Page 60 of How to Win the Girl

I can’t help noticing these things I failed to see the first time we met; then again, she was sitting in front of me, my view was only the back of her head and profile during class.

Obviously, the pictures on the dating app don’t do her justice, but I’m not dumb enough to tell her that to her face.

“So. You have a twin,” Daisy blurts out with no warning and no other salutation, getting straight to the point.

“I do.”

Daisy looks at me—really looks hard—studying every square inch of my face until I shift in my seat uneasily.

“I honest to god thought he was you when I bumped into him in the student union.” Her head gives a tiny shake. “Crazy how alike you look.”

Yeah—even crazier, considering how that was actually me and not my twin brother.

I nod. “Growin’ up was easier because I had longer hair, and he always kept his short.” I run a hand through mine now. “But now we not only have the same haircut but we also get it cut by the same dude.”

“The resemblance is uncanny—not that I do a lot of staring.” She laughs uncomfortably. “I’d have to do a side by side. Twins fascinate me.”

The server comes by and sets down my beer and her cocktail, and without even discussing it, we both raise our glasses and toast.

“Did you ever switch places to trick people?”

Um. I’m doing it right now. “Yes, I was never good at math or science, so sometimes Dre—I mean, sometimeshewould take them for me.” Teachers never noticed the slight differences between us, even those months in eight grade when I had a mullet.

Mullets, by the way, are making a comeback, so don’t judge me for rocking one when I was a kid.

I knew what was up.

“And all of you play football?”

I nod.

“How is that possible?”

I shrug. “My dad—I guess for a long time, we all wanted to be like him.” Which is the truth, mostly. We couldn’t have known as kids what a piece of shit husband he actually was to our ma; the cheating and running around behind her back. None of us could have known she was crying because Dad was unfaithful and she’d read about it in the tabloids—we just thought that’s what girls did.

Cried a lot.

“Our dad died when we were in middle school, so Duke stepped in. And he was already on his way to college, and Dallas was in high school, and football kept us busy so that’s what we did.”

Daisy’s bottom lip juts out. “I’m sorry about your dad.”

“It’s fine. That seems like forever ago.”

It was not an easy time; he didn’t just die, he left collateral damage in his wake that none of us had been prepared for. Women came out of the woodwork, claiming he was the father of their children but having no proof. Wanting a part of the estate he’d left to our mother.

The media had a field day with it, running the stories for weeks after he passed. My mother was unable to grieve privately.

It was fucking terrible.

And the one reason I haven’t been able to commit to any one woman; I’m terrified I’m going to end up like our dad, treating a woman the same way, unable to be faithful.

Irrational?

Perhaps.

But also valid.

Sure, Duke has done it, and Dallas has followed suit, both my older brothers in committed, monogamous—blissfully so if what they tell me is true—relationships. Two shining examples to erase the example our father created but…

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