easier, and it feels like the world is easing up on me a little. Like gravity is giving me a small reprieve from the weight of the universe on my chest.

“The last time I saw her,” I exhale and inhale fully before sharing my deepest, darkest secret. “She had passed. We sat with her for those last hours, and when she passed, she had this smile on her lips. The faintest smile, but still there. I told my dad that it was her goodbye smile. He said, ‘What?’ And I said, ‘From her library of smiles. That’s the goodbye smile.’ And he…”

I trail off, regretting my choice to even go down this road. Gemma squeezes my hand tightly and when I look up, she’s giving me a small, encouraging smile.

I wonder if everyone has a library of smiles. A library of frowns, of looks, and sighs.

“He said, ‘She’s not smiling anymore.’ But I could see her smiling right there. I was too scared to argue with him. He was so sad. So I just let it go. And I started smiling myself. I started making him smile. And I never stopped.”

“Until you ran off to Asia and refused to go to college,” Taylor adds with a small, breathy laugh.

I shrug, my shoulders feeling light for the first time in my memory. “It became easier over the years to do my own thing if I couldn’t see his disapproval. Running away was a solution to a problem I didn’t know how to solve.”

“Why did you bring us here, then? You must have known he’d be here.”

I consider this for a long moment. I wasn’t expecting to have to explain myself. Wasn’t expecting anyone to see inside the dark, inner workings of my mind. But somehow, these two found the trap door. “I guess, I just needed it to feel real. If I'm hiding things, they aren’t real. It's only when I have his approval that decisions are made. Until then, it’s just me fucking off or messing around.”

“Is that what he tells you?”

“Yes and no. It's implied more than he states it outright, I think. There’s the path, and then there are the secrets. I grew up understanding that I could have the secrets, but they weren’t part of the path.”

“Well, you sure brought some secrets onto the path tonight.”

Taylor’s statement hits me like a dagger of sadness. Because it’s not true. “I’m not sure if he really thinks that. I’m sure he just considers this some phase and that I’ll fall in line eventually like I always do.”

“And go to law school?”

I don’t need to answer the question, they already know the truth of that.

But what they don’t know is how deep it really goes. “At some point, when you’ve spent your whole life living in the shadow of a man who assumes you will grow up to be just like him, you come to understand that he’s never really seen you.”

Gemma curls down until her arms are wrapped around my center, her head resting in my lap. “I see you.”

---