Page 36 of Forking the Billionaire

“You look like you just smelled a fart,” Esme said.

I licked my lips. “Delicious.”

She laughed and passed the napkin she’d been drawing on over to me. In typical Esme fashion, the doodle was a stick figure giving me the finger.

Esme rolled the crayon across the table. She put her chin in her hands and rested her elbows on the table as she waited for my response.

I wrote:

You stole my luggage, didn’t you?

That was ridiculous, of course. I passed the napkin and the crayon back.

She wrote back:

The ghosts probably stole your luggage.

She didn’t really believe in ghosts, did she?

I wrote:

Ghosts aren’t real.

It felt like we were in middle school passing secret scraps of paper back and forth while the teacher wasn’t looking. Of course when I was in seventh grade, Esme was in kindergarten. Still, that didn’t change the slight thrill of what we were doing now.

She scribbled a note and passed the napkin back. It read:

The island says otherwise.

For my turn, I wrote:

Where would ghosts hide my suitcase?

She wrote:

Who knows? They’re ghosts.

Gabriel and Layana softened from deep tongue lashings to lighter pecks, meaning they were almost done, and our time before getting caught was running out.

This was my last turn, and the stakes felt higher than they had any right to. I wrote:

Sounds like another mystery. Will you help me solve it? Circle one: yes, no.

Just as I slid the note back, Jules turned around and leaned her head on my shoulder and looked up at me. “I’m going to grab another cup of coffee.”

Guilt and excitement pumped through my veins, which I knew was ridiculous because I hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Okay,” I told Jules.

As Jules walked away, Esme chewed her lip. Indecision warred on her features. Finally, she flashed me the napkin one last time, with her answer circled.

Yes.

TWELVE

ESME

It wasn’t entirely fair of me to take my agitation out on Jasper. Did he deserve to be tortured? Sure. Whenever I thought about him, I couldn’t help but remember his betrayal. So if someone were to sprinkle glitter in his shampoo, I would laugh and cheer the perpetrator’s spiteful spirit.

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