Page 39 of The Kiss of Deception

She sets my cards in front of me. “You seem more like a bee girl.”

Five hands later, we finish another round of Uno. She demolishes me. Again.

If she weren’t wearing a white butterfly top with a ruffled halter neck, I’d suspect she’s hiding +4 cards in her sleeves.

My phone beeps in my pocket. I find a message from my fake-boyfriend, and my first instinct is to ignore it. Except, it’s a media file—not one of his usual ninety-seven-minute audios—and I’ tempted to break my rule of making him wait—or never answering.

In the end, curiosity is a cat with a purr that I can’t resist. Not that I like cats.

My thumb taps twice. The screen lights up with the grins of the two men in my life, and my entire eyesight reduces to the screen until I can almost see every pixel of the picture.

Miles and Grandpa show teeth, crinkly eyes and dimpled cheeks. Happiness that can’t be faked.

The background is a familiar red and steel. Red that has been my home as much as my house. I spent some of my favorite childhood memories in a stadium in the middle of Grandpa and Grandma.

When she passed away, she left behind a broken man. For years, Tobias Westwood was a ghost—his wife the color in his life; without her, his world went pitch black.

A dull twinge nips with every beat of my heart. Miles is the hand Grandpa chose to hold as he refreshed his dusty footprints on our stadium.

But mainly, the pulpy organ thuds with overwhelming happiness.

Born in England, Tobias Westwood, like most children, found in his passion for soccer an escape from the ugliness of humanity. In the ruins of a country, kicking a ball, children could be just children.

When he emigrated to the Americas, he met a country that didn’t particularly care for the most beloved sport in his motherland. He had no choice but to correct the errors of Americans’ ways.

So, Tobias Westwood became one of the founders of Boston Football Club, one of the first football (err… soccer?) clubs in the USA, and the first in the city.

I know this tale by heart, so many times he held my hand in those stands and spoke those exact words like a special secret that belonged to us only.

I can’t remember the last time I heard them.

If I had known back then it would be the last time, I would have strained my ears. I would’ve stopped myself from blinking. I would have carved and committed every intonation to memory. From the wrinkles around his words, to the crinkle in the corners of his blue eyes—and the gleam in them.

The gleam that had faded with his wife’s last breath.

The gleam that never returned.

Our religious weekly soccer dates stopped with the beat of my grandma's heart, and they never came back.

Tobias Westwood never again stepped foot in the stadium he’d helped erect.

Not for the lack of trying. I tried and tried, then and now—always a resounding no for an answer.

Yet there he is.

Sitting in his box, in those same seats for which he holds seasonal tickets he’d never canceled; for years, they’d sat there, empty with dust-shaped memories.

“Are you going to tell me what’s got your face all twisted in a poem?” Camila’s voice yanks me from my head.

“Uh?” I have to clear my throat. “My grandpa went to the game with Miles. The soccer game.” I feel the need to clarify, as though she’ll comprehend the magnitude of such a little thing.

Her face scrunch up like a crumpled-up piece of paper. “A child dies every time you Burger Kings call football soccer.” The way she all but spits the word translates visceral loathing. “It’s me—my inner child. My European inner child.”

“Burger Kings?”

“Yeah. Like, if I were referring to French people, I’d say baguettes.” She sighs, slumps in her chair so dramatically she almost hits the girls on the next table. They side-eye her, sharing a look that conveys they don’t find Camila cute. “It’s a sad day for me, realizing I chose a friend with zero sense of humor.”

“Okay, first of all—” I hold up my index finger. “You have to meet my grandpa! You’ll be best friends as soon as he hears you’re a soccer-hater. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to replace me with you.”

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