This Gorgeous Game by Donna Freitas Read Free Book Online

his voice: a bit preachy, a little slurred. “That kind of stuff.”
    “Sounds dark,” Ash says and pops a bite of banana into her mouth.
    “Not exactly. More like, he’s reached a point in life when, since he doesn’t have children or a wife and he wants a legacy other than his books—he actually used that word when talking about the contest—he’s thinking of the people who win this prize each year as his pseudo kids or something. Like, it’s his job to take care of us. I don’t know. Maybe I’m being overly analytical.”
    “Well,” Ash says, “regardless of his reasons you get to be the beneficiary. Right place, right time. You know.”
    “And, on a different note…” Jada is ready to change the subject. “Guess what I have to report?”
    “You heard from Sam, didn’t you?” I exclaim, and when Jada nods I scold: “You waited an entire day of school to tell us?”
    “I wanted to wait until we had time to discuss the intricacies of the conversation and examine it down to the very last detail.”
    “Given that neither Olivia nor I have a boy in our lives—not yet at least,” Ash says, looking at me, mouthing the name Jamie, “we have all the time in the world to devote to your late-night exchange with Sam-u-el.”
    “So!” Jada seems ready to burst. “We IM’d for two hours last night,” she begins, and for the next thirty minutes the three of us sit by the window, at our little metal table with the tiny, old-fashioned chairs, picking apart each word, fragment, and sentence of Jada’s exchange with Sam, trying to figure out the meaning, however minuscule it might be.
    “Maybe, once Sam and I fall madly in love—and Olivia and Jamie, or insert other college boy here, fall madly in love…” She gives me a look before continuing. “We can set you up with one of their friends.” Jada reaches her hand across the table, tapping Ash’s. “Because if Olivia and I end up with boyfriends then, of course, you will need one, too.”
    Jada is still talking about Sam when I notice two familiar people standing in front of the ice cream shop.
    “Jada Ling!” I hiss. “I can’t believe you.”
    “I might’ve sent a quick text on our way here,” she sings, shooting me a sheepish look before she is up from her chair and out the door like a shot. I put my hands over my eyes, afraid to watch, afraid to be made a fool of, to act a fool, a jumble of nerves and thrills.
    “What?” Ash asks, craning her neck to see whatever I’m seeing outside the window. “Who’s out there?”
    “Nobody,” I say.
    “That’s a very hot nobody,” Ash observes once she gets a good view.
    Sam and Jamie—as in Jamie Grant—are locking up their mountain bikes to one of the meter poles along Newbury Street.
    Jada knocks on the window, waving us to come outside.
    “Go say hi to him already,” Ash demands. “I’ll watch our stuff. Besides, I don’t want to be a third wheel.”
    “I can’t.” I am as frozen as the ice cream in our sundae.
    “Olivia. Come on.” She tries yanking me from my chair.
    My shy side kicks into high gear, and when it’s clear I’m not going anywhere, Ash takes matters into her own hands and before I can grab her she tells me, “Fine, you watch our stuff and I’ll go get him for you.”
    Oh God, oh God, oh God,
I repeat in my mind, then pull out the novel I’ve been reading,
The House of the Spirits
by Isabel Allende, to give myself something to do other than watch whatever is happening outside. But after I read the same paragraph over and over for what feels like five minutes, the door of the ice cream shop opens and I can’t resist—I look up.
    There. He. Is.
    Jamie.
    “Hi, Olivia,” he says, walking over to the table. “Your friend Ashley said you might be getting lonely. Mind if I join you?”
    Oh, Ash! “No, not at all,” I say, grabbing my messenger bag off the seat and putting it on the floor to make room. “Of course not. Hi. Nice to see you again.”
    “Same