Page 37 of Forget Me

I cleared my throat.

His gaze traveled lazily up the curve of my spine to my face. His grin was obscene and all for Larissa and Flavio. “Don’t worry, babe. They understand.”

My cheeks burning, I turned my attention back to the ball. It was all pretend, hisbabehad reminded me. He didn’t actually like the way I looked or want to hold me in his arms. I didn’t want that, either.

While I whacked away at my allotment of golf balls, Larissa said, “So tell me, Mateo. How did you and Miriam get together?”

I missed the ball again. Shit, we hadn’t agreed on a backstory of our relationship. I opened my mouth to make something up, but he beat me to it.

“I think you know that my cousin and her brother are together?” He waited for her nod before continuing. “It was Ben’s birthday, and there was a family gathering. My aunt, Mimi’s parents, some of Ben and Mimi’s cousins. A few friends. Jackson Jones was there with his wife and their kids.”

I remembered it. Ben’s birthday was in July. Mateo had just come over from the island to lead Cooper’s security detail. Billionaires—and their boyfriends—needed security, I supposed.

“So Ben, who I knew from his visit to the island where I’m from, introduced me to his sister. She was so radiant that day, the sun shining on her dark hair like fire.”

I rolled my eyes before I drew back the club to swing. That was Mateo, romanticizing everything. My hair had been windblown that day, and I’d forgotten to put an elastic on my wrist to pull it back.

“So I did my usual thing. Small talk. A little flirting. She even told me a joke.”

“A joke? Mimi?” Larissa laughed.

“I still remember it. I had to look it up because I didn’t get it at the time. Want to hear?”

“Definitely.”

“Mimi, do you want to tell it?” he asked.

I leaned on the club. He remembered? “No, you tell it.”

“Okay. So an infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first mathematician says to the bartender, ‘I’ll have a beer.’ The second says, ‘Half a beer, please.’ The third asks for a quarter beer. This is the part I didn’t get. Why would you ask for a part of a beer?” He chuckled. “But the barman gets it. He sets two beers in front of all of them. And all the mathematicians—remember, there’s an infinite number of them—go, ‘That’s all you’re giving us?’ The bartender says, ‘Come on, guys. Know your limit.’”

Larissa, just like I’d expected, stood there with her mouth open. Flavio had wandered off completely.

“Later, I asked my smart cousin what it meant. He said it’s a calculus function. And I searched for it later and learned about limits of functions. I never got to calculus in school. Still, I knew it was a joke. So I countered with one of my own—a pun.”

“A pun?” Larissa asked with half a laugh.

“I said it would be hard to fog-get my first time in San Francisco.”

She groaned. “That’s terrible!”

I grimaced, not at the pun, but at the memory. I’d thought he was making fun of my nerdy joke. Snob that I was, I hadn’t realized he hadn’t had the same academic opportunities as his cousin.

Mateo winked at me. “I may have suggested I needed someone to keep me warm. My usual bullshit.”

I’d assumed he was mocking me with his fake flirting. I’d been curvy since puberty, and my desk job packed a little extra padding onto my butt. Guys who looked like Mateo didn’t flirt with women who looked like me. Or with women who told calculus jokes. He was an Adonis, and I was…just your regular corporate accountant.

“So that was it?” Larissa asked. “You’ve been together ever since?”

“No.” I sensed his bluster deflating a little behind me. “She shut me down. She told me to buy a better jacket.”

“I was serious about that. You were wearing a long-sleeved shirt as a jacket.” I whacked the ball, and it bounced down the green.

“It was July! But that’s my Mimi. Sensible as always. After that, I couldn’t think of anything to say to her. Everything that came out was painfully awkward. She broke me.”

I turned. “I didn’t break you.”

He spread his hands. “You did. Don’t you remember how ridiculous I was around you after that?”

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