Page 102 of Foolish Games

“Vivienne,” he says, a pained expression on his face. “Of course I did. I do. You’re fucking amazing. And it didn’t mean anything. I barely remembered it, it happened so long ago, and we’ve been together and had so much fun since then. It was nothing. I swear.”

“Even when it happened?” I ask. “By the time we slept together?”

“I was already nuts about you,” he promises. “It had nothing to do with that.”

“So it was real?” I ask, hope like a flower opening in my chest. “When we slept together?”

He reaches for me, tentative at first. When I don’t pull away, he draws me into his arms.

“It was always real, Viv. All of it. I meant every word I said. I meant it so much it scares the shit out of me.”

I press my cheek to his warm chest, listening to his strong heartbeat, so powerful it could hypnotize me. I remember when he said something about making smart girls stupid. He was right. His touch makes me all kinds of stupid.

“Did you take the money?” I ask quietly.

“What?”

“When you won the bet,” I say. “Did you take the money?”

He doesn’t say anything.

And that’s all the answer I need.

I push him away, and he lets me. He lets me turn and walk away, and climb in my car, and drive away. Tears roll down my cheeks as I go, but I don’t look back. I know that there’s nothing behind me. It was all an illusion.

No matter what he says, if he took the money, then none of it was real. If he’d felt something real, even when he won the bet, he would have told the guys that he couldn’t take the money. That he did it because he liked me, not to win.

Once he took it, that’s all it was and all it could ever be. A bet.

A lie.

And yes, I recognize the irony, that I’m crying over a fake relationship. Somehow, even though I created it and knew it was fake all along, I still felt like it was real.

What I felt was real.

The hurt I feel now is real.

*

“There you are,” Robert says, bending to peer in the window of my car.

When I don’t answer, he pulls open my door. “What are you doing in the garage?”

“Wallowing in self-pity,” I admit, pulling off my heart-shaped sunglasses.

“If you’re trying to die of exhaust poisoning, you gotta have the engine running, not just the radio,” he says. “Plus, I think you have to plug the tailpipes.”

“Are you giving me suicide tips?”

“Just testing you,” he says with a grin.

“I’m not going to kill myself over a boy,” I say. “I might kill you if you don’t leave me alone though.”

“Dude,” he says. “What the fuck are you listening to?”

I turn down the volume and cast him a guilty look. “Steve Miller Band.”

He points to my lap. “Are you eating French fries?”

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