My So-Called Sex Life (How to Date, #1)(29)

Yeah, it’s the time-honored tit-for-tat con.

And it works like a key in a well-oiled lock.

My childhood memories play out in sepia tones as I stare at the fountain. “My dad always said fountains were perfect spots for cons,” I begin, diving into the deep end.

“Oh,” she says, her back straightening, her tone surprised, like she didn’t think I’d go there. “He did?”

“Yeah. He honed his pickpocket skills at fountains.” I hold up my palm like my dad did when he’d teach me a con. “He told me, See how everyone’s looking the same way? They’re looking at the water and their wallets and purses are loose since they’re taking them out to grab coins to make wishes.”

Hazel clutches her purse closer. Smart move. I’m sure the square is teeming with thieves.

“Then he said: They’re usually on vacation, so they’re happier. Happy people and lonely people are easy marks for a short con.” I draw a deep breath and finish the heartwarming tale, “Then he looked at me, all fatherly, all teacherly and said, Don’t ever be a mark.”

Her green eyes flicker, perhaps with sadness, maybe even empathy. She has a shitty dad too. But she also looks like she’s adjusting to this new information. It’s one thing for her to know my dad’s a grifter; it’s another to know he taught me to follow in his footsteps.

“That also means—don’t be happy, Axel,” she says, heavily.

“Dad’s motto,” I say heavily, then since I’ve unlocked this door, I kick it open. “Then he told me: Alexander, you have to remember to always be suspicious. Be wary. Question everything. Otherwise you’re a mark.”

There was nothing worse than being a mark. A mark was a fool.

“That’s a tough thing to hear,” she says, then she reaches for my bicep, squeezes it.

Fuck, that feels good.

I keep talking even when she lets go of me. I can’t seem to stop. “He taught me how to pickpocket at Lincoln Center. Then he helped me refine the technique in Florida when I went to visit him. So many fountains in Boca, Palm Springs, Miami Beach. So many old people, so many marks. They’re either happy or lonely,” I say, and even though I’m trying to strip the acid from my tone, I can hear it in my voice.

More so I can feel it in my throat as I speak of my father.

“What was that like? Growing up with that?” she asks, with no agenda other than concern, it seems. “You must have been so young.”

“Six, seven, eight,” I say, recounting. “See, I was more valuable to him then. I could play on people’s sympathies. Prey on them, really. I was the kid lost from his parents, asking for help, for money. He’d teach me the script, make me practice it, then send me out into the world of marks,” I say, letting the light shine on my whole damn story.

“You were in grade school and he made you grift?”

“He did,” I say, tightly.

“Axel,” she says, my name full of sympathy. But a new kind, one perhaps born from this new understanding she was so damn curious about.

I heave a sigh, then shrug. “What can you do? We all go through stuff. You just figure out what to do with it,” I say, since I can’t open the door any farther. It’s off its hinges.

“Is he still conning?”

“He lives in Florida. Land of the scam. He’s graduated to online scams for the most part. But they work well enough for him.”

“And now you rewrite fountains,” she says, shifting the topic as she gestures to the water.

“I’m sure if he read my books, he’d laugh at me. He’d see through me. He’d know what I’d done.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t give him so much credit,” she says, in a strangely protective tone. “What you did is clever. And cathartic. I don’t think anyone, especially a con artist, could see it. It takes someone who knows how to look, to really look, and to really want to know.”

Like you? I want to ask. Someone like you? And do you really want to know me? Is that your goal?

But I don’t ask any of that. That’s a recipe for rejection.

Instead, I reach into my pocket for another coin. Flip it in the water. Add to today’s Trevi Fountain haul. “Want to know what I wished for?”

“Tell me,” she says eagerly.

“Gelato.”

“Now it won’t come true.” She pouts.

“Oh, but it will.” My gaze drifts to a gelato cart on the other side of the fountain. “Want some?”

“Yes.”

I make my way to the cart as I keep my real wish private.

The same one I wished for earlier—to pull off the long con of this trip.

I make the wish again as we eat the gelato, then as we head to the hotel, and once more as we take the elevator to the third floor.

We step out together.

This is the moment when I have to bang that wish into my skull. Because everything—every single thing—about this moment reminds me of the things I once wanted.

When she reaches her room, she heaves a weary sigh, one that says that was a long day, but a good one. “Thanks for taking me to jet lag school. I guess you’re a smidge rugged after all.”

“And a smidge is more than a tidge,” I say.