Page 11 of Fake Game

“Thank you for paying,” Jessica comments as I tuck my credit card back into my wallet.

I give her a shrug. “It’s the least I could do.”

“Yeah, I guess this was sort of a fail,” she snorts, sliding out of the booth. She tries to mask it, but there is a bitterness in her tone.

“I hope the rest of your blind dates go better.”

“You, too.”

Not if I can help it.

“Thanks.” I give her a nod as she walks away.

I wait until she walks out the door and then give it another few minutes before I exit the restaurant myself. The last thing I want is to bump into her and make this night even more awkward.

I’m already pulling up my mother’s number and dialing it by the time I get into my Jeep and start driving home.

“Wai,” her greeting filters in through my speakers.

“Ma,” I return dryly.

“Ah. I take it dinner with yourpo podidn’t go as expected.”

“Unless she suddenly found the fountain of youth and turned into a twenty-something-year-old woman, then no. No, it did not go as expected.”

She lets out a heavy sigh, “Jackson.”

“I don’t need to go on blind dates, Mom. I can handle my own love life.”

“You don’t have a love life.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, you don’t. You play around—that is not the same thing, and it’s not respectable.”

Shit.

I try to be discrete by conducting most of my activities at Cardinal Club, where customer confidentiality is key, and Sydney sweet-talks and bribes as many reporters as she possibly can to keep my sex life out of the press—but it’s hard to hide everything when you’re in the public eye, something always slips through.

Now it’s my turn to sigh as Mom descends into a monologue of her own.

“Po pois just looking out for you. And your aunties are right; you are getting older, and you’ve yet to have a stable girlfriend in your life. When I was your age, I was already engaged to your father. And I know things are different for people your age nowadays, but that’s not an excuse to not even try. Reputation matters, and it doesn’t look good on the family for our son to not even have a girlfriend when everyone else we know is busy setting up weddings and celebrating their grandchildren. You’re twenty-eight, time is ticking.”

Why did I think calling her was a good idea?

“I’ve spoken to your father about it, and he agrees that we should pursue this. It’s just a few dates. There’s no harm in just meeting the women and seeing if they’re a good match. You never know—auntie Lei met her husband that way, and they’ve been happily married for twenty years. So, just appease your grandparents and go on the dates.”

“No.”

“Lau Ka-yee, you will listen to me, and you will go on these dates, or so help me, I will come over there and force you to go on them myself.”

I grimace. It’s never a good sign when she switches to my Chinese name.

“I’ve let you do a lot of things in life that I was deeply opposed to, so for once, I’m telling you to do as I say and stop arguing.”

Great.

She just had to pull the gamer card.

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