Page 15 of Switched

We might be identical, but I’m missing something that she has in spades.

I can fake confidence, when I pretend to be her, but I never truly feel it.

“So, what’s the long story?” I ask, eager to be distracted from my woes.

She leans back, sips at her drink and then sets it down on the arm of the sofa.

Looking around the room slowly, she lets out a sigh.

“Whatever it is …” I start.

She blows out a breath. “It’s embarrassing.”

“It is?” I ask, trying to remember the last time my ballsy twin was ever embarrassed.

There were a few minor moments in high school, but she acts so cool and deflects so well that no one besides me ever really notices.

“It’s super embarrassing,” she admits.

Okay, now I’m really curious.

“What happened?”

“Well, okay. I’m out with the girls and we head to this place that’s like the local drinking hole for cops and whatever, because Karma loves a man in uniform and it’s somehow the first time she’s heard about this place.”

“Something embarrassing happened to you in a cop bar?”

“Yeah. I’m not super thrilled because there’s a gig across town we could be at, but whatever. It was Karma’s turn to pick the place. We go in, and I get my usual, and then I see there’s a section with pool tables.”

“Oh my God, Scar. Please tell me you didn’t try to hustle a bunch of cops.”

“Hey, it’s not a crime to pretend to be bad at something you’re actually good at.”

“But it’s not legal to place a bet on a game in a bar.”

“Well, kind of,” she murmurs, picking at the frilled edges of one of the couch cushions.

“What do you mean, kind of?”

She looks up at me. “You’re just not allowed to gamble with cash.”

“O-Kay.”

“I lost a bet to a group of these losery, stick-in-the-mud guys,” she complains, clearly still irritable about it. “So, now I have to …”

She picks up her drink and mumbles the rest into the glass, so I can’t hear it.

I let out a laugh. “What was the wager of this bet you lost, exactly?”

She puts the drink down. “If I won, they would spend a week cleaning our house.”

I blink at her. “Cleaning your house?”

She shrugs. “We’re busy career women. Who has time to clean?”

“Anyone who doesn’t want to live in a pigsty?” I ask.

She rolls her eyes. “I’d hardly call it a pigsty. Anyway, these guys totally hustled me and now I have to clean their house for the week.”

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