Page 61 of The Game


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We’d made pancakes together for breakfast, but she looked so damn sexy wearing my jersey in the kitchen that I wound up lifting her onto the island and pouring the syrup all over her so I could lick it off. I smiled and licked my lips. “If there’s any left between your legs, I can take care of that for you.”

“I think I’m good.”

“Shame.”

Bella went about getting things out of her drawers in her bedroom. But since her apartment was a studio, her bedroom was also her living room and kitchen. It was just one big area. I sat down on the couch and watched her.

She pulled a pair of shoes from a closet and looked over. “Are you going to watch me get ready?”

I shrugged. “Nothing else to do.”

“Well, you’re making me nervous. So you need to find something else.”

“Okay.” I looked around. “Where’s your TV?”

“I don’t have one.”

My face wrinkled. “You don’t have a television?”

“I don’t watch much, and clearly I don’t have much room. So when my last one broke two years ago, I never bothered replacing it.”

“So you’ve watched no television for two years?”

“Miller and I watch movies at his place sometimes. And we watched all the Bruins’ games there during the two years of the inheritance appeal, before I officially became the owner. Other than that, if there’s something I want to see, I watch it on my laptop.”

I glanced around again. “So what exactly would you like me to do?”

She pointed. “There are books on the shelf.”

I smiled. “Think I’ll play with my phone.”

A few minutes later, Bella was in the bathroom blow-drying her hair. I got bored with my phone, so I went to check out her books. I wasn’t much of a reader, except for playbooks and the occasional biography, but I figured I’d see what she was into. There was a full shelf dedicated to what I thought was computer programming languages, but I couldn’t even be sure. Then she had a few shelves of legal thrillers and various other novels. On the bottom was more of the same, except for one book on the end that stuck out. It had a gold-ringed binding, and I thought it might be a photo album, so I slipped it out. Sure enough, it was. The front cover had a small, square cutout window with a picture inside of it. I lifted the book closer to get a good look at the little girl in pigtails and crooked glasses. Yep. That was definitely Bella.

I carried the book over to the bathroom door and knocked.

“Come in!”

I opened the door. “Hey. I found a book I’m interested in after all. You mind if I look through it?”

She spoke to my reflection in the mirror. “Of course not. Go ahead.” But my smirk must’ve tipped her off because then Bella turned around. “Hang on a second. What book is it?”

“Don’t know. Doesn’t have a title.”

She cocked her head. “What book doesn’t have a title?”

I grinned. “The kind that has a cute little girl with pigtails on the cover.”

“Oh gosh.” She chuckled. “I forgot that album was on the shelf.”

“Is it alright if I look?”

“Sure. But we won’t discuss any photos from the age of ten to twelve. I went through a Hypatia phase.”

“A what?”

“Hypatia. She was an astronomer and mathematician. I did a book report on her in fourth grade and made my mom style my hair like hers for a while.”

“What was her hair styled like?”

“Oh, you’ll see.”

I planted myself on the couch again. The first two pages of the album had baby pictures of Bella. She was a tiny little thing with big, green, alert eyes and a smile that seemed perpetually on her face. When I turned the next page, I was momentarily confused. It looked like a recent picture of Bella, but her hair was darker and something about her seemed different. Then I realized Bella was the baby and the woman holding her must’ve been her mother. Damn, she really looks like her mom.

I watched Bella grow up as I flipped the pages. When I got to about age ten, there was a photo of her standing in front of a classroom, holding up a picture of a woman with an old-fashioned hairdo that was back in style with the bohemian crowd today. Her own hair was piled on top of her head in a loose bun, with a gold band placed near the front, sort of like a Greek goddess might wear. The quality of the photo wasn’t great, but Bella had the same retro hairdo for the next few pages, so I figured the woman in the picture she’d held was the mathematician she did her book report on. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I went through the next two years.

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