Fool Me Forever (The Confidence Game 2)

“No.”

He angled the empty glass toward Halsey. “But you thought about it.”

“I still want to call him.”

“Pretend you did.”

“Pretend, like when I was five and you locked me in the garden shed overnight and I pretended I wasn’t scared shitless?”

“Cal let you out the next morning.”

“And I got you back.”

Zeke frowned. Halsey could see the memory hamster in his head running the wheel backwards. “Nah.”

Halsey nudged Zeke with his knee. “Remember when you were dating Bettina Winslow?”

“Junior year. She was a senior. Hmm, older women. God, she was hot. Science nerd and a cheerleader. First kiss, first fingering, first hand job. I remember these incandescent make-out sessions in her dad’s car. Fucking sweet for how young and dumb we were.”

“You were in love and then she dumped you.”

“Broke my damn fool heart.”

“And you never found out why?”

“She never spoke to me again, and her family moved after the summer.”

“I told her you had crabs.”

Zeke gripped both sides of the table. “You what? You did. What? That was like eight years after the garden shed.”

“I might be slow, but I’m deadly.”

“Holy shit, Halsey.” Zeke laughed and slumped into the back of his chair. “You were a little punk. And you never told anyone till now. Still waters. You make me want to hold your head down the toilet and flush it till you agree to find Bettina and tell her what you did. She’s probably still traumatized.”

“Doubt it. She was sucking Beau Matthew’s face behind the basketball courts the next week.”

“No! She was? I pined for her. Wrote goddamn love songs about her for a whole year. Beau Matthews was a jock who couldn’t add up if he used all his fingers and toes. And you knew, you bastard.”

“Like you suffered. You turned it into an art form. The next year, you turned hooking up into your major. And you and Cal were kings of the school.” And now they were the kings of wealth redistribution, Cal was in love with Fin, and Zeke was still breaking hearts all over.

“Why the fuck am I here, Halsey?”

“Lenore Bradshaw. We were going to team up to run a sting on Cookie Jar, but I fucked up already and she kissed me.”

“You volunteered to come out from behind your big phallic antique desk and interact with a member the public in a humanitarian effort. Are the financial markets about to tank? Is the stock exchange shuttered? The dollar about to be devalued?”

“I knew it was a waste of time calling you. My desk is not phallic.”

“Your desk is a representation of your dick, a symbol of your masculine power and your ability to spend an insane amount of money on old stuff.” Zeke made a vee shape with both hands arcing down as if to indicate his groin. “Ergo, phallic.”

“You’re being a dick.”

“You want me to pat you on the head and congratulate you for seeing a problem and solving it?”

“I didn’t solve it. I fucked it up.”

“Oh. Shit. How?”