Page 63 of End Game

He winces. “Yeah. At least you’re not living at home.”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t survive that.”

“No idea how we survived for so long in that house,” he laughs. “They should have just shipped us off to boarding school the minute we turned eleven.”

I roll my eyes. Both of us requested to go to a boarding school more than once over the years. Our parents never gave in. It would be unseemly to send off their kids, they decided, despite the fact that most of our peers from our exclusive, upper-crust elementary school ended up at boarding school for either middle school or high school.

I’m sure that deep, deep, deep, deep down inside, my parents love us… when they don’t think of us as pawns or extensions of themselves. They’re just… difficult sometimes. Okay, most of the time.

It’s a fact that we’re both going to join the family business; the only question is when. It’s what we’ve been raised for, groomed for. I don’t have any complaints about going into forensic accounting, and it might be nice to work alongside my father, my uncle, and my cousin Nate. Our company is truly a family business, where all of the family members contribute. Even my mother worked there for a few years when we were younger in the Legal department before she decided she preferred Family Law to corporate. She does often contract the company’s services on behalf of her clients, though…

There was never an option for us to go into law or any other field. It’s always been clear that the plan was for us to study Accounting, take the CPA exam, and then get an MBA. It’s the same path Dad and my uncle James took, and the same path as our cousin Nate took. It’s the same path that Dougie is on now, and the same one I’ll likely be on.

I’m not complaining about the plan. I’ll get my MBA. I just want a breather first. Is that so wrong?

Chapter 19

Diana

Trey and I meet at Pinzer’s, the local bowling alley, shortly before seven on Saturday night. He’s wearing dark jeans and a yellow and green flannel shirt, his beard freshly trimmed and neatened. He looks good. My stomach flips in nervous anticipation.

I haven’t been on a date in six months, since before my dad was diagnosed, and the last time I got laid was a few days after that whole mess happened. I’m way overdue. Tonight I’m freshly washed and prepped everywhere that matters, just in case. My hair looks amazing, if I do say so myself, and my sweater dress and ankle booties are rocking the fall vibes.

Johanna gave me the side eye when I walked out of the house. I wouldn’t put it past her to try to lock me out of the house tonight for daring to go out without her permission, if it wouldn’t get her kicked off the team and stripped of her captaincy. I don’t have the mental energy to worry about her. She’s exhausting enough on a good day.

Trey greets me outside of the bowling alley. He walks towards me and reaches out for me, his hands grasping mine. He ducks down and offers me a chaste kiss on the cheek. It feels… kind of nice. I’m used to sketchy college boys who don’t know how to treat a woman like a lady. So what if he texted me last week looking for a hookup? He’s out on a date with me now.

And it’s not like I expect this to be much more than a night or two of fun. He’s cute and hopefully we can have a good time together. He’s not my forever.

“You look great,” he says right off the bat.

“Wow. Thank you.”

“You ready to head inside?”

“Um, sure.”

Pinzer’s is everything I would expect of a sleazy, run down bowling alley in a college town. The faded fluorescent lighting turns everything a mellow yellow color. The smell of disinfectant, smelly feet, and cigarette smoke hits me like a tidal wave when I walk through the door. That’s something I haven’t missed about being back home. People here smoke more than they do in California. I’ve gotten used to everywhere I go being smoke free. My allergies are none too happy with me for being back in the land of cigarette smoke everywhere.

“Hey, Donovan,” Trey says to the guy manning the front desk. “Two, please.”

“I take it you come here a lot.”

He shrugs. “Often enough.”

Donovan asks me for my shoe size and then hands over a pair of used bowling shoes for me to wear. He doesn’t have to ask Trey—he already knows which shoes to grab. He rings us up. Trey pulls a wrinkled twenty dollar bill out of his pocket and hands it over.

“Thank you,” I tell him, because my mama raised me to have manners. I don’t expect him to pay for me, but he’s the one who initiated this date: by the common principles of dating, the person who invites is the person who pays. I’ll offer to buy us drinks or something once we get settled.

He gives me that sideways smile of his.

We’re assigned to lane twelve, right in the middle of the bowling alley. The lanes on either side of us are occupied, one by a trio of senior citizens drinking beer and cussing each other out, and the other by a group of what look to be preteens or early teenagers. The bowling alley attracts an eclectic crowd in our sleepy little college town.

“So, you come here often?” I ask Trey, who’s tying his bowling shoes.

He shrugs. “What is often?”

Considering I’ve never been here, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gone bowling in the last decade, I’m going to bet we have different definitions of the frequency of “often.”